HJRPG1010

[Kainguru]

dnddad - you are NOT the tread killer!!! maxinstuff and I, being Australian, have particular diets. That of freshly slaughtered and debased, that's the important bit that they be debased first, threads could not taste sweeter or be more satisfying . . . If the forum is an ecosystem we are the hyenas cackling over a rotting cadaver as we feed.


Aaron

[heavymetaljess]

Aug 12, 2013 11:10:54 GMT -8 Kainguru said:

heavymetaljess I have somewhere in my realms of old archived game materials a judicial mechanic specifically for 2e - it was cobbled together from various sources and gives the incremental bonuses for things like charisma etc. It was a TOOL for RP not a replacement . . . you *could* use it to resolve the process with dice rolls but it was actually supposed to be used to take make the decision/justice less arbitrary (by that I mean purely by GM fiat or story goals driven ie: it's a sandbox mechanic). IIRC I 'borrowed' a large chunk from Thieves World by Chaosium, mainly sentencing, and the 2e WaterDeep Boxed set.

This would be awesome if you still have it. Coincidently, I think the only FR book I have is the naked lady Northern sourcebook mentioned in this episode.

[Kainguru]

Aug 12, 2013 12:25:10 GMT -8 heavymetaljess said:

Aug 12, 2013 11:10:54 GMT -8 Kainguru said:

heavymetaljess I have somewhere in my realms of old archived game materials a judicial mechanic specifically for 2e - it was cobbled together from various sources and gives the incremental bonuses for things like charisma etc. It was a TOOL for RP not a replacement . . . you *could* use it to resolve the process with dice rolls but it was actually supposed to be used to take make the decision/justice less arbitrary (by that I mean purely by GM fiat or story goals driven ie: it's a sandbox mechanic). IIRC I 'borrowed' a large chunk from Thieves World by Chaosium, mainly sentencing, and the 2e WaterDeep Boxed set.

This would be awesome if you still have it. Coincidently, I think the only FR book I have is the naked lady Northern sourcebook mentioned in this episode.

I'll have a look when I get home from work - I remember I wrote it up for detailed village I had (I went a bit back ground crazy one weekend: drew up charts for a village council, meetings, resolutions, judicial system, local mores, market produce, NPC backgrounds, even a chart for crop rotation in nearby fields and type of fish available from river - then I learnt 'Players trash that stuff at the first opportunity' ). It was pre-PC ownership however so I'll see if the handwritten notes have survived the ravages of time.

The only 2e FR stuff I bought at the time was WaterDeep . . . I never used it as WaterDeep I basically raped it for mechanics (especially the city system supplement that was printed afterwards) GreyHawk City was another one - the second DM's booklet in the boxed set had a few useful ways of resolving city adventuring issues.


Aaron

[HyveMynd]

Aug 12, 2013 9:10:06 GMT -8 addicted2aa said:

HyveMynd
I just downloaded Continuity. I'll give it a read before I run. Thanks for the heads up. 
The big enemy for the first part of the campaign is a digital virus that rewrites the way you think and act and slowly infects your backups every time you make a new save. Hence why they have such a large time gap, they had to go to a clean back up that Firewall saved. I've been advised else where to use that as the explanation of why they did things that are totally out of character, but I'm not sure how to get them that information. OR rather I'm not sure if I want to give them that information early, when they may first encounter discordant actions, where there is the potential for nerd rage and butt hurt-ness, or wait till later, closer to the climax, as I originally planned, and use it as a way of explaining after the fact, which does nothing to help the "hurt" that cames when they felt I've betrayed their character concept,  three sessions earlier.

I love the Eclipse Phase setting but am honestly not interested in the FIrewall/X-Threat stuff. I would probably never run a game of Eclipse Phase where the PCs are part of Firewall, as I feel that giving them such a massive support and safety network severely undermines the horror aspect of the game. If you have near unlimited access to the tools and resources needed to deal with X-Threats (as Firewall does) I really feel you lose the Lovecraftian "humanity is cosmically insignificant" aspect of the game. Which is, in my opinion, what the game is all about. Making the PCs Firewall agents turns the game into too much of a superhero game for my tastes. But I usually prefer gritty, street-level stuff anyway.

