Yes, falling unconscious is the way to stay alive if your side can prevail in the fight, or as in this case if the other side doesn’t want you dead.
1 Like
The (mostly) lack of a death spiral in D&D is one of the big differences and something I find a bit challenging to run as GM. The whole “yes, I’ve lost 90% of my hit points but that basically means I’m a bit tired”.
On the other hand, it does have quite a lot of ways to model impairing damage through things like ability score damage. The fiddly thing there, though, is that you then have to recalculate a bunch of things on the fly. I say this as GM for a PC who deals Dexterity damage… once she gets into combat, I have to remember the different penalties to defences, attacks and skill rolls for potentially several creatures at a time.
2 Likes
Just finished the last game before Christmas of our ongoing Roll 20 D&D sessions. I finished up DMing Curse of Strahd about 2 months ago and so for the time since then I have been playing in Rime of the Frostmaiden. And I’m really enjoying myself. The most difficult thing is to not be ‘directing’ all the time and I am very consciously doing that (I hope).
I also miss DMing … (!) but there is limited time and I want to ensure the new DM has the spotlight, so it may be a while …
4 Likes
Currently GMing:
Hell’s Rebels - Pathfinder 1e - Rebelling against devil-worshiping facists.
Mercy of the Icons - Coriolis: Third Horizon - Players are about to get off a derelict spaceship drifting into a nearby star
Out of Time - Tales from the Loop - Players are currently investigating a curious case of tens of missing pets.
Currently playing:
Necropolitans - Pathfinder 1e - Undead PCs
Das Terminus - Call of Cthulhu 7e - A documentary film crew gets sucked into a 500 year plot where witches attempted to sacrifice a changeling for absolute power. Involves time loops to by time to research and gather allies.
Stalingrad from the other side - Call of Cthulhu 7e - 1942 and the world is at war. The German 6th army already faces annihilation at the hands of the red army and the cold yet there is something stalking in the dark.
Adventures in Halycon High - Masks - Playing the superhero teenage son of a supervillain who is trying to balance wanting to impress his father while not allowing him to invade the city.
The Return - Kids on Bikes - The mayor’s daughter, a conspiracy theorist, a loner and a scout try to figure out what is the conspiracy at the abandoned mine and who is buried underneath it.
Strange Aeons - Pathfinder 1e - Lovecraft in Pathfinder
Rebel Crown - Rebel Crown - Basically Fleance’s story in Macbeth.
Currently Planning
A lot - See spreadsheet - Campaign Ideas - Google Tabellen
3 Likes
This level of activity puts me to shame. I can carve out two sessions a week of two hours each. And that seems a lot!
1 Like
It’s changed quite a bit since I last posted. At the moment:
Running:
- unnamed Traveller campaign for Whartson Hall
- Tears of the Moon, a GURPS dungeon fantasy for the Wednesday group.
Planning to run:
- more Stroboscope for one-offs
- something urban-fantasy-ish in GURPS
Playing:
3 Likes
I am currently running 1 (one) Star Trek Adventures campaign with 4 players. We use Discord for meeting/camera use.
The group includes a Changling security officer (“Greg”), a Betazoid/Denobulan scientist (“Velesa”), a Ferengi engineer (“Moshi”), and a Vulcan medical officer that was raised by Bajorans (“T’Norrun”).
Highlights of the campaign thus far: The Ferengi playing trombone to try and calm a group of feral humanoids and then reciting a famous nursery rhyme “Baby’s First Profit.”
4 Likes
Running: Werewolf the Apocalypse (but using nWoD system not oWoD system). With @RogerBW and @MichaelCule and Dave.
Playing: WH40K: Dark Heresy. I’m the medic and unsanctioned psyker.
In theory I’m also playing in a weekly Tales from the Loop game, but we haven’t had a session since November.
Planning to run: a one-off Aliens scenario for @RogerBW and @MichaelCule and others.
6 Likes
Playing Curse of Strahd weekly when I am not tied up with theatre.
Running the last bits of 5e Dolmenwood when I can find a gap from theatre.
Hoping to play one-offs of Trail of Cthulhu, Mausritter.
4 Likes
Currently GMing two Warhammer campaigns for separate groups.
The first is going through the Enemy in Shadows campaign and the 2nd is about halfway through the Starter Set. With the latter, they kind of want to do the Enemy In Shadows campaign too and Im trying to convince them to do some other adventures!!
1 Like
Yay, I’ll join in!
Playing:
- a WHFRP 4th editioncl campaign set in Ubersreik (the GM has very sensibly not said if it’s homebrew or bought one, or one player might cheat and look at it!)
- About to start an Achtung Cthulhu game, session zero incoming!
GMing:
- My main aim for the first half of this year is to become much wellerer in the mental department as possible, and get some financial stability after being dismissed from my job late last year. Soooo, I probably won’t do more than just dabble.
- That said . . . . I do have a Mythras Fantasy Gaming adventure with pre-gens waiting to go, if there’s a gap due to GM unavailability. And I’m fairly advanced in a similar one-shot of Mythras Luther Arkwright for later.
- My long-term goal of a GURPS Traveller campaign is still ongoing, but there’s a lot to do in my (somewhat very) alternative version of the Traveller Universe. And I was distracted last year by buying loads of GURPS 4th ed books (I much prefer the dead-tree versions)!
