Gaming, Entertainment, and Programming
Posts tagged Gming
The Rusty Dragon Inn
2My Rise of the Runelords, Pathfinder game is tomorrow night, and we are on Session 5. Last week the party had to move to a new inn since the one they were staying in burned down. So they took up lodging at The Rusty Dragon, which just happened to be next door to their old inn.
I found a really nice map online to use that was made specifically for this inn, but it is a large file and it would not load for at least one of my players. That prompted me to go ahead and make a new map using CC3. I based the foundation of the inn on the map that was provided with Rise of the Runelords, so the inn size should be pretty accurate. I only did one floor however, even though I am sure there are at least two floors.
The owner is also a bard that plays for her patrons each night. So what I decided to do was make a round stage in the center of the room, that had a stone bar that goes all the way around it. My idea here is that the owner would serve drinks at the bar, then when she decides to play, she can just hop up on the stage behind her and play for the crowd. The rest of the main hall is full of tables. Then you have the kitchen to the back and the lodging rooms to the left side of the inn. The rooms range from a cheap common sleeping area to a couple of nice private rooms in the back.
Let me know what you think!
I received some good feedback on the inn, so I made a few additional changes. Let me know what you think of this new version:
City Map – Bear Hollow
0Since I bought CC3 I have spent a lot of time playing around with its features, watching tutorials, and trying to figure out what all I need for the different games I am playing. One thing that kept coming up, I even mentioned it in my previous post, was my need for several maps of cities. Mainly because my Pathfinder campaign was fighting off a goblin raids throughout many different places in the city. So I decided to go ahead and dive right into the Profantasy software and bought City Designer 3 as well.
I am glad I did, it has a lot of good stuff in it and it has definitely made mapping cities a lot easier. I made this map very quickly and easily with the software. It is for a play by email game I am playing with one of my buddies. I enjoyed making it and feel like it is a pretty good map, especially considering it is my first city map using CD3. The software was definitely worth the investment. Let me know what you think.
Mythic GM Emulator
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While I am still planning on releasing my dungeon map, I have been sidetracked by school work, but fear not, I will have it out before the end of this month. However, now that I am finished with school for the semester, I find that I just want to play a game.
It’s always tough getting people to want to play the exact same thing that you want to, so I thought I would try out the Mythic GM Emulator by Word Mill Games. I have read some good solo adventures by Risus Monkey (you should read his stuff, it’s awesome) detailing an adventure he has been playing and it just sounds awesome.
I have already rolled up a character for my game, using Risus of course, and plan to run it soon. Right now, I am programming in the rolls in a small little Java app, that will hopefully make my life a little easier as I play. Of course, if I don’t finish it soon, I will have to just play without.
I’ll be sure to post my exploits here and let you know how it worked out.
Risus Super Heroes Actual Play (GMing)
01165 days
Our group got together the other night to play a game and we ended up deciding on a super heroes game using Risus. Snikle already did a great write-up on the game, so, instead of repeating the process, I thought I would do a little write-up on how we came up with the game and how I GMed it.
First off, we started out getting together a little before our regular meeting time. Now here I need to say, we play exclusively online since we are all in different states. We use Skype to communicate and we usually just text during the week, but for game night, we use voice. We have all used different virtual tables, such as Maptool and Fantasy Grounds, but because of the free form nature of the games we have been playing, we’ve just been using Google docs and a die roller.
Now, we like to Google up different images and something that catches our interest. This night, it was the Kick-Ass movie trailer that caused us to choose super heroes and Risus seemed to be the easiest system to implement on the fly. I said I would GM and off we went.
The guys made very colorful characters, as you can see below:
John’s Character: The Night Owl (Spencer Morgan)
Hotel Lounge Hypnotist (4)
“Insecuricist” (3) – Able to make people feel insecure through the use of backhanded compliments.
“Sorta Sleepless” (2) – Never, ever sleeps, except sometimes in times of stress.
