Magical MacGyver side-by-side comparison game [Archive]

Quertus

2023-03-22, 02:24 PM

OK, I guess I'll edit this to include actual stats as time goes on, but here's some placeholders for some of the characters I'm thinking of:

2e doesn't have WBL, treasure is normally quite random, so I chose the existing character I can best remember their items at 9th level, Armus, and am giving (what I can remember of) Armus' 9th level items to a brand new character. To maximize their personal ability to do stuff, I'll make them... probably a Cleric, who uses Skills & Powers to get schools of Wizard spells, too - as a Cleric, they have all their spells for free, and access to the most spells.Arma
Human Fighter 2 / Cleric 9
Str 11 -> 18(100)
Dex 5
Con 4
Int 11
Wis 17
Chr 15

Weapon Proficiencies: Long Sword, Short Sword, Hand Crossbow, Throwing Spikes
Non-Weapon Proficiencies: Read/Write, Riding 3-, Rope Use 12-, Throwing 10

Magic Items: Dwarven Short Sword +2, Sword of the Planes, Cloak of the Bat -> Daemon Wings (flight allowing her to distinguish herself as the "high" priestess), Golden Lion Figurines ("Awesome", "Charger"), Ring of Regeneration, Rechargeable Rod of Swarming Insects, Boots of Speed Sir Robin, Bag of Devouring Portable Black Hole, Potions of Healing x5, Scroll of Simulacrum x3, Amulet of Perpetual Youth and Inexperience.

Mundane Items: Holy Symbol w/ Divine Tears, Elven Longbow, Arrows (~17 or so), tunic, breeches, snakeskin belt, waterskin, rations, poison, mallet & spikes, 50' rope, gloves, cheat sheet of names.

Organic Resources: Homebrew Living Armor (adds to AC, HP), Homebrew ???? (flying mount, dissolves instantly in water antimagic), Ancient Shadow Dragon Simulacrum (on another plane...), undead x lots (depends on if item crafting comes online by level 9)

Magic: 155 spell points, all Cleric spells, and Wizard spells from Illusion, Transmutation, and... Enchantment/Charm(?) schools.

Needed: Cash on hand (mostly from 1k potions and scrolls)Stupid random stat rolls. I had to swap 2 of the stats to even be able to play a Cleric. As long as we're having fun with 2e, and get half the XP for the next level, I'll go ahead and spend a little of that XP on Fighter 2, requiring the purchase of Gauntlets of Ogre Power to successfully Duel Class (the rules legality of this has been brought into question, but it matches everything I've seen from 2e). Normally, a character has a 75% chance of making people at worst "Cautious"; with a 15 Charisma, this becomes a 75% chance of making people at worst "Indifferent". With an 18 Charisma, that would be a 75% chance of at worst "Friendly". Diplomancy seems an option here. Since she can only craft scrolls and potions at 9th level, I guess she'll buy items to boost those to 75% chance of success.Fighter () + Level () + Cleric (125) + Level x8 ()

216 Major Access to all Cleric Spheres
-102 all but Healing delayed to 9th level (Necromantic delayed to 5th)
21 Wizard Illusion Spells, delayed to 9th level
21 Wizard Transmutation Spells, delayed to 9th level
21 Wizard ____ Spells, delayed to 9th level
10 Weapon Selection (can use all weapons)

-15 Armor Restriction (no armor)
-5 Awkward Casting Method (Amine / MCU Dr. Strange light show on steroids)
-2 Behavior (must break 4th wall)
-2 Behavior/Taboo (puns are sacred)
-10 Hazardous Spells (1 dmg / spell level, save for half)
-5 Slower casting time (+3 init)
-8 Talisman/Symbol (requires Divine Tears focus)Arma was always teased for her Daemon blood, but, after the world ended, she found it let her travel places no one else could live. She quickly amassed a fortune from the remains of abandoned cities, and joined the Church of Dungeons and Dragons. (Not the Revised church, or he Reborn church, or the Restored church, or the Reclaimed church, the Re:Zero church). There, she established herself as "High" priestess through the use of daemonic wings.

Since then, she has worked to help or hinder the pockets of humanity / pockets of reality that remain in the wake of the end of the world as tickles her fancy.

Mostly, these days, she sits around wearing her Amulet of Perpetual Youth and Inexperience to retain her youthful good looks while brewing potions... sometimes healing, sometimes poison, always a gas at parties.

Arcane Spellcaster has the most tools to work with, but Wizard can actually learn and repeatedly cast their spells, so I was debating on this one. So it's a choice between "best ability to buy 1-shot solutions" and "ability to buy repeated solutions to problems". Obviously, I'm being lame, and mostly just buying spells as my solutions to problems, to minimize book diving.Whizzy
Human Wizard 8 / Tainted Sorcerer 1

Str 10
Dex 12
Con 17
Int 12
Wis 16(24)(4)
Chr 3

Needed: Skills (Knowledges, presumably Spellcraft), Feats (mostly prereqs and "more spells"), items (mostly just Wis boost), explicit listed funds.Stupid random stat rolls. OK, I guess Whizzy is all alone because nobody wants to adventure with uncouth, abrasive Whizzy. I guess a talking familiar buy items from the shop (even Leadership is out of the question), and Command Undead for the heavy lifting.

In a percentile system where "75%" is an almost unheard-of level of skill, I'll be desperately trying to layer plans to make a cumulative 75+% chance of success. Which will be difficult, given how few skills the characters usually have. Totally a hard-mode entry for this contest, despite not feeling that way in game.Telepathic Vampire

Telepathy 80%
Diplomacy 70% (covers almost all social skills)
Stealth 60%
Perception 50%
Barter 40% (one social skill it doesn't cover)

Special: Probability Manipulation (+2% all rolls), Vampire (anything classic - regeneration, fangs at will, unaging, no biology, etc. Also, blood diet, blood for mana, and severe sunlight allergy.), Psychic Vampire (steals skills of those he eats)

Dwoemers: Perfect darkness (**** sunlight, but can still see), Perfect Illusion (doesn't look like a cloud of darkness)

Personal Items: Business suit, cell phone, personal forcefield generator, disruptor, extra blood.

Owned: Lawnmower collection, wealth, karmic wealthThis poor being thinks it's an Isekai of my old character, accidentally summoned when the Hero was summoned to defeat the Daemon Lord, but is in reality more like a Doppleganger programmed in his image.

Needed: Fix skills? Include stolen Leadership, Command, Engineering, Science, and Business skills? Or don't even bother?

I doubt we'll learn much from this, but... this character wins by "taking infinity". Given enough time, they will eventually succeed at anything. We'll see if they can actually succeed at anything first try.Cutter Fyord
Physical 1 (5)
Mental 3 (4)
Spiritual 3 (4)
Katana of the Forbidden Flower (Increases Physical to 3, Increases Mental to 4, allows burn health for extra actions)
Snapblade Wakizashi (Increases Physical to 5)
Tanto of Lost Dreams (Increases Spiritual to 4, other powers moot)
10 lbs of Dream (think shapesand)
Mended Gee
of Bouncy Balls (no, that isn't a typo) (produces endless bouncy balls)

Marvel uses random rolls for character creation. I don't care what the character starts out as, I'm going to spend XP to make them a Wizard, dagnabbit! This will be funny in the context of this challenge, as none of their skills will be at 75%, *but* they can spend Karma (XP) to automatically make rolls. Perhaps this character will also be an item crafter, as, with the right skills and powers, that can be huge in Marvel (note to self: research item crafting for other characters, too).John Faseman
Random Mutant

F Gd(8)
A E(16)
S In(36)
E Am(46)
R Ex(16)
I Ex(16)
P Am(46)

106 Health, /149,998 Karma
Popularity? Resources? (Resources -1 CS)

Powers
Hyper-Invention Rm(26)
Energy Absorption - Magic Rm(26)
Telekinesis In(36)
Hyper-Speed Am(46)
Disintegration Am(46) {20 areas, about 10 city blocks, 46 cubic feet of matter}

Spells
Fire Generation Ex(16)
Cold Generation Ex(16)
Electrical Generation Gd(8)
Life Form Creation Ex(16) {max 1 lb, costs 1 health/oz}

Talents

4 powers, 3 talents, 3 contacts

Needs: pick original talents and contacts (includes mutant group), Actually spending Karma to boost stats, buying Contacts for new world (government, guild, Isekai classmates, adventurers), purchase new talents, maybe purchase new powers and build items from time Isekai'dJohn Faseman
Random Mutant

F Gd(8)
A E(16)
S In(36)
E Am(46)
R Ex(16)
I Ex(16)
P Am(46)

106 Health, "78" Karma
Popularity? Resources? (Resources -1 CS)

Powers
Hyper-Invention Rm(26)
Energy Absorption - Magic Rm(26)
Telekinesis In(36)
Hyper-Speed Am(46)
Disintegration Am(46) {20 areas, about 10 city blocks, 46 cubic feet of matter}

Talents

4 powers, 3 talents, 3 contactsDecided that I'd give them enough Karma to take all their stats and powers up to the mid-point of the next level, but spend that Karma as I choose.1,400 Stat Cresting x7
1,620 Gd(8) -> Ex(20)
9,450 Ex(16) -> Rm(30) x3
5,950 In(36) -> Am(50)
36,000 Am(46) -> Mn(75) x2

2,500 Power Cresting x5
9,100 Rm(26) -> In(40) x2
11,900 In(36) -> Am(50)
72,000 Am(46) -> Mn(75) x2

149,920 TotalWell, I rolled "Random Mutant". Mutants are known for becoming casters, so hooray. And some absolutely amazing stat rolls doesn't hurt. I was just going to be "mutant Wizard with random mutations they didn't use", except... Marvel allows rolling power categories and picking sub-powers, and I rolled such perfect categories and such high power levels for the powers, I couldn't help using them.Imagine a world of sword and sorcery, where warriors make epic feats look easy, and wizards juggle arcane energies unknown to science. Where monsters lurk in dark places, and adventurer guilds call the noble heroes to safeguard humanity. Where a little faerie ripped the daemon lord in half with her bare hands.