I'm mentioning all this so that you take my suggestions with a grain of salt, addicted2aa.

My advice is to show the characters (and players) the effects of the virus. Treat the story like any other X-Threat mystery with the PCs tracking down individuals and discovering they are infected. Show them (through the victims' actions) that the virus rewrites the personality of the host. Show them that the host has no idea they are being rewired. Show them that the virus can bypass security measures and get into a hosts backup copy. Drive home how scary this damn thing is and how you really don't want to catch it.

And then slowly start dropping hints and clues that the PCs have dealt with this virus before, but they have no memory of it. Have NPCs the PCs have never met before remember meeting them. But the NPCs remember them with slightly different personalities. Little things. Nothing giant. Stuff that can be explained away by bring in a different morph. Your goal here should be to make the players paranoid as fuck that they caught the virus two months ago, and had to be reinstated from an old backup. But did the virus get into the backup Firewall used? Are they currently infected? Don't be overt though. Much like a Lovecraft story you have to do this slowly. Drawn out over a period of time.

Which is why it might not be that great for a con game. But you can still use ideas from it. Then it becomes The Hangover; you know something's missing and you have to find out what. This is what the Continuity module does. It's a great read.

[sbloyd]

Aug 12, 2013 11:59:17 GMT -8 Kainguru said:

being Australian,
...
hyenas

Shouldn't that be dingoes?

[addicted2aa]

Aug 12, 2013 17:52:34 GMT -8 HyveMynd said:

I love the Eclipse Phase setting but am honestly not interested in the FIrewall/X-Threat stuff. I would probably never run a game of Eclipse Phase where the PCs are part of Firewall, as I feel that giving them such a massive support and safety network severely undermines the horror aspect of the game. If you have near unlimited access to the tools and resources needed to deal with X-Threats (as Firewall does) I really feel you lose the Lovecraftian "humanity is cosmically insignificant" aspect of the game. Which is, in my opinion, what the game is all about. Making the PCs Firewall agents turns the game into too much of a superhero game for my tastes. But I usually prefer gritty, street-level stuff anyway.

I'm mentioning all this so that you take my suggestions with a grain of salt, addicted2aa.

My advice is to show the characters (and players) the effects of the virus. Treat the story like any other X-Threat mystery with the PCs tracking down individuals and discovering they are infected. Show them (through the victims' actions) that the virus rewrites the personality of the host. Show them that the host has no idea they are being rewired. Show them that the virus can bypass security measures and get into a hosts backup copy. Drive home how scary this damn thing is and how you really don't want to catch it.

And then slowly start dropping hints and clues that the PCs have dealt with this virus before, but they have no memory of it. Have NPCs the PCs have never met before remember meeting them. But the NPCs remember them with slightly different personalities. Little things. Nothing giant. Stuff that can be explained away by bring in a different morph. Your goal here should be to make the players paranoid as fuck that they caught the virus two months ago, and had to be reinstated from an old backup. But did the virus get into the backup Firewall used? Are they currently infected? Don't be overt though. Much like a Lovecraft story you have to do this slowly. Drawn out over a period of time.

Which is why it might not be that great for a con game. But you can still use ideas from it. Then it becomes The Hangover; you know something's missing and you have to find out what. This is what the Continuity module does. It's a great read.