Motivational Poster Photographer (1)
Snikle’s Character: Pittfall (Angelina Pitt)
A Teen Drama Queen Band Geek who can KICK-ASS with her dual clarinets(4) current (4)
Never fully dressed and can use it to her advantage(4) current (4)
A dreamer who thinks that she the bastard child of John Woo and an Anime character(2) current (2)
Brennen’s Character: The Hoodoo Doctor (aka Orangelo ‘Gelo’ Lincoln)
Mysterious Spiffy Dressing Voodoo Priest (4)
Womanizing North Country Blues Guitarist (3)
Can speak fluent Spanish, but only when stoned (2)
Insecure Barbecue Chef moonlighting as a graphic arts student (1)
Now we decided on the location of Memphis Tennesee and off we went to create an adventure. I decided to throw in a little of one of my favorite games, Inspectres!, and had them tell me about their head quarters. I even made them roll for the stuff they came up with. Here is pretty much how the HQ part went:
Base:
A small three room flat above the Beer-O-Mat.
Matt want’s a pet guinea pig. Matt rolls a 13, A pet guinea pig that is dyed green that is named Henry Rollins that Matt’s character believes is physic that she consults for cases. He lives off weed grown by Ogranoloo.
Brennen: vintage suitcase with hot sauce collection with medicinal properties.
Rolls a 15
John wants ventriloquist dummy that he used to have in his act before it starting freaking him out. Believes the dummy is a master interrogator. Tommy Pines, hewn out of rough Pine.
Rolls a 12.
Brennen wants a mid 70′s conversion van with a water bed interior hydroponic garden, wet bar, and it is a low rider.
Rolls a 15. Driver of the copped van is Eye-Patch Jan. She lost her eye in one of the acts with John’s character.
Now, they had to come up with images that suited each of these, so we spent a lot of time googling for the best pictures with lots of fun and laughter. You can see two of the great images above. This is of course one of the things I really like about our group, we have a lot of fun playing, but usually have just as much fun coming up with characters or games.
Now as for DMing the game, I asked the players what they wanted to do. We ended up bantering around in their base, doing laundry, when a Thug came in to hold up the place. The great thing about Risus is it was really easy to come up with the bad guys. Here is my stated out bad guy:
Drunk Gang-banger (5)
Slow 6-shooter (3)
Wannabe ninja moves (2)
They took care of him very fast and ended up getting into a cooking contest with the chef, which they also won. Again, I stated up the chef and actually had a cooking duel, which was easy to use do with Risus.
The rest of the night went as you read in Snikle’s post. They fought a few more thugs, then went on to the hideout where they took out guards and guests alike with a combination of pretty girl and great BBQ sauce. However, they did let one guy go, the guy that had been standing at the bar. One of the guys commented that it had been too easy and then realized they hadn’t found the big bad guy. Remember the guy they let go? Oh yeah, that was him. They were surprised and happy (I think) that the adventure could continue. All in all it was a good little adventure and I think the guys had fun.
Inspectres One-shot Actual Play
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I had some free time the other night and the some of the guys were online, so we decided to run a game at short notice. We choose Inspectres because it requires no preperation and it is incredibly easy to just pick up and run, even with new people. I encourage you to check it out and pick it up (here is the link), it is a really cheap and awesome game!
We played this game via Skype and Google Docs.
Here are the characters that the guys quickly made:
Brennen’s Character
Name: Amelia Dubois
Description: A thin, sickly girl in her mid-20s. She dresses in old handmade dresses from the 1940s.
Background: Amelia has been haunted since she was a small child because of her psychic abilities. As a result, she was ostracized by her classmates and sought refuge in the library of the ancient boarding school her parents abandoned her to.
Talent/Weird Abilities: +1 die when contacting spirits
Characteristics: She knows lots of eccentric old psychics.