Turn the clock back a decade or two, and you see a classic fantasy world, prepared to summon Heroes for their Isekai adventure. As fate would have it, this particular summoning spell happened to target a classroom that was a government experiment, where mutants were with government permission secretly attending school alongside normal students, because the school was about to loose funding due to their poor performance.

Normals and mutants alike were whisked away to a fantasy world. Our protagonist, John Faseman, was afraid of showing off his phenomenal power, and took to training as a mage. Of course the local wizards taught him spells like Fire Bolt and Ice Lance; however, the first custom spell he created on his own, Life Form Creation, proved strong enough to turn the tide of the war even more surely than his own mutant powers. He had witnessed Kryptonians (in a crossover event), and, although his capacity with the spell was limited, John created a miniature, 1' tall versions of Supergirl. This, his first daughter, proceeded to single-handedly wreck entire dungeons - sometimes literally.

Some experimentation later, and he produced something of a half-breed Kryptonian / faerie. Regrettably, his second daughter was more strong-willed, and less... covert than his original creation, and proceeded to solo the Daemon Lord, ripping him in half with her bare hands.

Although most of the heroes went home after the Daemon Lord's defeat, John chose to stay behind (in part to clean up his mess). Now John acts as guildmaster for a prominent guild, prepared to shepherd the next group of Isekai heroes for when one of the 666 Daemon Lords inevitably gets resurrected.

Totally a combat character, whose only ability to solve any of these non-combat challenges will likely involve inventing a new spell.Gear: Panther Assault Cannon (Damage: Dead (resist with 2 successes of 18+ on exploding d6's)

Needs, like, any stats at all?

No (M&M) book diving necessary (although science book diving may help), this character will test the ability of transformation powers and wealth to solve problems.

Needs, like, any stats at all.

This could involve book-diving: does the system contain a power which can solve the problem? If so, the Omni-Wizard can get (at least a weak version of) it.

Needs, like, any stats at all. Maybe. Variable 10(8).

Yeah, this isn't a character, so much as "every ability of me picking and choosing from among every all but the one craziest Warhammer (40k and Fantasy) character I've ever run, rolled up into one conceptual character. I expect they'll have a really high failure rate at these challenges.6-armed half-breed chaos troll chaos marine w/ Mark of Tzeentch

Mutations: 6-armed (3x attacks), half-breed (changes stats), Tough (adds to Toughness), Unique: mutation analysis (allows detection and identification of mutations), Wings (fly speed)... Regeneration? (regenerates 1 health per turn?)... "Eat your brain" (gain memories from eating the brains of others (yeah, Space Marines are totally normal)

Blessings: Mark of Tzeentch (adds to casting power), Blessing of Tzeentch? Winds of Change? (adds or subtracts from stats)

Magic Items: Sword of Gears (terrible, *but* stores the souls of those killed; can "implant" stored souls in other bodies), Burning Book (like "Book of Infinite Spells", but only for Flames of Tzeentch; miscast -> book catches fire, must put out in increasingly crazy ways or book burns to ash)

Tech Items: Kustom 6-armed Terminator Armor, Plasma Rifle x3 (unlimited ammo when powered by armor), Infinite Possibilities Gauntlet (just a Warpstone-studded fist, causes mutations in those struck)

Low-tek Items: Choppa x4 (really, just helicopter blades)

Organic Resources: Bio-engineered Transparent Face-Huggers (provides extra layer of protection), Acolytes x3 (T, Sac: negate one miscast)

Spells / Psychic Powers: Vomit (makes target throw up in their mouth) ... "spacial manipulation" (makes all ranges count as most favorable to me for perception, ranged attacks, etc (custom improvement to existing power)), Probability Manipulation (gives a bonus to rolls?)... Flames of Change? (deals damage and causes mutations)... Regeneration (so unnecessary on this character, but regenerates health, lost limbs/organs, etc)

Skills (boy, these systems aren't terribly compatible on skills, and I'm going from memory): Um... Melee, Ranged, Psychic, Medicae, Bio-Engineering, Bluff, More Bluff, Carousing, Barter,

Special: Infiltrator (believed to be part of systems he does not belong to), Imperial Requisitions (can attempt to requisition items from the Imperium), Chaos Requisitions (can attempt to trade (or 3e Diplomancer "trade") with others), Time Traveler (has foreknowledge of events due to being from the future), Fate Points (allows rerolls).

Needs... base stats? Except the systems aren't compatible, so...

Also not really a character, just "can I McGyver a solution out of Magic cards?" I suspect that this not-a-character will give the strongest "Magical MacGyver" feel of any of my submissions.Not much for rules, just trying to limit how many cards it would take, and measuring how quickly / effectively / completely it solves the problem. Also, trying to limit myself to "cheap" cards in real-world currency for the actual solutions. I should *probably* build a base deck, that the poor MtG Mage has to hack cards out of to solve whatever problem they encounter. Hmmm... it'd probably be hard for me to have a better base deck than my old "Elven Chronomancer" deck. Also, the efficacy of MtG solutions may depend greatly on how long one adjudicates a round/turn to take...(Yeah, it's just a deck list)

4x Llanowar Elves
4x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elven Mystics
4x Priest of Titania
2x Wellwisher
4x Wirewood Channeler
4x Skullclamp
2x Gaia's Blessing
1x Naturalize
1x Channel
1x Time Walk (OK, I didn't own this one)
1x Time Twister (Nor did I own this one)
2x Beacon of Tomorrows
6x Unaccounted for... (was Elvish Visionary and some mana dumps, IIRC)
4x Tropical Island
4x Breeding Pool
2x Hinterland Harbor
10x Forest

Needs... Sideboard, Followed Footsteps, what's the mana dumps?

Yeah, um... not someone with personal power to do much of anything, but... how many problems can't be solved with the judicious use of a Transporter, Replicator, Holodeck, etc?Lt. Commander Staltek Vir, Federation Psychic Phenomenon Expert
Chief Science Officer aboard the USS Zero
(Now embedded observing a primitive pre-industrial advanced-telepathic culture)

St 16(+4)
DX 20(+8)
Ct 15(+3)
Mn 18(+6)
Lk 18(+6)
Ch 10(+0)

Skills: Sciences, Psychic Phenomenon x2, Generator Theory, Transporter Theory, Replicator Theory, Holodeck Theory, History, Psychology x2, Diplomacy

Powers: Empathy (know emotions), Telepathy (know thoughts), Telekinesis (move objects).

Personal Gear: Phaser, Comm Badge, Tricorder, Psychic Webbed Gloves.

Available: Everything (Transporter, Replicator, Holodeck, Portable Shield Generators, Antigrav Lifts, portable tractor beams, etc)

Needs: "away team" compositionThis character uses a "heavily modded" version of Star Trek Frontier (the rules are so nonexistent, there's more patches than rules), most notably a highly-expanded skill list. For adjudication, the quick of it is, there's no penalty for not having a skill; skills can only provide nebulous bonuses. So all rolls - except Charisma rolls and opposed rolls - will automatically succeed at 75+%.Lt. Commander Staltek Vir has always wanted to study psychic phenomenon, and assist the psychic technology or evolution of the Vulcan race. Unfortunately, he was assigned to Engineering duties straight out of the Academy as an Ensign aboard the USS Javeline. Although he managed to acquire a cache of ancient telepathic artifacts to study during his time there, to his chagrin, he managed to be assigned by Star Fleet to captain his own ship, the USS Ambergris, before finally being assigned more appropriately as Science Officer aboard the black ops USS Zero, a time-traveling D'deridex under the command of a Romulan captain, who treats federation rules and even the Prime Directive as suggestions (although, curiously, he does encourage the Federation's more... hedonistic tendencies).

At last, Lt. Commander Vir finally has been assigned a post that allows him to pursue his life goal of studying psychic phenomenon, in the cloaked system dubbed the D'deridex Daedalus system. Initially uncertain he had adequate training to avoid breaking the Prime Directive while studying and interacting with the natives, LtC Vir quickly found that the natives a) had members powerful enough to read his mind; b) that they were aware of other worlds and could even use their psychic powers to travel between them; c) that they had no interest in "taking levels" in his "inferior alchemist class".

Maintaining any pretense of secrecy or the need for such no longer being a concern, Staltek Vir has managed to, in the words of the Zero's security officer, "beamed down and set up everything short of a working Star Base", and the natives have shown complete disinterest in Federation or Romulan (or other "borrowed") tech, leaving LtC Vir free to openly conduct all the experiments he wants on their psychic powers. His current goal is to find some way to earn enough of their money to purchase the psychic artifacts that they simply produce and sell like common trade goods.