3 Likes
Sign me up
Tonight — in ten hours — I will conduct the party-and-character generation session for a new Flat Black campaign that I am going to run by way of Discord, with and old gaming chum and two new recruits from the AUS RPG discord server. The pitch was as follows:
Campaign : It Belongs In A Museum
System : ForeSight
Setting : Flat Black
Genres : low-concept SF; planetary adventure; thrillers, hard-boiled mysteries, capers
Inspiration : Mission Impossible , Burn Notice , SF works of Jack VancePlatform : Discord voice and chat
Schedule : Saturday nights 20:00–23:30 AET
Commencement : late January 2022
Players : 3–4Premise
The PCs comprise a small team of versatile and highly competent “effectives” who perform secret operations for an interstellar NGO on the “planet of the month”.
Human Heritage is an interstellar non-government organisation that is dedicated to recording and conserving cultural treasures, and protecting artists and their freedom of expression. Human Heritage has supporters and members on most planets. But these are seldom skilled enough to do anything difficult, resolute enough to do anything strenuous or dangerous, or bold enough to confront opposition. HH therefore employs skilled and daring “effectives” as undercover and clandestine operators. Rarely of a military character, their missions usually involve finding missing artists, rescuing captives, finding and recovering stolen art, interdicting the trade in stolen art, and preventing major acts of vandalism—by whatever means necessary. But if you get caught, the Conservator will deny any knowledge of your mission.
Flat Black is a setting for adventures in which more-or-less cosmopolitan PCs come with an objective to an exotic planet with a bizarre culture and society. The peculiarities of the planet are an obstacle while they are not understood, but PCs can figure out how to adapt to, circumvent, and even take advantage of them.
I’m using first edition ForeSight with only the essential minimum of simplifications to character generation, for the sake of having something definite that the players can rely upon.
5 Likes
Played D&D last Friday night with another 4 and had a blast! I am not very convinced with D&D rules for combat, but I was not very focused on that. We had a good time on the Sword Coast travelling with a convoy from Neverwinter to Phandalin, and looks like we will have another session on Friday smashing goblins.
I did not remember how much I missed RPGs, it had been way over a decade since I played last, Vampire the Masquerade 2nd Ed likely.
8 Likes
Are you doing the starter set?
I believe so, with pre-made characters.
For a Starter Set is actually quite a good little adventure
2 Likes
We’ve had 2 more sessions, and it has been a delight. I must admit I am enjoying it quite a lot, especially love the balance between acting the investigation and the battles in the dungeons.
4 Likes
With all respect and credit to @lordof1; I got three friends together over drinks last night on zoom and we went through the Mongoose Strontium Dogs character Generation.
The Grizzled Veteran of the Group with three terms of service is Sinistar Fistulon. Severely deformed with a stretched chest, a missing left elbow, and boneless left knuckles. His devastating “hot dog morningstar” attack is feared the galaxy over.
The brains of the operation with two terms of service is a radically mutated customer whose entire head is conjoined into his right shoulder. Headly LeWarr specializes in hostage situations and sighting down the barrel of a blaster while preparing to take the recoil on his nose.
The young turk of the group with one term of service is the shambolically mutated Randow TF. His sideways toes, his crystaline knees, his pustulent stomach, his scaled neck, and his withered left nostril all mark him as hideous and disturbing, however perhaps nothing is more creepy than the distorted voice that issues from his throat… the throat of a seahorse!
Sinistar began his career stalking down, capturing, and making a lifelong enemy of the serial arsonist Toastmaster General on a distant world in the Gutbucket cluster. While Bruce Shambles (the stront with the triple size chin and double size stomach, ever since a professional rival) was distracted following up on Toastmaster’s crafty crumbs; Sinistar played possum by stopping his heart and then caught Toastmaster upside the head with a overhead sausage finger slam.
Hedy (Headly! What are you worried about, it’s 2182 she’s in the public domain!) began his career rescuing a starship full of hostages headed to the danger zone in the clutches of dapper gang The Kenny Logginses.
Sinistar’s second warrant involved a critical accident with a number 4 cartridge and he no longer trusts variable cartridge blasters. Sadly the resulting explosion took out most of the station and Sinistar had to escape the wreck in zero g.
Headly next skragged some mob guys. Just some mob guys. Seriously, it was boring. We couldn’t even make a Dinsdale joke stick. He probably just threw a T bomb into a barbershop and then had lunch.
Randow roared into the thick in one term though, not only capturing devastating hypno performer Billy Idle alive but also saving King Clarkie’s distant niece from becoming another blank slate bride during one of Idle’s wipe weddings.
Lastly Sinistar tracked down and engaged the foulmouthed Qubist in an avant garde battle of wits for survival. It took all of his cunning and skill to stop the orange headed weirdo from reducing the board of directors of Mondrain the designer plumbing manufacturer to cubes of inert matter with a dastardly innovation in dimensional weapons.
When next they meet, they will be on the trail of a mutant industrial terrorist with a bizarre agenda who has vanished into colonial space. I call it tough times for tracking down the three-eyed chicken headed mutant Roaster Cogburn.
8 Likes
This is amazing and I am in awe. I would have loved these stories in 2000ad.
4 Likes