Academics -4
Athletics – 1
Technology - 1
Contact – 3
John’s Character
Name: Danny Morrow
Position: Gopher/Intern/CEO
Description: High school kid. Tall, lanky.
Background: Starting pitcher on the varsity baseball team. Started hanging around the franchise after a weird encounter. Not one of the cool jocks, but has a foot in that world simply by virtue of being integral to the baseball team. Volunteered to be an errand runner for the group just to be a part of the team and get some insight into this other world.
Talent/Weird Abilities: Can throw virtually anything with uncanny accuracy.
Characteristics:
Academics – 2
Athletics – 4
Technology - 1
Contact – 2
Jared’s Character
Name: Marvin Thomas
Descripton: Wimpy, nerdy, hacker, bookish type. Inventor and master-mind (hard for me to play, I think)
Background: Once lived in a home with parents. Now lives in an apartment. The end.
Talent/Weird Abilities: Max Brooks +1 to weapons when dealing with zombies, ghouls, or other corporeal undead/monsters.
Characteristics: Strong, silent type wrapped up in a 90 pound weakling’s body.
Academics – 4
Athletics – 1
Technology - 3
Contact – 1
We had a fourth player join us, but his Skype cut out before we got started and he never did join back in.
After the characters were made, we took time to build the franchise. The way it works is that whoever comes up with the materials that they want for the franchise have to make a Technology roll. This really keeps things interesting as they succeed or fail, and many times, them telling me what they get when they fail is much funnier than when they succeed.
Franchise
Small franchise. Landlord owns property, old, dilapidated victorian mansion. Independent business.
Landlord does not know what they do.
Danny Morrow’s old aunt is financing the business. She expects a decent return, better than the stock market. Wants proof that ghosts are real.
Large branch of the Inspectres Corp just moved into the area.
Ghosts are the specialty of this franchise.
Secretary: Melissa, good secretary, a little ditsy and does not believe in ghosts. She thinks they are crazy, but doesn’t say anything because she needs to pay the rent.
Library: Misc unsorted books that he can sometimes use.
Danny’s Car: Old ’70s Cadillac convertible. Sea-green and an eight track player. Bad Company track jammed into the player that cannot get out.
Contacting Spirits Equipment: Equipment that can contact or capture spirits.
Brennen has a haunted Ouija board but by a ghost or demon that just likes to screw with him.
Danny: has a bag of Wiccan blessed baseball gear. Bats and balls and helmet.
Jared rolled a 4 on tech for the flashlights and got the following:
Flashlights: Old, cheap flashlights. Christmas lights ducktaped to a beer helmet with a 9 volt battery in the beer spot.
Brennen rolls for uniforms (2) but wants the GM to decide the fate, I oblige with the following:
Uniform – Old person velcro shoes, horrible plaid pants, with suspenders. Wife beaters with a suede jacket to go over it. Garbage bags with holes cut out. Old fishing hats with the lures still in them.
Gym: 3
Library: 2
Credit Card: 2
Bank:
Starting Interview
Aunt Portia Morrow brings in her bridge team, as potential investors. She asks many questions and tries to point out they they make a decent profit, however Amelia keeps pointing out that they haven’t been paid yet. Danny is uncomfortable since his aunt made him CEO even though he is the youngest member of the crew and has the least amount of experience. Marvin was just off in his own little world.
Job:
I made a roll here on the random chart, and this is what I got: 8,5,2,3 – Frantic, City worker, Transformation, In the water.
So I came up with: Olmar – Overweight balding man working for the labor union wants to hire them because they were working in the sewer and it froze over. His buddy turned into a block of ice.
Jared jumped right into the first confessional and gave us the following:
Jared Confession – Young kids just impulsive and wanted to jump right down in the sewer. Don’t they know what happened last time? Fortunately, I just finished my Ghost Toaster 9000. Hopefully we can keep from getting it wet.