Yeah, so... this young guy has agoraphobia, and never leaves his house (Sanctum). He's surrounded by friendly spirits, all in the form of video game characters.The bags under his eyes are from staying up late, playing video games (feeding the spirits Quintessence). A life-sized R2-D2 takes deliveries for him, which is how he gets groceries, and shipments of video games and systems.Alex Knight
WoD Mage - Virtual Adept Orphan

Str 1 Dex 2 Sta 4 (late nights)
Chr 2 Man 4 (influencer) App 2
Per 4 (video games) Int 5 (illogic) Wit 2

Magick: Arete

Merits: Computer Adept, Spirit Nexus

Flaws: Child

Needs: Skills, Magick, work on probability mathI'm really gonna have to do the math, and see what level of Arete makes it even possible to hit a 75% chance roll...Alex has always played video games. They were his only friends, as the outside world was scary. When his parents died, they stepped out of their games to help him cope. Over time, he has built a shrine to games, a single system that comprises all known gaming systems. Recently, his video have begun playing video games - especially one in particular, called "Another World". They aren't very good at the game, so Alex helps them cheat, by using his 'leet skills to transport goods and characters from one video game to another.

Yeah, that last one doesn't do WoD justice, so here's Harry, the happiest Order of Hermes mage ever, who finds that everyone completely believes in his spells.WoD Mage - Order of Hermes LARPer

Needs, like, any stats whatsoever.

Telok

2023-03-22, 03:06 PM

I'm curious about Amber. Because of the GMless structure, I'll leave it to you to 'run' your own interaction with shadows based on what you think would be reasonable given the details I put in the scenario as far as e.g. 'ability to find things that interact directly/indirectly with this'. It might still give rise to interesting stories even if it doesn't give rise to meaningful difficulty, which I'd also be curious about.

I won't do Amber, it's probably too off from what you're thinking of. I think I'll stick with fun & capable but unoptimized characters from DtD40k7e, Traveller, and Paranoia. The only one that'll take any work is the DtD one. I'll find a random R&D gear generatior somewhere for the poor Paranoia schmuck.

NichG

2023-03-22, 05:27 PM

Alright, scenarios written and locked in, so they won't change based on whatever characters people post.

animorte

2023-03-22, 08:21 PM

Some character ideas:

Probably Shadow Sorcerer/Celestial Warlock: Pact of the Tome (minimum 11 cantrips at level 4).

Level distribution will depend on how I determine the value of meta-magic vs invocations. Don't be surprised if I toss in another class for more cantrips.

Will very likely have a race that provides additional spell availability plus a feat (or two) that adds more spells.

You read that correctly, My Little Pony.

We've got several young ones that appreciate the simplicity and it's been fun. I'll most likely just drop in the character sheet for my Telekinetic Unicorn.

It's actually pretty darn sweet. Think 5e Psi Warrior with Mage Hand and Floating Disk (et al).

May not get to these...

I was once asked what I thought was my most overpowered character of all time. This was my second RPG character I ever made and it's been a while. Either I'll have to rebuild the sheet or abandon this build entirely as I may not have enough time.

I'm pretty sure it was a Dwarf with Travel and Trickery domains.

Worlds Without Number

This is such a cool system. It's not overpowered and not very difficult, but the sheer amount of skills you can build for (not at once) brings so many different possibilities to life.

I found a pretty neat interaction (if I've understood correctly) that would allow a certain warrior/mage to recover health each time it punches something. It would very much come across as a "punch first, ask questions later" character so I fully expect it to fail miserably in anything else.

In this system, you can do literally anything you want, it seems.

You have a limited number of Clichés you can start with (limited by your own imagination) up to 10d6 distributed as you see fit (nothing starting above 4d6 and no more than 5 different ones).

If your few Clichés are clever enough, I expect they could account for any number of circumstances. Just make sure you don't spread yourself too thin by either metric. Only limit is you can't be too vague, though ambiguity is in the eyes of the beholder GM.

Everything is determined by opposed rolls until somebody runs out of dice.

I'll be coming back to edit these as I have more time to do so. Looking forward to it!

Telok

2023-03-22, 09:44 PM

Ok, DtD40k7e v1.t character, plus a silly backup one.

Dungeons the Dragoning 40K 7e v1.t, a d10 exploding dice pool roll & keep Frankenstein's monster of a system. We aren't considering this character actually buying or looting anything but a few cheap spaceship consoles and some better armor & weapons for the bodyguards. This is a dryad vampire vice president of new markets for the Aztechnology megacorporation, with a personal space cruiser and a lot of contacts. The character isn't optimized, they're quite competent but not optimized for anything. If you want optimized we could thrown down a character with with followers (10k), wealth(millions), contacts(many), backing(faction leader), holdings(a planet) at 5s, 3 other exalt allies, and fame 1.

stats (specialty allows rerolling 1s if they apply):

intelligence 4 (puzzle solver)
wisdom 4 (attentive)
willpower 3
strength 2
dexterity 3
constitution 2
charisma 4 (eloquent)
fellowship 4 (persuasive)
composure 3

skills (and the most common attribute used):

arcana(int) 1 -> 5k4
academic lore(int) 1 -> 5k4
forbidden lore(int) 1 -> 5k4
tech use(int) 1 -> 5k4
common lore(int 1) -> 5k4+5
craft(wis) 1 -> 4k4
perception(wis) 0 -> 4k3
medic(wis) 1 -> 5k4
politics(wis) 1 -> 5k4

brawling(level) 2 -> 5k2
ballistics(level) 2 -> 5k2 if proficient in weapon
drive(int/dex) 1 -> 5k4, cars, tanks, mecha, trains, etc.
pilot(int/dex) 1 -> 5k4, planes, spaceships, hovercraft, submarines, etc.
weaponry(level) 0 -> 1d10-1
acrobatics(dex) 1 -> 4k3
athletics(con/str) 1 -> 3k2
larceny(dex) 1 -> 4k3
stealth(dex) 1 -> 4k3

scrutiny(cmp) 3 -> 6k3
charm(fel) 1 -> 5k4
persuade(cha) 3 -> 7k4
animal ken(cmp) 1 -> 4k3
command(cha) 1 -> 5k4
deceive(cha) 1 -> 5k4
intimidate(cha) 0 -> 3k3
disguise(fel) 1 -> 5k4
perform(fel) 0 -> 3k3

backgrounds:

inheritance 3 (best cybernetic cortex implant = +1 int & +5 on common lore tests)
wealth 3k3+5 (easily buy easily buy meltaguns, anti-tank rockets, grand daiklaives, chain-swords, powered exoskeletons, medevac helicopters or top of the line laptop computers, if using tricks to reduce target numbers then las cannons, power armor, lightsabers, and Bugatti Veyron luxury sports cars are not difficult)
contacts 5k5 (leader of all Ventrue clan vampires, regional manager of ComStar FTL communications for the Mt. Celestia political region, an Inquisitor of the human Imperium, an admiral in the Elven Imperial Navy, Factol of the Doomguard Sigil Faction)
followers 2 (20 fanatic loyal personal guards/assistants)
mentor 3(the spirit of Tiamat who is temporarily dead again)
holdings 3 (spelljammer, a light frigate of 325 meters and 530 crew)
backing 4 (is the vice president at large of new markets for the Aztechnology megacorporation)

Species: dryad: size 4, +fellowship or + wisdom, +animal ken & +scrutiny, ability - pollenate: duplicate the effects of Attraction spell using level+fellowship instead of the spell casting test (Attraction, TN 20, full action, mind affecting, saving throw wisdom+arcana, non-combat, subtle, touch, one hour duration, affects creatures within 30 meters, if targeted on a person they get +1k1 all social rolls else if targeted on a thing people will interact with it)
Exaltation: vampire, bitey, undead, see in the dark, old money

powers: old money (extra background points), undead resilience (requires an explosive/energy crit-5 to the heart or power weapons, artifacts, or magic to kill and cannot die from limb critical damage), sunlight weakness (negated - see feats), blood dependency (lose 1 resource point per day & comatose without blood), bite attack (+1k1 rending natural weapon with brawling tag and does extra fatigue damage), doesn't eat breathe bleed or get poisoned/drugged
resource: blood, 5x power stat, spend up to power stat per round, used to gain extra reactions, gain extra dice on checks, or heal hit points.
power stat 1: see in all darkness & +1k0 perception checks
power stat 2: spend 1 blood to gain Fear(1) for the rest of the scene (will save vs TN 15 - in combat roll on shock table for stun fleeing penalties and insanity damage OR out of combat take penalties & if save fails by 10+ take 1d5 insanity damage)
power stat 3 (character does not yet have, costs 400 xp): spend 1 blood point to gain 1 extra half action

classes - negotiator, courtier, diplomat (class completion bonuses +2 resolve)

feats & assets & xp spending (estimating about 2500 xp gain to "half way to max" although it really depends on the class track, this is about 11 game sessions worth of xp):

starter xp 600 + 400 from 4 hinderance + 2500 to mid level = 3500 total
600 xp charisam 1->4, 300 xp composure 1->3, 800 xp assorted skill ranks, 400 xp backgrounds (mentor holdings backing), 100 xp vampire Ventrue clan asset (+5 wealth tests & +1 contacts & peer(Ventrue vampires +2k0 social checks)), 200 xp power stat 1->2, 100 xp veteran asset (+1 wisdom & +1 tech use & enemy), 100 xp dryad photosynthesis species asset (for vampires removes sunlight sensitivity), 100 xp academy asset (weapon proficiencies basic & ranged 1), 900 xp feats -> courtier's privilege x3 (bonus backgrounds), discipline (+1 resolve), protocol (int+common lore vs 15 save against damn fool mistakes), peer (dragons) & good reputation (dragons) (+2k1 charm persuade & command skills), eidetic memory (never forgets), language (elven)

stat line: hp 10, resilience 5, armor 0, static defense 23, dodge 4k3(avg +10 def), fatigue limit 3, speed 5m & run 30m, initiative 1d10+6, mental/social defense 20, resolve 9, devotion/religiousness 6(Raven Queen), sanity 100, resource points 10 & regain by biting, hero points 2, languages: dryad, trade, assimar, tifeling, elven

combat (most NPC/monster static defense TNs are in the 15-20 range, armor runs 0-10 points, and resilience is mostly 3-5):
bite: 5k2 @ 3k2 rending, pen 0, inflict fatigue if wounds, regain 1 resource and +1 more fatigue damage point on wounding
lasgun on full-auto: 7k3 @ 3k2 energy, pen 0, range 30/120/180/240, rof s/3, ammo 60 & 1 full turn reload, +1k0 damage per 5 over defense to max +3k0, reliable - misses instead of jamming(requires rolling four 1s)

