TRPG General Chat

12:46 AM

Oh maaaaan

OOTS GETTING REAL NOW

I'm considering doing an epilogue at the start of my next session. Anyone have any experience with that and whether it's a good or bad idea?

@Sandwich SO REAL! 1500+ pages, 1000th strip, digital books and some very interesting upcoming strips from the looks of it :D

Sandwich

An Epilogue at the start?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, they wiped when we concluded the last time.

Sandwich

Yes I remember that

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

So I want to do an epilogue of those characters before we roll new ones.

Sandwich

12:51 AM

Epilogue is something you say at the end

Okay so you are completely starting a new thing then

doppelgreener

this is the end at the beginning apparently

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Sandwich Pretty much yeah. I decided it was time. :P

So I've been thinking about doing an epilogue mainly so they know a bit about the events that unfolded after their actions to sort of tie up the story.

Sandwich

That's fine Will

Though they might be salty about it

But it was the result of their own actions

BESW

@Emrakul (or any other mod willing) [poke] Can I please get an unfreeze on the Spoil-Lair?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Sandwich Indeed it was. And I'm not a fan of introducing a deus ex machina to save them from themselves.

Sandwich

12:55 AM

That cheapens storytelling

Shalvenay

@Emrakul -- mind popping your head into the NAB?

Shalvenay

1:09 AM

or @Pixie for that matter :)

Sandwich

NAB?

trogdor

Not A Bar

it does play one on TV though

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

I'm not a place to unwind after work, but I play one on TV.

Sandwich

Must be a pretty touchy subject for it to be in NAB

Pixie

1:25 AM

Not necessarily. Sometimes it's just "oh, we're having a different conversation that's interrupting others, let's have that over there."

BESW

Nah, just that Shalv's RP history is complicated enough that taking about it in main chat gets... Messy... With folks who don't have the whole picture.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- yep. it is a touchy subject to a few folks, and it's also quite complicated

BESW

2:29 AM

@doppelgreener, @trogdor, I'm using the Spoil-Lair as a dump for pictures I might put in my own influence map. You're welcome to look and comment and suggest if you want, right now it's just a brainstorm.

Starts here.

trogdor

ok, sounds nice

I forgot what the one that inspired Brother James was from

all the other ones I recognize

BESW

City of Lost Children.

doppelgreener

That was a wonderful movie.

BESW

It's a major influence for the aesthetic of Brother James and his cult.

doppelgreener

@Emrakul could I also have some fire magic?

BESW

2:34 AM

I haven't yet figured out which Atomic Robo image(s) to use for my influence map, but they'll be there.

doppelgreener

this room hasn't been used for like 2/3rds of a year, wow.... that's some deep freeze.

Magician

2:53 AM

5e Orcus.

So, question to people who actually play the system: how tough does he look?

Alternatively, how easy is it to get necrotic immunity?

Miniman

@Magician Pretty tough.

@Magician Resistance is easy, though.

BESW

3:14 AM

BTW, @doppelgreener:

(source)

doppelgreener

@BESW how terrifying!

BESW

> If you're a gardener, kudzu is one of the great enemies (along with wisteria and bindweed and a few others) and you fight it back as if it were out of the D&D manual--sword and fire, poison and sweat.

Ooh, here's the photo that inspired my description of the Nibiru-1 Object.

That's an actual photo of a solar phenomenon (just a wacky solar flare) which flakey folks bandied around as an "invisible planet."

doppelgreener

oh wow.

that's cool :D

BESW

(I found it while researching Mayan/Nibiru conspiracy theories for ideas on how to start the campaign.)

From that, and the concept of the Nibiru Cataclysm, and Doctor Light's obsession with the Sun, the whole first volume plot just fell into my lap.

doppelgreener

and now the second arc sort of is falling into our laps as well :D

BESW

3:25 AM

Heheh.

I just wanted to have a light-hearted one-shot with a time portal. Then Doctor Light went and got trapped in the pre-Cambrian and Myka had a breakdown blaming herself, and everything's snowballed after that.

doppelgreener

And after we get back from SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! the world will be changing, and magic stuff will be taking root in places.

BESW

Yes!

trogdor

lol

were you not planning to bring time portals back?

BESW

I was kinda planning to use them as an intermittent "Oh, random episode now" thing, and/or introduce a parallel ally/rival organisation dedicated to dealing with them.

doppelgreener

time travel doesn't seem to be so important - the most interesting stuff is here and now.

BESW

3:33 AM

(One concept I'd been toying with was Amaterasu setting up a separate team to deal with Time Problems, and us occasionally joining them or playing PCs on that team.)

