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Post by Kainguru on May 26, 2013 10:26:27 GMT -8
Part way into the podcast - I'd just like to point out that the best Australians tend to have been born, like myself, in New Zealand . . . As such I am genetically compelled to say: Don't fuck with our religion: RUGBY!!!! If there is God and a Heaven that's what God plays and his side are the mighty All Blacks!! Give me an army of All Black forwards and I'll crush all my enemies before me . . . Lamentation of their women . . . yadda yadda. Seriously though much love to the poster from the land of the long white cloud . . . I miss it loads . . . Aaron
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on May 26, 2013 17:43:07 GMT -8
I'm only 30 minutes in so far, but I wanted to comment on the turn cloak NPC discussion. I absolutely agree with the hosts when they say that you (the GM) has to go for the slow burn with a traitor character. You can't reveal the secret too soon, or the game is over. Draw it out. Make the traitor character trustworthy, or at least not bone obvious. There are two fantastic boardgames that illustrate this, and can also give you ideas of how to use traitors in your RPGs; Battlestar Galactica and The Resistance. If you get a chance to play either of these games, I can't recommend them enough.
Learn from my mistakes, people.
Battlestar Galactica: In the game, you are the humans aboard the Galactica, trying to outrun the Cylons and get to Kobol. The players are all cooperating with each other, playing against the board which spits out Raider and Basestars to attack Galactica, as well as having emergencies happen on the ship (water shortages, civil unrest, mutinies, etc.). But someone (or possibly more than one person) is a hidden Cylon tying to sabotage the humans. At the beginning of the game, everyone is dealt a Loyalty Card. This card is kept secret from the other players and tells you if you're a human or a Cylon. If you are a Cylon, on your turn whenever you want, you can reveal yourself, flip over your Loyalty Card, and do something really nasty to the human players. But your ability only works if you are not in the Brig. So, if you act too suspiciously or tip your hand too early, the other players are going to stick you in the Brig first chance they get. And once you're in the Brig, you can only get out again if you can convince enough people to vote you out. There's a lot more to the game, but that's all you need to know for my example.
One game, I think it was our third or fourth, I finally got to be a Cylon. The Loyalty Cards are dealt out randomly, so no one knows who is who. Anyway, I was so damn excited to be a Cylon that I did something incredibly stupid on my very first turn. I was playing as Laura Roslyn, who's special ability allows her look at the top two cards of the Crisis Deck (which is the deck players draw from every turn to see what bad shit everyone has to deal with this turn) at the end of her turn, and stick one card on the top and the other on the bottom of the deck for the next player. So, she can stack the deck. As I said, I was so excited to be a Cylon, that I stuck the worst card on top of the deck so that the next player would draw it. Big mistake. When the player drew his Crisis Card he looked at it, looked at me and said "Dude. I don't know what the other card was, but whatever it was it HAS to be better than this one. Especially on the first turn. You are such a Cylon." I was like "Oh, shit." and my face must've said it all, because everyone else said "Yup. He's a frakkin' taoster." I spent the rest of the game in the Brig. Worst. Cylon. Ever. I never made that mistake again.
The Resistance: The Resistance is like a stripped down version of BSG in that everyone is dealt a Loyalty Card at the beginning of the game. You're either part of the Resistance, or a Megacorp Spy. The Resistance is trying to complete sabotage missions against the Megacorps, while the Spies are trying to sabotage those sabotage missions. The Resistance wins if they complete 3 out of 5 missions. Spies win if they sabotage 3 out of 5 missions. Each turn the team leader (a rotating role) selects a number of players to go on the mission, then everyone at the able votes on whether that team should be sent out or not, with the majority winning. If the mission gets voted down, team leadership moves to the next player and they select players again. If the vote passes, the players going on the mission (anywhere from 2 to 5 depending on the mission and number of players) are dealt a Pass card and a Fail card. They choose one, hand it face down to the team leader who shuffles them, then they get revealed. If even a single Fail card is revealed, the mission fails and the Spies get closer to victory. That's really all there is to the game.
Anyway, in a 5 player game there are only two Spies and only two people go out on the first mission. One game I was a Spy, got selected to go on the first mission, and threw in a Fail card. Bad move. With only one other person on the mission with me, both of us immediately got pegged as Spies. No one sent me on any of the other four missions for the rest of the game. I had played my hand way too early.
Don't be an idiot like I was.
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scubasteve
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Post by scubasteve on May 26, 2013 19:00:32 GMT -8
Battlestar Galactica:One game, I think it was our third or fourth, I finally got to be a Cylon. The Loyalty Cards are dealt out randomly, so no one knows who is who. Anyway, I was so damn excited to be a Cylon that I did something incredibly stupid on my very first turn. I was playing as Laura Roslyn, who's special ability allows her look at the top two cards of the Crisis Deck (which is the deck players draw from every turn to see what bad shit everyone has to deal with this turn) at the end of her turn, and stick one card on the top and the other on the bottom of the deck for the next player. So, she can stack the deck. As I said, I was so excited to be a Cylon, that I stuck the worst card on top of the deck so that the next player would draw it. Big mistake. When the player drew his Crisis Card he looked at it, looked at me and said "Dude. I don't know what the other card was, but whatever it was it HAS to be better than this one. Especially on the first turn. You are such a Cylon." I was like "Oh, shit." and my face must've said it all, because everyone else said "Yup. He's a frakkin' taoster." I spent the rest of the game in the Brig. Worst. Cylon. Ever. I never made that mistake again. Not directly related to RPGS, but I have to point out: in BSG, being in the brig only stops you from moving, not from taking actions. You always had the option of using the action on your loyalty card, revealing yourself to be a cylon, which automatically moves you to the resurrection ship, and out of the brig. So that example is more about not looking at the rules.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on May 26, 2013 19:48:53 GMT -8
Edit. You're right scubasteve. Being in the Brig prevents you from moving, meaning you can't "activate" any of the Locations on Galactica for your action, as you can't move there. You can still use Skill Cards, Title Cards (Admiral or President), Quorum Cards, or Character Cards for their Action, if they have one. Plus, the Cylon Loyalty cards all say: "Action: Reveal this card. If you are not in the Brig [some nasty effect]." So I exaggerated a bit in that first post. I didn't spend the whole rest of the game in the Brig. I saw that everyone had me pegged as a Cylon, and realized that I was never going to convince anyone to vote me out of the Brig. So on my second turn, I shot myself (revealed my Cylon Loyalty card), then popped up back on the Resurrection Ship and was a Revealed Cylon for the rest of the game. Which was a total waste. Those Cylon reveal effects can really kick the human players right in the balls when used at the right time. Like when they're getting fucked by something else, have no idea you're a Cylon, and need you to do some crucial action to save Galactica. That's when you say "Nah. I'd much rather do this." and flip your Loyalty Card, kick them when they're down, and bathe in their tears of shock and frustration.