Starting gear: knife, common clothing, lasgun & 2 e-clips, med-kit, comm-bead, tricorder, laptop computer.
Easily purchased (and proficient with) if needed: grenade launcher, flamethrower, web gun, plasma grenades, best Quality silver cestus, low quality power fist, laser sniper rifle, automatic lockpicking tool.
not proficient with but can easily afford: plate armor, powered exoskeleton, light ballistic mesh, high quality flak jackets, electro-flail, goremaul, meltagun, plasma rifle.

roll percentages:

Weirdly the game came out 2 years before D&D 5e but has the absolutely exact same TN/DC chart in it with 15=normal & 30=near impossible.
Resource points can be spent for extra +1k0 on any skill/ability check or save, up to 2/round
hero points (refresh per session) can be spent for a reroll after rolling or a -5 target number Before rolling, or both.
Stunting can be done as often as the GM will put up with, simply describe what the character is doing pretty well and involve the scenery/setting in some way, allows for some minor player directed scenery editing (if you need curtains to dramatically swing on then they're there), gives 1-3 bonus rolled dice.

3k2 - 80% 10+, 45% 15+, 20% 20+
5k2 - 95% 10+, 60% 15+, 35% 20+
3k3 - 90% 10+, 65% 15+, 35% 20+, 15% 25+
4k3 - 85% 15+, 55% 20+, 30% 25+, 15% 30+
6k3 - 95% 15+, 80% 20+, 50% 25+, 30% 30+
7k3 - 85% 20+, 60% 25+, 35% 30+, 20% 35+
4k4 - 90% 15+, 65% 20+, 40% 25+, 25% 30+
5k4 - 85% 20+, 60% 25+, 35% 30+, 20% 35+
7k4 - 95% 20+, 85% 25+, 60% 30+, 40% 35+
5k5 - 90% 20+, 70% 25+, 45% 30+, 25% 35+
6k5 - 95% 20+, 85% 25+, 65% 30+, 45% 35+

Common benchmark NPCs

Generic humanoids: commoner, guard, soldier

Prole: size 4, Level 0, stats 2s, initiative +4, common lore & JOB SKILL 3k2, perception 1k1
hp 4, resilience 3, ap 0, def 14, dodge 2k2, speed 4/24, mdef 15, resolve 4, devotion 6
brawl 1k1 @ 2k1 I pen0 +fatigue, gear: clothing, pocket change, chrono or cheap comm or job tool

Guard/Law: size 4, level 1, CON&WIS 3, else 2, init +2, perception 4k3, brawl 2k1, shoot 3k2, common
lore & politic & scrutiny 3k2, first aid 4k3, 50/50 command or persuade 3k2
hp 6, resil 4, ap 5 chest (armor vest), def 17, dodge 2k2, speed 4/24, mdef 15, resolve 4, dev 6
brawl 2k1 @ grapple 6k2 v sz+str, hand cannon 3k2 @ 3k2 I p3 35m s/- 6a 2f
K.O spray: dodge tn 15, 4m*2m cone, con 15 inhale vs +fatigue, 2 ammo, 2 full reload
gear: armor vest, comm-bead, spray reload, hand can & 2 clips, handcuffs, badge, donut, torch

Soldier: size 4, level 2, phy 3, else 2, init +5, athletic & acrobat 4k3, weapon & shoot 4k2, scrutiny & intimidate & perception 3k2, 50% drive 4k3, 50/50 command or craft 3k2
hp 7, resil 5, ap 5 (FLAK body & head), def 17, dodge 4k3, speed 6/36, mdef 15, resolve 4, dev 6
knife 4k2 @ 4k2 R p0 throw 5m @ 2k2, lasgun 4k2/6k3 @ 3k2 E p0 60m s/3 60a 1f reliable
gear: flak vest & helmet, 2 knife, lasgun & 2 clip, 2 smoke grenades(2k2 @ blast[5] 9m), comm-bead
chrono, torch, collapsible shovel, uniform, mission gear (rebreather - multitool - maps - MREs)

Combat Servitor: kill-bot death machine

size 6, level 2, str con 5, dex will 3, wis 2, else n/a, init +3,
fight 5k3, perception 4k1, +MINDLESS +FEARLESS +pre-loaded IFF software & datajack back of head
hp 16, resil 4, ap 10 all(machine), def 13, dodge 2k2, speed 3/18 no-swim crawler
light vehicular multilas (heavy): 5k3/7k4 @ 3k2 E p0 s/8 60m 80a +reliable +recharge 1 shot/min, claw: 5k3 @ 6k2 R p0 +snare
immune fatigue toxic disease breath eat environment bleed mental biology (not stun immune)
SPECIAL: crawls over impassible terrain, gun in gizzards hit loc, 2 claws & 2 arms

Cocaine Wizard Journeyman: is high

level 2, sz 4, cha int wis will 3, else 2, init+4, arcana & academic 6k3, deceive & common & forbid 4k3, charm 3k2, scrutiny & ballistic & brawl 4k2, TESTED, perf. memory, foresight(10m=+1int)
backing 2(CW guild), wealth 2, mentor 3(coke wiz L3), ally 2(wiz L2), contact 1(dealer)
hp 5, resil 4, ap 5 all(mageAC), def 19, dodge 2k2, speed 4/24, mdef 15, resolve 5, devotion 6
autopistol: FAB 4k3 @ 2k2 I p0 30m -/6 12a 1f, slap fight: 2k2 @ 2k1 I p0 +fatigue
gear: implement(rod staff wand orb), charm, magic theory book, chrono, nice clothes, autopistol & 2 clips, Cocaine Wizard Guild Official Member Card & Discount Coupon, 10g of coke, serious pocket money
Abj 2: 1% warp
shield : 10 Re S,self : parry d10 => 1=+7, 2-3=+10, 4-7=+12, 10=+15
mage armor : 15 Hf S,touch, 24h : d10 => 1-2=fail, 3-6= ap 3, 7-9=ap 4, 10=ap 5
Evo 1: 5% warp, ignores 2 points of Aura for damage
magic missile : 15 Hf S,attack,30m,auto-hit : 2k1+1 E dmg d10 => 1-2=fail 3-7=1x & 8-10=2x

spelljammer:

Type: Thresher (Frigate), Class: Destroyer, Price: Holdings 3
Shields: Standard Mk III (125 points & 20 regeneration)
Hull Points: 60, Crew: 16, Crew Quality: 3, Fore Guns: 3, Aft Guns: 2
Initiative: +15, Speed: 10 VU (60,000 km per turn), Static Defense: 14, Maneuver: +5, Acceleration: +10, Sensors: +5
Ship Size: 57 = about 325 m. Crew Number: about 536 people

Weapons:
3x fore Torpedo Launcher
2x aft Light Positron Array (fires as a single weapon), Range 16 (96,000 km), Arc normal (aft and sides), Accuracy +0, Damage 6k4, Shield Disruption 8, Critical Chart Roll +0
light array orbital bombardment: 600m radius, 6k4 damage, armor penetration 8

Torpedoes:
15x Quath Torpedo, Range 20 (120,000 km), Arc narrow (forwards only), Accuracy +0, Damage 4k4 (phases through shields to hit but crit is reduced to +0 if shields are up), Shield Disruption +0, Critical Chart Roll +8
quath orbital bombardment air burst: 1200m radius, 8k8 damage, armor penetration 16
quath orbital bombardment ground burst: 200m diameter crater (automatic vaporization of targets), 400m radius blast increment (damage halves at every additional increment), 10k10+15 damage, ignores armor

Consoles:
Arcana 1/1, Command 1/1, Engineering 0/1, Tactical 2/2, Universal 1/1, Total 2/6.
Teleportarium: Arcana, Boarding Actions at 5 VU (30,000 km) if there are no shields plus Star Trek transporter style beaming about
Partial Wing: Universal, Antigrav plus landing gear allows ship to land safely
Library Computer: Command, Gain +1k1 to all Lore tests and make them untrained when using it
Murder Servitors: Tactical, Gain +2k1 to repel boarders and put down mutinies (total 5k4 unless the ship's tactical officer has brawling/weaponry skill of 4+)
Cargo Bays: Universal (in tactical slot), Big open spaces to ship lots of stuff

alternate silly super focused optimized character: 2500 xp gnome daemonhost mercenary, tactical officer, chief security officer, walking gunshow, living fortress, filthy rich teleporting monster summoner who leads a bunch of mercenaries.

