TRPG General Chat

Miniman

01:10

@DuckTapeAl Hey, good to see you around!

Also, depending on what you want to achieve, Shadowrun could kinda work for a Mass Effect game.

Which is...weird.

DuckTapeAl

Hmm. Which edition?

I've never played, but from what little I've read of whatever edition it was I read, I can kind of see what you mean.

Miniman

I've only played 4th, personally.

But a lot of the skills match up to what I think you'd want in a Mass Effect game.

And depending on how complicated you want hacking to be, that could be used as-is.

You'd need to change magic a fair bit to get biotics though.

Hmmm...biotics is probably closer to Adept powers than Magician spells.

Mike Q

Shadowrun 4e has three separate magic(like) systems - hacking, sorcery, and adept powers

and I agree that if you want to approximate mass effect, then use adept powers for biotics, and leave out sorcery entirely

Miniman

Not sure how non-hacking tech powers would work, though.

DuckTapeAl

I've heard that hacking in SR is crazy complicated. Is that true?

Miniman

01:21

As I understand, it was in earlier editions. From 4e onwards, it's been simplified (which means it's still fairly complicated).

BESW

What about Eclipse Phase, or Transhuman?

Miniman

[shrug] Don't know them well enough to judge.

BESW

(I know nothing about Mass Ferret.)

Mike Q

I think that a lot of Shadowrun's noncombat complexity is so that you can have noncombat characters who focus on tech and other skills. So it might not map perfectly to the Mass Effect schema where every character has some combat role.

Miniman

Yeah, it's not a perfect match, for sure.

Mike Q

01:33

@BESW Mass ferret is just like Force ferret, but divided by acceleration

BESW

And Acceleration Ferret is a surprisingly good budget knock-off of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Mike Q

Acceleration ferret is the one who says "Gotta go faster over a period of time"

DuckTapeAl

01:57

My current plan is to do research into a few different systems that do different Mass Effect things well, and then pick one based on what the players actually liked most about Mass Effect.

The last time I ran it, I used GURPS 4th, which was pretty good for the combat side of it.

If the players mostly want to do things other than fight, maybe SR4. If they're more interested in exploring the world, maybe Fate or DW.

Shalvenay

02:10

@DuckTapeAl -- I don't think I got to tell you about my Tabaxi cleric, or some of the orc hijinks I got up to not too long ago for that matter?

DuckTapeAl

I have vague memories of orc hijinx, but I definitely don't remember a Tabaxi cleric.

Shalvenay

ah. the Tabaxi cleric is my character in nits' ToA game :>

nitsua60

03:09

Just GMed my first epic-style event: four hours, one dungeon, four parties, four gms. It was a blast. And now I'm on the hook for writing the next one =\

Simon H.

wow, good luck!

nitsua60

Thanks. Got any unused epic-ideas rattling around you're not going to use?

=)

Simon H.

lol I always do, just not good ones xD

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 hrm...I have a minicampaign rattling around, but that's about it sigh

nitsua60

fire 'em off -- I'm at the blank-sheet stage right now! (Actually, I've already jotted down two things. But I'm at that end of the project where creativity's much more important than details.)

Simon H.

03:15

fantasy stuff exclusively, right?

nitsua60

@SimonH. Yeah, sorry. 5e, and pretty vanilla in its presentation.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 let me pastebin the notes I have and send them to you in a Discord PM, k?

nitsua60

These gather together the RPG clubs at a bunch of different schools and we draw parties out of a hat, so I feel like there's enough wackiness there that I want them to be able to count on dwarves being miners and orcs being aggressive.

@Shalvenay cool, thanks.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 oh, actually, nvm then >.>

Simon H.

I've been interested in trying something like a subterranean city evacuation

An old, decrepit dwarven city is falling apart from years of disrepair and poor leadership. After recent skirmishes with duergar, the entrance to the 'cave' is beginning to collapse. You have to defend the exit and try to save as many people as possible as they flee under attack from duergar and other underground baddies as the cave collapses.