About the firewall, I agree that giving them too much help will water down the game, but I think that can and should be mitigated. For one things, Firewall is a conspiracy so they can't be too overt without exposing themselves. For another, sentinels work in autonomist cells. They are expected to perform without calling in aid most of the time. If they continue to do that, Proxies should burn their rep, lowering their ability to actually call for help. You can also play with different political factions in firewall working against the party. Firewall definitely gives the players an advantage, similar to delta green in Cthulhu, but I don't think leads to super hero transhumanism. I think Caleb Stokes' campaign on RPPR walked that line pretty well between Horror, spy/conspiracy, and action adventure that most players are looking for. Of course if you want to remove the action adventure stuff you can do that as a firewall campaign as well. Just make it the analyst's(can't remember the jargon term for them) trying to solve and fight X threats. 


Thanks for the advice. Some really good ideas in there.

[HyveMynd]

You're absolutely right, addicted2aa. There are ways to reign in Sentinels. It's not only Eclipse Phase though. I just don't care for big, epic "let's go save the world/humanity/the universe" storylines. I don't know why, but I find them boring and tedious. Regardless of system/setting, I'd much rather play smaller, more personal, often street level stories. The issues of slavery, uplift, what it means to be human, AI rights, corporate espionage, etc. found in the Eclipse Phase setting are much more compelling to me than the default game of Firewall team vs. X-Threats. But if that's what you and your group like, go for it.

I forgot to mention this, but if you have time to do a multi-session game don't have the characters wake up knowing that they're missing two-months of time. That's too much of a give away if you're going for the slow reveal. Instead, they wake up assuming everything's fine, but start to discover little inconsistencies. Small memory gaps of hours or days. Memories of meeting NPCs, but being unable to remember their names or the context of the meeting. Events that seem slightly out of order.

What happened is their old selves were infected by the virus. Firewall recovered them and excised the infected portions of their brains, hoping to leave as much of the previous two months intact. Those memories were added to the brains of the current PCs so they don't have to start from zero. Did Firewall get rid of the entire infection though? Really make the players paranoid about whether they're a "clean copy" or not. Do you want to back yourself up, knowing that you may be backing up a corrupted copy? Do you want to reboot from a previous version, when that copy may also be infected?

[Kainguru]

Aug 12, 2013 18:15:40 GMT -8 sbloyd said:

Aug 12, 2013 11:59:17 GMT -8 Kainguru said:

being Australian,
...
hyenas

Shouldn't that be dingoes?

They only eat babies . . .



Aaron

PS and they don't have a 'bark' as such' - silent feasting would ruin the analogy.

[maxinstuff]

Aug 12, 2013 11:59:17 GMT -8 Kainguru said:

dnddad - you are NOT the tread killer!!! maxinstuff and I, being Australian, have particular diets. That of freshly slaughtered and debased, that's the important bit that they be debased first, threads could not taste sweeter or be more satisfying . . . If the forum is an ecosystem we are the hyenas cackling over a rotting cadaver as we feed.


Aaron

Wait.... you debase them FIRST??

[Kainguru]

Aug 12, 2013 22:25:22 GMT -8 maxinstuff said:

Aug 12, 2013 11:59:17 GMT -8 Kainguru said:

dnddad - you are NOT the tread killer!!! maxinstuff and I, being Australian, have particular diets. That of freshly slaughtered and debased, that's the important bit that they be debased first, threads could not taste sweeter or be more satisfying . . . If the forum is an ecosystem we are the hyenas cackling over a rotting cadaver as we feed.


Aaron

Wait.... you debase them FIRST??

Well yeah? . . . It's the look in its eyes at the moment of its debasement that makes its marrow taste sweeter afterwards . . .


Aaron

[shadrack]

Hey there heavymetaljess - Here is a thought on your trial. This is a take-off from Diaspora's social combat. (diaspora SRD) Diaspora is a hard sci-fi FATE game.