stats: int 2, wis 3, will 5(stubborn), str 2, dex 2, con 3, cha 2, fel 2, cmp 2
skills: ballistics 5(heavy metal), brawling 5(biting), academic lore 1, craft 1, medic 1, perception 3, command 3, intimidate 3, scrutiny 2
backgrounds: allies 3 (rogue trader starship captain, cocaine wizard, cleric of Lolth), wealth 5 (filthy rich), followers 3 (100 loyal mercenaries)

species: gnome, size 3, weapon proficiency basic, armor proficiency light
exaltation: daemonhost, bitey, resist damage, free magic school
resource: essence, will+cha+2x power stat, on use change to resonance, clear resonance with bite or will vs 10+2/resonance if fail still clear resonance & -1 hp & retry until success
power stat: 1= reduce damage by con+power stat unless from silver or magic
classes: mercenary, tactical officer, chief security officer, walking gunshow, living fortress

xp & stuff: 4x hinderances (law of the stars(principled), slowpoke, intolerance(politicians & lawyers), night terrors), +2 wealth, +1 ballistics, +2 brawling, +3 hp from mercenary & walking gunshow, +2k2 leading & resisting boarding attacks if serving as tactical officer on a ship, veteran (+will +ballistics +old enemy), language(), sound constitution (+1 hp), master of orbital bombardment, worf barrage (space combat buff), extracurricular study (crisis zone 1), worf effect (enemies shoot me first), match frequency (space combat buff), paranoia (+2 initiative), lend expertise (space combat buff), rock & roll (+5 to hit per consecutive round of full-auto shoots), improved weapon focus (+0k1 with machine guns), crushing bear (free auto-damage while grappling), death before defeat (spend a hero point to ignore the effect of a non-killing critical hit), +1 followers & +1 style point

gear: power armor, las cannon, machine gun, missile launcher, magic carpet*, jet pack*, fancy clothes, power fist, doc-bot 9000*, AT-ST*, pet T-Rex*, animal handler android (use the repair android stats with swapped skills), smart autonomous air-car*, auto-repair android*, 10 to 20 cargo/passenger vans* for the mercs and stuff.

* stats not included here but available on request

stat block: hp 20, resilience 6, armor 12-all & daemonhost -4 (not vs silver & spells), static defense 11, dodge 2k2 (use the porte spell instead), speed 4 meters & run 24 (or cast blink for 40), initiative 1d10+6, mental defense 15, resolve 7, devotion 6(Raven Queen), sanity 100, resource points 9 & regain by biting or 5k5 vs 10+2/spent if fail lose 1 hp and re-try, hero points 2

las cannon: 10k6 reroll 1s for 5k5 energy, armor penetration 10, ranges 150/600/900/1200, rof 1+recharge, ammo 5, 2 full turns reload
machine gun: 10k8 reroll 1s +5 per turn of consecutive full auto for 3k2 impact +1k0 per 5 over target's defense to max +10k0, armor penetration 5, ranges 60/240/360/480, rof 10+only full auto, ammo 100, full turn reload
missile launcher: 5k5 reroll 1s for 4k3 explosive & 6 meter blast radius, armor penetration 5, ranges 100/400/500/600, rof 1, ammo 1, 2 full turn reload, may also use anti-armor missiles for 5k4 X pen 12 but only 1m blast
bite: 10k5 reroll 1s for 3k2 rending, pen 0, +1 fatigue, recover resource points equal to wounds dealt
power fist: 10k5 for 5k3 impact, penetration 4, +1 fatigue, power field (if parries or parried by a weapon without power field or is an artifact then 4+ on 1d10 to other weapon breaks)

gun kata: crisis zone 1 & 1 extra style point
with heavy weapons, on a standard half action attack, may not repeat on consecutive rounds, +2k0 to attack rolls

magic: conjuration 5
call item (free action, conj+will vs 15, verbal, summon prepared item to hand)
web (half action, conj+will vs 15, verbal, somatic, material(sticky candy), attack, save dex+arcana, 25 meter range, 10 meter radius, immobilized 5 rounds, str or size vs casting roll to move half speed)
porte (half action OR reaction, conj+will vs 20, somatic, 5 hour duration, 3 meter portal on a flat surface within 100 meters, needs two castings to have an exit, con only have two portals at one time, portals must be immobile relative to each other, like a portal-gun)
greater servant (full action, conj+will vs 30, material(candle), 5 minute duration, somatic, summon thing with 4 all stats and 4 in 4 skills adjacent you, does what you tell it)
gate (full action OR 1 hour, conj+will vs 35, somatic, 5 hour duration, full action is as porte but both portals at once and minimum duration even if they would pop is the end of your next turn, hour long cast uses a doorway or arch or corridor and places the other end anywhere except across crystal sphere boundaries & planar boundaries & teleport shielded locations plus the physical anchor can be moved after casting)

casting: do these two
fettered casting = 98% 15+, 85% 20+, 70% 30+, 29% 35+, never any warps
full power dropping 10s = 97.7% 25+, 80% 30+, 45% 35+, 0.014% chance of warps at +10
casting: don't do these
full power 10k5 = 95.8% 30+, 85% 35+, 65% chance of warps (60% +10, 30% +20, 9% +30, 1% +40)
pushed casting (10k7) = 96.7% 35+ & average of +70 on the warp tables
pushed casting dropping 10s = 95% 30+, 80% 35+, 1.3% chance of +50 warps & 98.7% chance of +40 warps

warpy crap(do not add too 100% because of multiple effects at a time and chances for doubles & triples):
+10 warps: 78% safe, 0.001% death, 0.007% demons, 6% gain insanity, 13% save vs insanity, 4% take damage, 2% fatigue, 1% tech scorn, 6% trigger enemy hinderance, 3% stunned, 1% roll on the mental trauma table, 0.001% warp vortex % demonic possession & gouging out your eyeballs
+40 warps: 43% safe, 1.5% death, 4% demons, 10% gain insanity points, 40% save vs insanity, 7% take damage, 5% fatigue, 1% knocked out, 6% triggers enemy hinderance, 6% stuns, 1% warp vortex, 2% roll on the mental trauma table, 1% mutation, 2% falling damage, 0.5% demonic possession, 0.2% gouge out your eyeballs.
+70 warps: 13% safe, 20% death, 29% demons, 15% automatic insanity, 58% save vs insanity, 4% take damage, 5% fatigue, 3% tech scorn, 2% knocked out, 6% trigger enemy hinderance, 18% warp vortex, 2% falling damage, 0.2% demonic possession, 0.1% gouge out your eyeballs

Hilarity: There's no size limits on the gate spell and it's literally like a portal-gun portal, line of sight & effect go right through. You can throw a huge one up on hanger door and pass jumbo jets though. You can use a tiny fairy house tchotchke and summon monsters anywhere by sticking your finger through.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-22, 09:55 PM

Since someone else was planning on using risus i might as well use it. It's just gonna be a hodge podge of my favourite cliches i haven't used (yet). I'll say he is really high level.

Name: problem solver-chan

6d6 master of random facts and trivia.

6d6 ninja.

6d6 "i know a guy."

6d6 wealthy.

This is a character that is really good at solving problems. Btw the highest dc is 30 in risus which is "actually impossible" and this gal can actually do those things if she rolls lucky.

solidork

2023-03-22, 10:42 PM

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-23, 12:06 AM

OK, I guess I'll edit this to include actual stats as time goes on, but here's some placeholders for some of the characters I'm thinking of:

Arma
Human Fighter 2 / Cleric 9
Str 11
Dex 5
Con 4
Int 11
Wis 17
Chr 152e doesn't have WBL, treasure is normally quite random, so I chose the existing character I can best remember their items at 9th level, Armus, and am giving (what I can remember of) Armus' 9th level items to a brand new character. To maximize their personal ability to do stuff, I'll make them... probably a Cleric, who uses Skills & Powers to get schools of Wizard spells, too - as a Cleric, they have all their spells for free, and access to the most spells.Stupid random stat rolls. I had to swap 2 of the stats to even be able to play a Cleric. As long as we're having fun with 2e, and get half the XP for the next level, I'll go ahead and spend a little of that XP on Fighter 2, requiring purchase of Gauntlets of Ogre Power to successfully Duel Class. Note to self: Research what Charisma gives a 75% chance to what (especially on Reaction Checks).

Arcane Spellcaster has the most tools to work with, but Wizard can actually learn and repeatedly cast their spells, so I'm debating on this one. So it's a choice between "best ability to buy 1-shot solutions" and "ability to buy repeated solutions to problems". Obviously, I'm being lame, and mostly just buying spells as my solutions to problems, to minimize book diving.

In a percentile system where "75%" is an almost unheard-of level of skill, I'll be desperately trying to layer plans to make a cumulative 75+% chance of success. Which will be difficult, given how few skills the characters usually have. Totally a hard-mode entry for this contest, despite not feeling that way in game.

I doubt we'll learn much from this, but... this character wins by "taking infinity". Given enough time, they will eventually succeed at anything. We'll see if they can actually succeed at anything first try.

Marvel uses random rolls for character creation. I don't care what the character starts out as, I'm going to spend XP to make them a Wizard, dagnabbit! This will be funny in the context of this challenge, as none of their skills will be at 75%, *but* they can spend Karma (XP) to automatically make rolls. Perhaps this character will also be an item crafter, as, with the right skills and powers, that can be huge in Marvel (note to self: research item crafting for other characters, too).

Totally a combat character, whose only ability to solve any of these non-combat challenges will likely involve inventing a new spell.

No (M&M) book diving necessary (although science book diving may help), this character will test the ability of transformation powers and wealth to solve problems.

This could involve book-diving: does the system contain a power which can solve the problem? If so, the Omni-Wizard can get (at least a weak version of) it.