("Doctor Light, we need your team to rescue the Time Guys!")

doppelgreener

@BESW I think that is a splendid idea.

trogdor

is that just a drawing or is it supposed to be some kind of punk theme?

BESW

> Not really full steampunk, someone said it looked like regular wheatley with a bunch of brass bits stuck on. (source)

doppelgreener

i couldn't place it in a particular *-punk, but that seems to be a wonderful drawing with more of an early 1900s aesthetic.

it's got some art deco to it.

trogdor

@BESW I wasn't thinking steampunk really

not specifically anyway

I figured maybe solarpunk, because the only difference would probably be aesthetic anyway

BESW

3:44 AM

Yeah, it's more nouveau, I think.

(And solarpunk is often nouveau.)

trogdor

I am well aware enough that you have to change more than this does to be real steampunk

BESW

Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)

►

doppelgreener

@BESW I never thought someone would've made a song about this! This reflects my thoughts XD

BESW

4:02 AM

[hums] A copper-painted hunk/ Of some nineteen-eighties junk/ Will fetch a pretty penny on e-bay

Magician

BESW

Ben

5:10 AM

So I played a Homebrew game last night: "Hargrove". This guy only does it once a year, at a certain time of the year, leading up to 12:00 12/12/12. Which is, in his mind, the day of the apocalypse. (He's still pissed it didn't happen :P)

He came up with the whole system, (based around the number 12) and it's all very impressive

BESW

@Ben He can take comfort that my campaign will duly destroy the world at that particular moment.

Ben

His will too ;)

And in my mind, it's a DM's dream: he never rolls any dice :)

Shalvenay

@BESW re kudzu -- you know how my druid would solve it? summon a goat. :D

Ben

The interesting thing is that, I believe he's actually based it off D&D.

BESW

Well, plenty of games don't have the GM roll dice.

A lot of games, actually, put the dice only in the hands of the players.

Right off the top of my head, Cthulhu Dark, Great Ork Gods, Lady Blackbird, Lasers & Feelings...

Ben

5:20 AM

Well fair enough

Either way, it was really fun. Our group was a bunch of misfits; a 19 yr old Texan Barista (with a "questionable" sexual orientation - as he kept pointing out), a Mexican drug dealer, an Irish Brothel Mistress, and a Hagrid-looking bin man

BESW

Nice.

Ben

Unfortunately, the Barista didn't make it.

(Not sure if you can all tell, but I was very impressed by the whole thing) haha

BESW

Sounds fun.

How did the world end?

Ben

Not really sure. We were in the bank, when a bunch of guys came in and held up the bank. They got away, we were all left unharmed, and the cops were interviewing all the witnesses when the floor collapsed. Lots of noise and earthquakes and such, and we were trapped underground.

We managed to find our way into the sewers, where we were attacked by some kind of phantom beings...

Made our way out of there into some kind of storage facility, where a minotaur beast attacked us. I (the Garbage man - Sam) managed to take it out with a shotgun I found on one of the dead cops from the bank robbery. Felt very manly haha.

But by the end of it I was really wanting to get back top-side.

But that's where the session ended

Very intense

BESW

5:38 AM

What strategies/techniques did he use to make it so intense?

Ben

@BESW Background music, he used a lot of sound effects, he was very descriptive too.

And there was a lot of suggestive looks when people wanted to do things... haha

Made them second guess every now and then.

trogdor

@BESW yes, quite

Ben

5:54 AM

Miniman

@Ben Oof, been there.

Ben

Like, I can understand writing up the skeleton in pen ("STR:", "DEX:" etc, and maybe some of the unchangeable things like name etc, but yeah. Lol.

BESW

6:30 AM

@doppelgreener, @trogdor, I think this is about perfect as a visual for how I imagine Amaterasu's everyday working:

trogdor

hee

doppelgreener

6:54 AM

@BESW YEP.

trogdor

I don't expect it looks like that everywhere

just the places where people are allowed to know fish men exist

doppelgreener

Certainly; the public reception area (read: "pedestrian rebuffing and deflection department") is not like that.

BESW

...PRADD?

doppelgreener

Sure!

They are in general in charge of making sure Amaterasu is outwardly as boring and uninteresting as possible. They came up with the pen manufacturer front.

Shalvenay

@trogdor -- :P my employer wouldn't care if you were a blue fish person as long as you could communicate and get the job done

@trogdor -- sends the fish-person on the left to operating rules class

trogdor

7:06 AM

yes, but I think a government agency would care

XD

BESW

At least until he gets his Special Needs Permission Request approved to waive the office's dress code and let him go shirtless.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- hi-vis fits on everybody!

(no exceptions either -- see and be seen is important when 143 ton railcars are roaming about)