Mainly we generated characters and since I didn't take notes, this will be pretty sketchy.
The basic idea is the PCs are all crew members on a ship that totally isn't a
About a month ago, Dash (Actually A805F-GV514 but Dash for short) woke up on board his ship. He has absolutely no memory of his personal history before waking up, why it is his biological bits seem to come from six different people [1] or for what purpose he was optimized. He did know he owned the ship he was in and happily despite the really odd lack of serial numbers on the ship, he could prove it.
Since one cyborg cannot run a ship single handed, he advertised for a crew for his craft, Boundless Enthusiasm. In short order (because we've done the 'none of the party will talk to each other' thing and it really makes adventures a lot harder) Dash found five individuals to serve on the Boundless Enthusiasm.
This seems like a good place to mention that Dash's forte isn't people skills (he's the tech guy), with one exception: he's good at inspirational speeches.
Unfortunately I didn't keep the notes so what I remember is our security guy is a former MP who isn't the sharpest pencil in the box but who does have a laudable enthusiasm for the unfamiliar. The doctor is obsessed with the bottom line (he owes the people who paid for his education). Not sure what the back stories for the pilot, the face guy or the fallen post-human are.
As the session ended, the group got a contract from a Perfectly Legitimate Munitions Company to go to Space Vegas and find out what happened to a missing business executive.
1: I should mention that to the GM.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are
2012-07-12 11:01 am (UTC)
That's because it's either a 100 tonne !Scout or a 400 tonne !Free Trader. :D
2012-07-13 03:15 pm (UTC)
2012-07-14 01:58 am (UTC)
2012-07-14 07:03 pm (UTC)
2012-07-12 01:33 pm (UTC)
ok then. this sounds more interesting than the superbrats (sorry :)
to be honester though, I do miss the adventures of Quinn.
2012-07-12 02:01 pm (UTC)
I liked Quinn and the rest, too (well, better after I dropped the paladin and switched to a ranger). I can't speak for the others, but I feel like we gave D&D 4 a whole year's worth of chances, and the system (as opposed to the characters) never got to a place where we could do interesting things with it. When I think about it at all, I think, "Eberron. Cool stuff hampered by its attachment to D&D4." And that doesn't have to true.
2012-07-12 03:49 pm (UTC)
eh, you know. not everything is for everyone. if anything I'm a bit envious that y'all actually manage to work through so many different games.
I don't know from D&D4, but from what I've read I'm not sure I want to.
2012-07-12 05:38 pm (UTC)
I feel like it used game-specific mechanics to replace actual role-playing. ("And when you're not fighting and doing resource management, you can roll the dice for this!") If you didn't like the miniatures game that came with it, it was very hard to shoehorn in the roleplaying stuff. That might be unfair, but it was an impression supported by the adventures we used, most of which were published. There might have been selection bias on the part of the various GMs, but I didn't see counterexamples.
And character creation really called out for an optimized character, which effectively meant software. I have used software for games, but I hate it when a game forces me into it: it's one of my biggest complaints about the changes made to M&M, for instance: something about how they've changed the power structure does not gibe in my head, calling for the use of software. Ewww.
2012-07-12 06:20 pm (UTC)
One factor is longevity. Some of us started gaming together in 1983 or so, so we're coming up to 30 years of gaming. (In fact, Brian ran the first AD&D campaign I was ever in, in January of 1980, and Jim started running Champions during the FASS weekend of 1983. He might have started earlier, but I wasn't there.)
Another factor is having at least one member who is a writer of fiction.
A third is that we're all comfortable with changing game systems, to varying degrees: Someone can actually urge us to play something different (I think the most brain-stretching was when Jim urged us to play Capes) and we won't retreat into a corner, clutching our worn AD&D Players Handbooks.
I don't think we've ever tried any OSR stuff, but we've certainly tried PDQ, ORE, CoC, D&D[3-4], the first two editions of M&M, Champions/Hero 2-5, ICONS, Harn, FATE, DC Heroes, and more besides. Heck, I can't even remember the names for some of the systems.
(Start a list, James; you've been around more reliably than I have the last twenty years.)
2012-07-12 07:54 pm (UTC)
I, for one, would probably like to stick it on the slate. I've participated in the Dwimmermount kickstarter, and I'd like to throw a group at it using ACKS at some, ill-defined point in the future.
2012-07-12 07:56 pm (UTC)
- Burning Wheel (which although we forget, we played for a year)
- Classic Traveller
- Inspectres
- Sorcerer
- GURPS
- CORPS
- EABA
- RuneQuest
- HeroQuest
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
- Reign
Edited at 2012-07-12 07:57 pm (UTC)
2012-07-12 08:47 pm (UTC)
My enthusiasm for an OSR game is limited; I mostly want to try Swords & Wizardry or LotFP because I own them, and if I don't try them, I should get rid of them. Although I will certainly play it with you guys, it's not a genre that's ever spoken to me (yeah, I'm enh on LotR: technically, I think it has virtues that are rarely mentioned, but I think Jackson's film version dumped a lot of cruft[1]...added some, too).
1. I like the idea someone had that the forest, feared by the hobbits, is meant to keep Tom Bombadil in; he seems jolly and happy when we see him, but all the evidence is that he's a dark Lovecraftian creature.
2012-07-12 09:18 pm (UTC)
Oh, and MasterBook.
My taste for full-on Tolkein-ey fantasy is also limited. I prefer my fantasy to be swords-and-sorcery-ish, with city-states, and phalanxes, and sandals. ACKS can certainly handle that, just as LotFP can.
But, given how well the 13th Age playtest seemed to go, I'd probably be more than happy to just use that as a set of rules for anything in that rough genre neighbourhood, at least for now.
Edited at 2012-07-12 09:20 pm (UTC)
2012-07-14 02:48 am (UTC)
--Dave, or Toon, which seems peculiarly suited to James?
PS: Or Nobilis second edition, or In Nomine?
Edited at 2012-07-14 02:49 am (UTC)
2012-07-15 09:27 am (UTC)
heh. speaking of that old time religion, the rulebook for the AD&D variant that I played most has gotten to be very expensive (warning, ebay)
2012-07-12 04:22 pm (UTC)
2012-07-12 05:27 pm (UTC)
I remember one of our group being very excited for Dresden Files to come out, but I wasn't around if we ever played it.
I've seen Starblazers and Diaspora at the table (one of our gang gets a lot of stuff), and several people have discussed Bulldogs and, uh, Agent of SWING, but I don't think we've played any of those.
ICONS has FATE-inspired stuff but emphatically isn't FATE. The guy who ran last night's game has been thinking about a Strands of FATE thing.
PDQ in Jaws of the Six Serpents was a little too free-form, but I wouldn't mind tackling it again, though probably with new characters. I think about things differently now, though we'd see if things actually happened differently.
2012-07-12 05:33 pm (UTC)
Re:
2012-07-12 05:41 pm (UTC)
2012-07-12 05:39 pm (UTC)