Yeah, this isn't a character, so much as "every ability of every Warhammer (40k and Fantasy) character I've ever run, rolled up into one conceptual character. I expect they'll have a really high failure rate at these challenges.

Also not really a character, just "can I McGyver a solution out of Magic cards?" I suspect that this not-a-character will give the strongest "Magical MacGyver" feel of any of my submissions.

Yeah, um... not someone with personal power to do much of anything, but... how many problems can't be solved with the judicious use of a Transporter, Replicator, Holodeck, etc?

Some cool characters man. I'm especially excited to see how the vulcan, mtg, and m&m mutant can do. Depending on what challenges the "gm" gives us i can totally see any of these being useful.

Some character ideas:

Probably Shadow Sorcerer/Celestial Warlock: Pact of the Tome (minimum 11 cantrips at level 4).

Level distribution will depend on how I determine the value of meta-magic vs invocations. Don't be surprised if I toss in another class for more cantrips.

Will very likely have a race that provides additional spell availability plus a feat (or two) that adds more spells.

You read that correctly, My Little Pony.

We've got several young ones that appreciate the simplicity and it's been fun. I'll most likely just drop in the character sheet for my Telekinetic Unicorn.

It's actually pretty darn sweet. Think 5e Psi Warrior with Mage Hand and Floating Disk (et al).

May not get to these...

I was once asked what I thought was my most overpowered character of all time. This was my second RPG character I ever made and it's been a while. Either I'll have to rebuild the sheet or abandon this build entirely as I may not have enough time.

I'm pretty sure it was a Dwarf with Travel and Trickery domains.

Worlds Without Number

This is such a cool system. It's not overpowered and not very difficult, but the sheer amount of skills you can build for (not at once) brings so many different possibilities to life.

I found a pretty neat interaction (if I've understood correctly) that would allow a certain warrior/mage to recover health each time it punches something. It would very much come across as a "punch first, ask questions later" character so I fully expect it to fail miserably in anything else.

In this system, you can do literally anything you want, it seems.

You have a limited number of Clichés you can start with (limited by your own imagination) up to 10d6 distributed as you see fit (nothing starting above 4d6 and no more than 5 different ones).

If your few Clichés are clever enough, I expect they could account for any number of circumstances. Just make sure you don't spread yourself too thin by either metric. Only limit is you can't be too vague, though ambiguity is in the eyes of the beholder GM.

Everything is determined by opposed rolls until somebody runs out of dice.

I'll be coming back to edit these as I have more time to do so. Looking forward to it!

2 things. 1 i really find the unicorn and necrofist funny. 2 risus has 3 task resolution systems actually. Skill checks for unopposed actions like climbing a mountain or dodging a crossbow trap. A single opposed roll for stuff like pick pocketing or being the 1st to grab the mystic artifact of doom. A the one you described for stuff like a court battle, a wizard duel, or a messy divorce.

Ok, DtD40k7e v1.t character, plus a silly backup one.

Dungeons the Dragoning 40K 7e v1.t, a d10 exploding dice pool roll & keep Frankenstein's monster of a system. We aren't considering this character actually buying or looting anything but a few cheap spaceship consoles and some better armor & weapons for the bodyguards. This is a dryad vampire vice president of new markets for the Aztechnology megacorporation, with a personal space cruiser and a lot of contacts. The character isn't optimized, they're quite competent but not optimized for anything. If you want optimized we could thrown down a character with with followers (10k), wealth(millions), contacts(many), backing(faction leader), holdings(a planet) at 5s, 3 other exalt allies, and fame 1.

stats (specialty allows rerolling 1s if they apply):

intelligence 4 (puzzle solver)
wisdom 4 (attentive)
willpower 3
strength 2
dexterity 3
constitution 2
charisma 4 (eloquent)
fellowship 4 (persuasive)
composure 3

skills (and the most common attribute used):

arcana(int) 1 -> 5k4
academic lore(int) 1 -> 5k4
forbidden lore(int) 1 -> 5k4
tech use(int) 1 -> 5k4
common lore(int 1) -> 5k4+5
craft(wis) 1 -> 4k4
perception(wis) 0 -> 4k3
medic(wis) 1 -> 5k4
politics(wis) 1 -> 5k4

brawling(level) 2 -> 5k2
ballistics(level) 2 -> 5k2 if proficient in weapon
drive(int/dex) 1 -> 5k4, cars, tanks, mecha, trains, etc.
pilot(int/dex) 1 -> 5k4, planes, spaceships, hovercraft, submarines, etc.
weaponry(level) 0 -> 1d10-1
acrobatics(dex) 1 -> 4k3
athletics(con/str) 1 -> 3k2
larceny(dex) 1 -> 4k3
stealth(dex) 1 -> 4k3

scrutiny(cmp) 3 -> 6k3
charm(fel) 1 -> 5k4
persuade(cha) 3 -> 7k4
animal ken(cmp) 1 -> 4k3
command(cha) 1 -> 5k4
deceive(cha) 1 -> 5k4
intimidate(cha) 0 -> 3k3
disguise(fel) 1 -> 5k4
perform(fel) 0 -> 3k3

backgrounds:

inheritance 3 (best cybernetic cortex implant = +1 int & +5 on common lore tests)
wealth 3k3+5 (easily buy easily buy meltaguns, anti-tank rockets, grand daiklaives, chain-swords, powered exoskeletons, medevac helicopters or top of the line laptop computers, if using tricks to reduce target numbers then las cannons, power armor, lightsabers, and Bugatti Veyron luxury sports cars are not difficult)
contacts 5k5 (leader of all Ventrue clan vampires, regional manager of ComStar FTL communications for the Mt. Celestia political region, an Inquisitor of the human Imperium, an admiral in the Elven Imperial Navy, Factol of the Doomguard Sigil Faction)
followers 2 (20 fanatic loyal personal guards/assistants)
mentor 3(the spirit of Tiamat who is temporarily dead again)
holdings 3 (spelljammer, a light frigate of 325 meters and 530 crew)
backing 4 (is the vice president at large of new markets for the Aztechnology megacorporation)

Species: dryad: size 4, +fellowship or + wisdom, +animal ken & +scrutiny, ability - pollenate: duplicate the effects of Attraction spell using level+fellowship instead of the spell casting test (Attraction, TN 20, full action, mind affecting, saving throw wisdom+arcana, non-combat, subtle, touch, one hour duration, affects creatures within 30 meters, if targeted on a person they get +1k1 all social rolls else if targeted on a thing people will interact with it)
Exaltation: vampire, bitey, undead, see in the dark, old money

powers: old money (extra background points), undead resilience (requires an explosive/energy crit-5 to the heart or power weapons, artifacts, or magic to kill and cannot die from limb critical damage), sunlight weakness (negated - see feats), blood dependency (lose 1 resource point per day & comatose without blood), bite attack (+1k1 rending natural weapon with brawling tag and does extra fatigue damage), doesn't eat breathe bleed or get poisoned/drugged
resource: blood, 5x power stat, spend up to power stat per round, used to gain extra reactions, gain extra dice on checks, or heal hit points.
power stat 1: see in all darkness & +1k0 perception checks
power stat 2: spend 1 blood to gain Fear(1) for the rest of the scene (will save vs TN 15 - in combat roll on shock table for stun fleeing penalties and insanity damage OR out of combat take penalties & if save fails by 10+ take 1d5 insanity damage)
power stat 3 (character does not yet have, costs 400 xp): spend 1 blood point to gain 1 extra half action

classes - negotiator, courtier, diplomat (class completion bonuses +2 resolve)

feats & assets & xp spending (estimating about 2500 xp gain to "half way to max" although it really depends on the class track, this is about 11 game sessions worth of xp):

starter xp 600 + 400 from 4 hinderance + 2500 to mid level = 3500 total
600 xp charisam 1->4, 300 xp composure 1->3, 800 xp assorted skill ranks, 400 xp backgrounds (mentor holdings backing), 100 xp vampire Ventrue clan asset (+5 wealth tests & +1 contacts & peer(Ventrue vampires +2k0 social checks)), 200 xp power stat 1->2, 100 xp veteran asset (+1 wisdom & +1 tech use & enemy), 100 xp dryad photosynthesis species asset (for vampires removes sunlight sensitivity), 100 xp academy asset (weapon proficiencies basic & ranged 1), 900 xp feats -> courtier's privilege x3 (bonus backgrounds), discipline (+1 resolve), protocol (int+common lore vs 15 save against damn fool mistakes), peer (dragons) & good reputation (dragons) (+2k1 charm persuade & command skills), eidetic memory (never forgets), language (elven)

stat line: hp 10, resilience 5, armor 0, static defense 23, dodge 4k3(avg +10 def), fatigue limit 3, speed 5m & run 30m, initiative 1d10+6, mental/social defense 20, resolve 9, devotion/religiousness 6(Raven Queen), sanity 100, resource points 10 & regain by biting, hero points 2, languages: dryad, trade, assimar, tifeling, elven

combat (most NPC/monster static defense TNs are in the 15-20 range, armor runs 0-10 points, and resilience is mostly 3-5):
bite: 5k2 @ 3k2 rending, pen 0, inflict fatigue if wounds, regain 1 resource and +1 more fatigue damage point on wounding
lasgun on full-auto: 7k3 @ 3k2 energy, pen 0, range 30/120/180/240, rof s/3, ammo 60 & 1 full turn reload, +1k0 damage per 5 over defense to max +3k0, reliable - misses instead of jamming(requires rolling four 1s)

Starting gear: knife, common clothing, lasgun & 2 e-clips, med-kit, comm-bead, tricorder, laptop computer.
Easily purchased (and proficient with) if needed: grenade launcher, flamethrower, web gun, plasma grenades, best Quality silver cestus, low quality power fist, laser sniper rifle, automatic lockpicking tool.
not proficient with but can easily afford: plate armor, powered exoskeleton, light ballistic mesh, high quality flak jackets, electro-flail, goremaul, meltagun, plasma rifle.

roll percentages:

Weirdly the game came out 2 years before D&D 5e but has the absolutely exact same TN/DC chart in it with 15=normal & 30=near impossible.
Resource points can be spent for extra +1k0 on any skill/ability check or save, up to 2/round
hero points (refresh per session) can be spent for a reroll after rolling or a -5 target number Before rolling, or both.
Stunting can be done as often as the GM will put up with, simply describe what the character is doing pretty well and involve the scenery/setting in some way, allows for some minor player directed scenery editing (if you need curtains to dramatically swing on then they're there), gives 1-3 bonus rolled dice.