Research:
Brennen rolls 5 on contact- (gaining one franchise die) and finds out that the workers have been hearing noises and whispers, but they thought it was expanding pipes and drunkards.
Jared rolled a 6 on academics (gaining two franchise dice) to see what he could find out about the situation. He learned of the Stink fairy (Etherious Malodorous): A notorious urban legend known for haunting toilets. He jumped to the conclusion that this is what was causing the problems in the sewers.
Investigation & Suit-up:
The team heads for the sewers and jumps right in. It is still mainly frozen, but has a little melt off on the top.
Amelia attempts to contact spirits. (gets a 6 for contact – gaining 2 franchise dice). She starts to shake and then she says coldly, “They are buried down here in the sewer, its so cold, so very cold.”
Amelia takes to the confessional booth this time and tells us:
Amelia Confession – I know Danny was supposed to be a good pitcher, but I didn’t realize he could pitch that fast and accurate with a piece of poo.
Since this is the first time Danny has seen Amelia contact spirits, he gets a little stressed out and has to roll two stress dice. He ends up with a low 2, and gets frazzled! He takes two ranks of damage in contact, and has a hard time talking from then on.
Marvin attempts to get more information from Amelia. (Rolls a 5 in contact, gains 1 franchise die) She discloses that there are lots of dead people down here in the sewer. As they go deeper into the dark tunnels they find a large cavernous open area. Here it appears the city dug under a cemetery and the coffins fell into the cavern into the poo. The spirits are fairly perturbed about this.
Danny is already frazzled, so he is unfazed, but seeing all those coffins, bodies, and spirits, Amelia and Marvin both have to roll two stress dice. They pass with flying colors though, each of them with a 5 as their lowest roll and they shake it off to continue business as usual.
Amelia rolls a contact ( 2 sixes, gets 2 franchise dice) to see what more she can find out. Her eyes roll back in her head and starts babbling and falls into a puddle of poop. She recovers and says, there is something down here and it is very angry, he has been in the area for a long time, before the white man came. She doesn’t think it is a fairy. She thinks it is an ancient bog spirit.
Marvin starts to set up the ghost toaster where it won’t get wet. (Rolls a 6, gaining another 2 franchise)
Gets it set up and aims at the appropraite direction and sets it off. It works, and keeps running too well and starts to suck the cavern in a little bit. Amelia, notices why they can get it to shut off, Marvin used duct tape for the switch.
Danny starts to run towards the toaster, with his baseball bat, but he slips and goes face first into the muck, bat flying out of his hands into the muck. Still several yards short, he comes up with a frozen turn and hurls it. (He gets a 6, gaining 2 franchise dice) It goes end over end and impales the side of the toaster. It sparks and goes silent. The stench hits the group as the hot toaster melts the turd.
Marvin and Amelia tell Danny to carry the toaster out, but Danny pulls rank and tells Marvin to carry the toaster back.
Amelia goes into the office of records and researches the matter. (She rolls two 6s, gets 2 franchise dice) She borrows the library phone and calls Danny. Apparently his great uncle Harold is the engineer who planned to build the sewers directly under the cemetery. They have to set it right or the spirits will never rest. Danny asks that they don’t tell Aunt Portia, but Amelia thinks they should.
Cut scene where they are flying down the highway. Montage, the car is going down the road with Bad Company blaring as they are on the way to meet with Olmar.
They wrap up the job by meeting with the Olmar for tea and tell him what they found out and collect the money. Amelia makes sure they get a little extra for her own pocket. The sewer hasn’t unfrozen yet, and they are going to have to remove the bodies and re-bury them but the ghosts are taken care of. They put the ghosts in a containment system that should contain the next thousand years. (The camera cuts to the garage where the cadalic is housed and the lights come on with the eight track player starts to play.)
Roll Credits.
That’s where we ended the game. We had wrapped up the investigation a little early because of the late hour and the fact that they had reached their franchise dice goal. All in all, it was a great game and we had a lot of fun.