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scubasteve
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Post by scubasteve on May 26, 2013 21:18:31 GMT -8
Nah, the best time to reveal is when it's a crisis on the turn of whoever goes right before you, and then you dump all of the cards you have that are negative into the skill check. That way you can guarantee that you will screw the humans over, and you will be able to use your cylon reveal action. Anyway, downloading the episode right now, so I'll have something to say about the actual content later.
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Post by Kainguru on May 26, 2013 21:24:27 GMT -8
Nah, the best time to reveal is when it's a crisis on the turn of whoever goes right before you, and then you dump all of the cards you have that are negative into the skill check. That way you can guarantee that you will screw the humans over, and you will be able to use your cylon reveal action. Totally . . . Can only be better if you've dicked around enough before hand so that at least one human is in the brig. Aaron
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Post by shadrack on May 27, 2013 18:43:57 GMT -8
Stork - if you're interested in getting your kids involved and using FATE, you should take a look at fate accelerated. They have streamlined Fate even further. Instead of skills, you have approaches (flashy, forceful, clever and three more I can't remember off hand. So they describe what and how, they do something, and that's all you need to decide what to roll. It's really sweet. You can download it for free or pay evil hat what you want to. evil hat store- Fate Accelerated
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jpk
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Post by jpk on May 27, 2013 19:10:33 GMT -8
As far as limiting a potential Two Sides, One Epic entry to a page size, that's not going to work out. Establish a character or word limit instead. Check out you preferred text size in the layout you like to fit on your Kindle (or other "random" page size), and use that as your guide.
You have to guard yourself against goobers who can't self-edit but can set the text to 5.5-point.
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maxinstuff
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HJRP0920
May 27, 2013 21:55:05 GMT -8
via mobile
Post by maxinstuff on May 27, 2013 21:55:05 GMT -8
Sure it will - it's a competition. If some bell-end submits something like 2 A4 pages of single spaced 5 point font they simply wont win
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Post by Stu Venable on May 28, 2013 6:58:38 GMT -8
I think there was a minimum type size on 2 Sides 1 Epic, so it would work the same way.
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SirGuido
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Post by SirGuido on May 28, 2013 7:46:21 GMT -8
Battlestar Galactica, The Resistance, and Avalon(a better version of The Resistance) are all GREAT examples of having a turncoat, and how to play one. Play a few rounds of any of them and you will be primed to play a PC turncoat without a doubt. (IIRC, you can't use your reveal ability if you're in the brig as it is an Action. I might be wrong in that, but I'm pretty sure that's the case. Also, the best time to reveal as a Cylon is right after the player before you has used an Executive Order on you because you are playing Tyrol and they desperately need you to repair the FTL. Action 1: Reveal, Action 2: Draw an extra Super Crisis card. On your turn, nail them with one of those Super Crisis cards. That's what I did the last time I played BSG as a Cylon, it was glorious.)
I for one would be ecstatic if I could get you douchebags out to GenCon. I think people think its bigger than it actually is really. Yes, there are tens of thousands of gamers, yes it can get a bit funky, but its a lot less crowded than you might think unless you're in the dealer hall.
The dice rings are AhMAYzing! Seriously, they are cool. I have the blue and silver one in d20. I will definitely be buying more at GenCon this year. As of right now you can only buy them at cons because their site isn't up yet. But they are well worth the $15 price tag.
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mrcj
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Post by mrcj on May 30, 2013 6:01:02 GMT -8
Two things regarding turncoat NPCs.
One, it can be hard GMing those characters as, and I think Stork touched on it, the GMs non-verbal cues can give the character away. Pauses before he speaks, shiftiness in answering questions, sometimes GMs have tells and you just need to either be aware of them or put the NPC far enough away or not in a positiong for your to show your cards before the players figure it out.
Two, another great example of a turncoat is in "Force 10 from Naveronne" starring a very young Harrison Ford and apretty grisled Robert Shaw. And actually, come to think of it, "The Guns of Naveronne." Both these movies are pretty good for adventuring in general the plot kinds of lends itself to it: a group of highly skilled experts on a military mission.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2013 8:28:03 GMT -8
So.... Stu are you really flying back to wherever to do some guys laundry or am I playing my gullible dis ad?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2013 9:49:34 GMT -8
Absolutely loved the turncoat discussion. Definitely making me rethink one of my Kingmaker NPCs.
The introduction though about the laundry ... horrible. Went on way too long.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on Jun 2, 2013 10:15:34 GMT -8
At 66:10 CADave mentions "people at a con game they're not, in general, they're not sitting there waiting to be offended. It's not what they've showed up for." And I was reminded of this:
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