3k2 - 80% 10+, 45% 15+, 20% 20+
5k2 - 95% 10+, 60% 15+, 35% 20+
3k3 - 90% 10+, 65% 15+, 35% 20+, 15% 25+
4k3 - 85% 15+, 55% 20+, 30% 25+, 15% 30+
6k3 - 95% 15+, 80% 20+, 50% 25+, 30% 30+
7k3 - 85% 20+, 60% 25+, 35% 30+, 20% 35+
4k4 - 90% 15+, 65% 20+, 40% 25+, 25% 30+
5k4 - 85% 20+, 60% 25+, 35% 30+, 20% 35+
7k4 - 95% 20+, 85% 25+, 60% 30+, 40% 35+
5k5 - 90% 20+, 70% 25+, 45% 30+, 25% 35+
6k5 - 95% 20+, 85% 25+, 65% 30+, 45% 35+

Common benchmark NPCs

Generic humanoids: commoner, guard, soldier

Prole: size 4, Level 0, stats 2s, initiative +4, common lore & JOB SKILL 3k2, perception 1k1
hp 4, resilience 3, ap 0, def 14, dodge 2k2, speed 4/24, mdef 15, resolve 4, devotion 6
brawl 1k1 @ 2k1 I pen0 +fatigue, gear: clothing, pocket change, chrono or cheap comm or job tool

Guard/Law: size 4, level 1, CON&WIS 3, else 2, init +2, perception 4k3, brawl 2k1, shoot 3k2, common
lore & politic & scrutiny 3k2, first aid 4k3, 50/50 command or persuade 3k2
hp 6, resil 4, ap 5 chest (armor vest), def 17, dodge 2k2, speed 4/24, mdef 15, resolve 4, dev 6
brawl 2k1 @ grapple 6k2 v sz+str, hand cannon 3k2 @ 3k2 I p3 35m s/- 6a 2f
K.O spray: dodge tn 15, 4m*2m cone, con 15 inhale vs +fatigue, 2 ammo, 2 full reload
gear: armor vest, comm-bead, spray reload, hand can & 2 clips, handcuffs, badge, donut, torch

Soldier: size 4, level 2, phy 3, else 2, init +5, athletic & acrobat 4k3, weapon & shoot 4k2, scrutiny & intimidate & perception 3k2, 50% drive 4k3, 50/50 command or craft 3k2
hp 7, resil 5, ap 5 (FLAK body & head), def 17, dodge 4k3, speed 6/36, mdef 15, resolve 4, dev 6
knife 4k2 @ 4k2 R p0 throw 5m @ 2k2, lasgun 4k2/6k3 @ 3k2 E p0 60m s/3 60a 1f reliable
gear: flak vest & helmet, 2 knife, lasgun & 2 clip, 2 smoke grenades(2k2 @ blast[5] 9m), comm-bead
chrono, torch, collapsible shovel, uniform, mission gear (rebreather - multitool - maps - MREs)

Combat Servitor: kill-bot death machine

size 6, level 2, str con 5, dex will 3, wis 2, else n/a, init +3,
fight 5k3, perception 4k1, +MINDLESS +FEARLESS +pre-loaded IFF software & datajack back of head
hp 16, resil 4, ap 10 all(machine), def 13, dodge 2k2, speed 3/18 no-swim crawler
light vehicular multilas (heavy): 5k3/7k4 @ 3k2 E p0 s/8 60m 80a +reliable +recharge 1 shot/min, claw: 5k3 @ 6k2 R p0 +snare
immune fatigue toxic disease breath eat environment bleed mental biology (not stun immune)
SPECIAL: crawls over impassible terrain, gun in gizzards hit loc, 2 claws & 2 arms

Cocaine Wizard Journeyman: is high

level 2, sz 4, cha int wis will 3, else 2, init+4, arcana & academic 6k3, deceive & common & forbid 4k3, charm 3k2, scrutiny & ballistic & brawl 4k2, TESTED, perf. memory, foresight(10m=+1int)
backing 2(CW guild), wealth 2, mentor 3(coke wiz L3), ally 2(wiz L2), contact 1(dealer)
hp 5, resil 4, ap 5 all(mageAC), def 19, dodge 2k2, speed 4/24, mdef 15, resolve 5, devotion 6
autopistol: FAB 4k3 @ 2k2 I p0 30m -/6 12a 1f, slap fight: 2k2 @ 2k1 I p0 +fatigue
gear: implement(rod staff wand orb), charm, magic theory book, chrono, nice clothes, autopistol & 2 clips, Cocaine Wizard Guild Official Member Card & Discount Coupon, 10g of coke, serious pocket money
Abj 2: 1% warp
shield : 10 Re S,self : parry d10 => 1=+7, 2-3=+10, 4-7=+12, 10=+15
mage armor : 15 Hf S,touch, 24h : d10 => 1-2=fail, 3-6= ap 3, 7-9=ap 4, 10=ap 5
Evo 1: 5% warp, ignores 2 points of Aura for damage
magic missile : 15 Hf S,attack,30m,auto-hit : 2k1+1 E dmg d10 => 1-2=fail 3-7=1x & 8-10=2x

spelljammer:

Type: Thresher (Frigate), Class: Destroyer, Price: Holdings 3
Shields: Standard Mk III (125 points & 20 regeneration)
Hull Points: 60, Crew: 16, Crew Quality: 3, Fore Guns: 3, Aft Guns: 2
Initiative: +15, Speed: 10 VU (60,000 km per turn), Static Defense: 14, Maneuver: +5, Acceleration: +10, Sensors: +5
Ship Size: 57 = about 325 m. Crew Number: about 536 people

Weapons:
3x fore Torpedo Launcher
2x aft Light Positron Array (fires as a single weapon), Range 16 (96,000 km), Arc normal (aft and sides), Accuracy +0, Damage 6k4, Shield Disruption 8, Critical Chart Roll +0
light array orbital bombardment: 600m radius, 6k4 damage, armor penetration 8

Torpedoes:
15x Quath Torpedo, Range 20 (120,000 km), Arc narrow (forwards only), Accuracy +0, Damage 4k4 (phases through shields to hit but crit is reduced to +0 if shields are up), Shield Disruption +0, Critical Chart Roll +8
quath orbital bombardment air burst: 1200m radius, 8k8 damage, armor penetration 16
quath orbital bombardment ground burst: 200m diameter crater (automatic vaporization of targets), 400m radius blast increment (damage halves at every additional increment), 10k10+15 damage, ignores armor

Consoles:
Arcana 1/1, Command 1/1, Engineering 0/1, Tactical 2/2, Universal 1/1, Total 2/6.
Teleportarium: Arcana, Boarding Actions at 5 VU (30,000 km) if there are no shields plus Star Trek transporter style beaming about
Partial Wing: Universal, Antigrav plus landing gear allows ship to land safely
Library Computer: Command, Gain +1k1 to all Lore tests and make them untrained when using it
Murder Servitors: Tactical, Gain +2k1 to repel boarders and put down mutinies (total 5k4 unless the ship's tactical officer has brawling/weaponry skill of 4+)
Cargo Bays: Universal (in tactical slot), Big open spaces to ship lots of stuff

alternate silly super focused optimized character: 2500 xp gnome daemonhost mercenary, tactical officer, chief security officer, walking gunshow, living fortress, filthy rich teleporting monster summoner who leads a bunch of mercenaries.

stats: int 2, wis 3, will 5(stubborn), str 2, dex 2, con 3, cha 2, fel 2, cmp 2
skills: ballistics 5(heavy metal), brawling 5(biting), academic lore 1, craft 1, medic 1, perception 3, command 3, intimidate 3, scrutiny 2
backgrounds: allies 3 (rogue trader starship captain, cocaine wizard, cleric of Lolth), wealth 5 (filthy rich), followers 3 (100 loyal mercenaries)

species: gnome, size 3, weapon proficiency basic, armor proficiency light
exaltation: daemonhost, bitey, resist damage, free magic school
resource: essence, will+cha+2x power stat, on use change to resonance, clear resonance with bite or will vs 10+2/resonance if fail still clear resonance & -1 hp & retry until success
power stat: 1= reduce damage by con+power stat unless from silver or magic
classes: mercenary, tactical officer, chief security officer, walking gunshow, living fortress

xp & stuff: 4x hinderances (law of the stars(principled), slowpoke, intolerance(politicians & lawyers), night terrors), +2 wealth, +1 ballistics, +2 brawling, +3 hp from mercenary & walking gunshow, +2k2 leading & resisting boarding attacks if serving as tactical officer on a ship, veteran (+will +ballistics +old enemy), language(), sound constitution (+1 hp), master of orbital bombardment, worf barrage (space combat buff), extracurricular study (crisis zone 1), worf effect (enemies shoot me first), match frequency (space combat buff), paranoia (+2 initiative), lend expertise (space combat buff), rock & roll (+5 to hit per consecutive round of full-auto shoots), improved weapon focus (+0k1 with machine guns), crushing bear (free auto-damage while grappling), death before defeat (spend a hero point to ignore the effect of a non-killing critical hit), +1 followers & +1 style point

gear: power armor, las cannon, machine gun, missile launcher, magic carpet*, jet pack*, fancy clothes, power fist, doc-bot 9000*, AT-ST*, pet T-Rex*, animal handler android (use the repair android stats with swapped skills), smart autonomous air-car*, auto-repair android*, 10 to 20 cargo/passenger vans* for the mercs and stuff.