Shalvenay

03:26

@SimonH. yeah, that's something I've been wanting to do, only substituting the Underdark for a singular subterranean city, and with a different threat....

Simon H.

@Shalvenay what kinda threat did you have in mind?

Shalvenay

@SimonH. a megascale version of this event:

Lake Peigneur

Lake Peigneur (pronounced [pɛɲœʁ]) is located in the US state of Louisiana, 1.2 miles (1.9 km) north of Delcambre and 9.1 miles (14.6 km) west of New Iberia, near the northernmost tip of Vermilion Bay. It was a 10-foot (3 m) deep freshwater body, popular with sportsmen, until an unusual man-made disaster on November 20, 1980 changed its structure and the surrounding land. == Drilling disaster == On November 20, 1980, an oil rig contracted by Texaco accidentally drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Company salt mine under the lake. Because of an incorrect or misinterpreted coordinate reference...

aka "WHO THE #@$!@$!@ TURNED OUR HOME INTO A GIANT FLOOR DRAIN?!??!"

Simon H.

Like from the movie antz?

Shalvenay

@SimonH. I suppose?

Simon H.

@Shalvenay but with dwarves, swearing, and violence?

nitsua60

03:31

@SimonH. interesting: "DWARVES: defend fortress" is the first thing I'd jotted down =)

Simon H.

glad to hear it :L

Shalvenay

@SimonH. :P

nitsua60

@SimonH. I like the idea of giving them a fortress layout and a fictional week to set up defenses, traps, artillery, whatever. Then some battles happen. There's some regrouping time. Expeditions outside the walls. Incursion. Flashback scene. Circle of dwarven clerics summon some huge elementals to deal with the big baddie and our characters scramble around their feet (effectively the big fight is a shifting environment for the PCs).....

Simon H.

@nitsua60 it's always a good idea to introduce separate mechanics that the group has to consider while tackling the problem. I think you're onto something with that defense setup idea.

nitsua60

(but darnit! I don't want to get too into the details yet. I've only got two top-level concepts down so far.)

(okay, four now)

@SimonH. This might need a dive into Caesar's History of the Gallic Wars... =)

Simon H.

03:47

A wizard/lich is attempting to use an unstable magical crystal to destroy the planet. By some strange quirk of the magic, as soon as the main characters die, the entire cycle resets to the beginning of the dungeon. This could be useful to set up a more dense environment with different weaknesses and structures they can use to their advantage on subsequent runs, but each run would have to be short and difficult.

nitsua60

The romans were insane about standing up fortresses the likes of which the Gauls had never even seen in, like, three days.

The legions would bump up against some tribe, the tribe would run off to get help and return later that week to find miles of palisade, earthworks, towers, bridges, wells, cleared surrounds, even new hills! Out of thin air, as far as they could tell.

Simon H.

@nitsua60 you'd have to make that dwarven city terrain really unique, with bottlenecks and various hazards scattered around

nitsua60

One of my other GMs is nuts about 3d printing terrain. He's got a setup at home and cranks stuff out soooo fast. He's like a roman legion standing up a fortress in Gaul =)

Simon H.

Wish I had a 3d printer. I guess mats are alright, though, but the official d&d mat is cheap and breaks easily.

nitsua60

"official D&D mat"? What's that?

Alright, I've got five high concepts. I should head off to bed.

Simon H.

03:53

the adventure grid, I mean

Alright, g'night

BESW

07:11

@nitsua60 Better than Official D&D Steve, that's what.

@SimonH. I laminated the tear-out map in the back of the 3.5 DMG and used wet-erase markers on it almost every week for the next eight years, during which time it traveled to someone else's house for at least half of those uses, and also traveled almost halfway around the world at least four times. It's thirteen years old and still serviceable, though obviously showing its age. My friend who didn't get theirs laminated had to buy a new one every six months or so.

Monster of the Week Actual Plays Index

SPavel

09:32

Once again, I find myself in an airport lounge

Thus

This* one has XO cognac, unlimited

I may take advantage

Wow, it is very smooth

aloisdg