Imagine a row of 11 squares (11 is a randomly selected number, use what you want). The jury is in the middle, prosecution on one side and defense on the other. The goal is essentially to 'pull' the jury to your side by using awesome arguments. Perhaps you can show the jury evidence and that gets you a mod on a relevant skill check. (perhaps INT to convey the connection of the item to the situation, or WIS to explain your logic, or CHA to rouse emotion in the jury) The opposing council gets a chance to rebut and we have a contested roll. Win and move the jury toward you, win by 10? and move them 2 spots. Of course, your player won't know where on the ladder they are. Also, if the trial takes days, perhaps the baddies get to the jury and move them 3 spots the other way. Perhaps the Judge is crooked, that may be worth 1 or 2 spots. This is just something I scratched together, but I think it covers a few of the issues that were raised. You can interpret this as the scales of justice and you're moving the jury over to your side of the scale. I also like that it's not one roll and done.



adictedtoaa - Eclipse Phase is sweet. I just got the transhuman book and highly recommend it, if for nothing else then for the 'package' style character creation. On to your question. I don't think it would be bad for them to be tracking down what their past selves have been up to. (almost 'The Hangover' style). There are a ton of reasons they are getting backed up with some 'lack'. And they certainly could've had some altered/doctored memories. Firewall may have even restored them from backup because their actual selves got a) killed, b) infected with an virus/nanovirus/swarm c) went rogue and burned Firewall. They may be chasing themselves... (dum - dum - dummmmmm!)

hyve - I've never seen Firewall as a group that gives it's agents access to unlimited coffers. It seems more like, 'go do this, we can give you a little bit, but you're pretty much on your own'. Maybe an illegal weapon or, a bit of hard to find tech, but a lot of times it seems like. Farcast into this place, there's a crate of weapons you can access and fix this problem.

Regardless, love the setting, and I think the books are awesome. You can get them all for free on pdf(creative commons license), but I've been buying them because I want more.


as far as geography. I currently live in Saint Louis, MO. and here where the Mississippi and Missouri meet, in August in can feel like you just got licked when you step outside. I walk out of my pleasantly AC filled house, and before I can make it to the car, I have a sheen of sweat, but it's so humid I get no relief from the sweat. It just sits there. (sigh)

[Kainguru]

Aug 12, 2013 12:25:10 GMT -8 heavymetaljess said:

Aug 12, 2013 11:10:54 GMT -8 Kainguru said:

heavymetaljess I have somewhere in my realms of old archived game materials a judicial mechanic specifically for 2e - it was cobbled together from various sources and gives the incremental bonuses for things like charisma etc. It was a TOOL for RP not a replacement . . . you *could* use it to resolve the process with dice rolls but it was actually supposed to be used to take make the decision/justice less arbitrary (by that I mean purely by GM fiat or story goals driven ie: it's a sandbox mechanic). IIRC I 'borrowed' a large chunk from Thieves World by Chaosium, mainly sentencing, and the 2e WaterDeep Boxed set.

This would be awesome if you still have it. Coincidently, I think the only FR book I have is the naked lady Northern sourcebook mentioned in this episode.

heavymetaljess - I found it, it's pretty simple except it's handwritten, it'll take me a day to copy it over to my PC - the list of crimes and punishments will be the most time consuming


Aaron

[ericfromnj]

For the trial, look up the D&D adventure Diplomacy in Dungeon Magazine (at least I think that was it), which was more of a hearing about property, but it did the job well. It brought everything down to a roll but if the person was a good enough debater, bringing up certain points, the bonuses got high enough that failure was not an option anymore. At the same time, a person who could not debate their way out of a paper bag in real life could still make a roll and have a good chance of getting what they needed with a few simple points or tie ins.

In another note, I love it when my players all together try to figure something out. It's a DM popcorn moment.

[heavymetaljess]

Kainguru: You're the best! Unless you're also doing it for yourself, you don't have to include the crimes and punishments if it'll save you some work.

I had tried looking up AD&D Waterdeep books but it seems like there were a couple. Was it the one by Ed Greenwood? I'm always looking to add to my collection of AD&D paraphernalia.

[sbloyd]

My favorite for waterdeep was the City System boxed set. Something like a dozen poster sized maps in there...