* stats not included here but available on request

stat block: hp 20, resilience 6, armor 12-all & daemonhost -4 (not vs silver & spells), static defense 11, dodge 2k2 (use the porte spell instead), speed 4 meters & run 24 (or cast blink for 40), initiative 1d10+6, mental defense 15, resolve 7, devotion 6(Raven Queen), sanity 100, resource points 9 & regain by biting or 5k5 vs 10+2/spent if fail lose 1 hp and re-try, hero points 2

las cannon: 10k6 reroll 1s for 5k5 energy, armor penetration 10, ranges 150/600/900/1200, rof 1+recharge, ammo 5, 2 full turns reload
machine gun: 10k8 reroll 1s +5 per turn of consecutive full auto for 3k2 impact +1k0 per 5 over target's defense to max +10k0, armor penetration 5, ranges 60/240/360/480, rof 10+only full auto, ammo 100, full turn reload
missile launcher: 5k5 reroll 1s for 4k3 explosive & 6 meter blast radius, armor penetration 5, ranges 100/400/500/600, rof 1, ammo 1, 2 full turn reload, may also use anti-armor missiles for 5k4 X pen 12 but only 1m blast
bite: 10k5 reroll 1s for 3k2 rending, pen 0, +1 fatigue, recover resource points equal to wounds dealt
power fist: 10k5 for 5k3 impact, penetration 4, +1 fatigue, power field (if parries or parried by a weapon without power field or is an artifact then 4+ on 1d10 to other weapon breaks)

gun kata: crisis zone 1 & 1 extra style point
with heavy weapons, on a standard half action attack, may not repeat on consecutive rounds, +2k0 to attack rolls

magic: conjuration 5
call item (free action, conj+will vs 15, verbal, summon prepared item to hand)
web (half action, conj+will vs 15, verbal, somatic, material(sticky candy), attack, save dex+arcana, 25 meter range, 10 meter radius, immobilized 5 rounds, str or size vs casting roll to move half speed)
porte (half action OR reaction, conj+will vs 20, somatic, 5 hour duration, 3 meter portal on a flat surface within 100 meters, needs two castings to have an exit, con only have two portals at one time, portals must be immobile relative to each other, like a portal-gun)
greater servant (full action, conj+will vs 30, material(candle), 5 minute duration, somatic, summon thing with 4 all stats and 4 in 4 skills adjacent you, does what you tell it)
gate (full action OR 1 hour, conj+will vs 35, somatic, 5 hour duration, full action is as porte but both portals at once and minimum duration even if they would pop is the end of your next turn, hour long cast uses a doorway or arch or corridor and places the other end anywhere except across crystal sphere boundaries & planar boundaries & teleport shielded locations plus the physical anchor can be moved after casting)

casting: do these two
fettered casting = 98% 15+, 85% 20+, 70% 30+, 29% 35+, never any warps
full power dropping 10s = 97.7% 25+, 80% 30+, 45% 35+, 0.014% chance of warps at +10
casting: don't do these
full power 10k5 = 95.8% 30+, 85% 35+, 65% chance of warps (60% +10, 30% +20, 9% +30, 1% +40)
pushed casting (10k7) = 96.7% 35+ & average of +70 on the warp tables
pushed casting dropping 10s = 95% 30+, 80% 35+, 1.3% chance of +50 warps & 98.7% chance of +40 warps

warpy crap(do not add too 100% because of multiple effects at a time and chances for doubles & triples):
+10 warps: 78% safe, 0.001% death, 0.007% demons, 6% gain insanity, 13% save vs insanity, 4% take damage, 2% fatigue, 1% tech scorn, 6% trigger enemy hinderance, 3% stunned, 1% roll on the mental trauma table, 0.001% warp vortex % demonic possession & gouging out your eyeballs
+40 warps: 43% safe, 1.5% death, 4% demons, 10% gain insanity points, 40% save vs insanity, 7% take damage, 5% fatigue, 1% knocked out, 6% triggers enemy hinderance, 6% stuns, 1% warp vortex, 2% roll on the mental trauma table, 1% mutation, 2% falling damage, 0.5% demonic possession, 0.2% gouge out your eyeballs.
+70 warps: 13% safe, 20% death, 29% demons, 15% automatic insanity, 58% save vs insanity, 4% take damage, 5% fatigue, 3% tech scorn, 2% knocked out, 6% trigger enemy hinderance, 18% warp vortex, 2% falling damage, 0.2% demonic possession, 0.1% gouge out your eyeballs

Hilarity: There's no size limits on the gate spell and it's literally like a portal-gun portal, line of sight & effect go right through. You can throw a huge one up on hanger door and pass jumbo jets though. You can use a tiny fairy house tchotchke and summon monsters anywhere by sticking your finger through.

This is the most impregnable system i have ever seen. Looking forward to see what happens

Skills:
Secret Agent 4 - Run. Jump. Shoot. Brawl. Drive. Pilot. Sabotage. Lie. Look good in a suit.
"The name's Bond. James Bond." 2 - Catchphrase for making an impactful first impression, often for seduction or intimidation.
Cool 2 - This is gives a penalty to anyone who tries to directly mess with Bond.

Affliction: Gadgets - It's a law of the universe that James Bond happens to have just the right gadget for whatever insurmountable problem he's faced with.
Bond: "I am driven to become romantically entangled with dangerous women." - Bond gets a boost to his seduction when there is competition or a good reason why they shouldn't be together. When this tendency gets him in trouble, he gets a boost of resources to spend on doing things.

Bonus Perks:
Power Up: Secret Agent - 2x per scenario Bond can treat his Secret Agent skill as a level 2 Superior Skill, letting him push it to superhuman levels.
Chi-Boost - 1x day Bond cand spend an MP to get a +2 tool bonus to a skill he has at least 2 points in.
Extra Tough Health level.

Will: 8
Health: 2 Normal, 3 Tough

Ah a fellow rules light systems guy. Curious how james bond chuubo edition will compete with my trivia ninja risus edition.

Peat

2023-03-23, 02:14 AM

NichG

2023-03-23, 02:33 AM

Sounds interesting. If I get time I'll run up some characters for Exalted and Scion. Maybe Shadowrun, WFRP, SoIaF too.

Just as a benchmark - we'd be assuming level 9 would take around 35 sessions to get to, right? That sounds about right based on googling. Just want to get a rough idea for how much XP these bad boys would have.

You could do it like that, but the idea is to have a character that has matured fully into their schtick and is starting to need to advance horizontally.

animorte

2023-03-23, 03:28 AM

2 things. 1 i really find the unicorn and necrofist funny. 2 risus has 3 task resolution systems actually. Skill checks for unopposed actions like climbing a mountain or dodging a crossbow trap. A single opposed roll for stuff like pick pocketing or being the 1st to grab the mystic artifact of doom. A the one you described for stuff like a court battle, a wizard duel, or a messy divorce.
Just a few weeks ago I started my very first Risus game on this very forum, so I appreciate your input on the matter! Still new, but it's neat.Thanks for reading my entries (so far).

Ah a fellow rules light systems guy. Curious how james bond chuubo edition will compete with my trivia ninja risus edition.
I have also recently been seeking out rules light systems (clearly) so this will be fun.

You could do it like that, but the idea is to have a character that has matured fully into their schtick and is starting to need to advance horizontally.
I was thinking, for anything that doesn't have the 1-20 leveling, I plan to take "max - 1" and run with that.

Telok

2023-03-23, 03:51 AM

You could do it like that, but the idea is to have a character that has matured fully into their schtick and is starting to need to advance horizontally.

There's a thing where more point-buy like systems can go really super focused into one thing. Like the characters I put up, one is very spread out (that's the character concept anyways) and the other is super focused on maxxing out just a couple tricks (fighting & one school of magic) but they both have the same amount of XP. The "matured fully into their schtick" is really... subjective? I guess?

This is the most impregnable system i have ever seen. Looking forward to see what happens

It's really no more difficult than D&D (AD&D with a bunch of options turned on, 3e, 4e, 5e with all books in play). It looks whonky because I over describe a bit and this way I don't have to refer back to any documents, I can just scan back to my posts. Also, in my rewrite and for my running the game I've built an assortment of simulators, so when I want to do something like convert the tarrasque into DtD40k7e numbers I can easily run tests to set it at the correct level of danger. It's like having a CR calculation that actually works.

Any hoo, the Paranoia and Traveller characters.

Paranoid Bob from Paranoia. A simple, fast, easy d20 roll under the number system. Instead of "9th level" we'll say ol' Bob here has survived five missions.
The only complicated thing is weapon damage. There's a list "Ok, Snafued, Wounded, Maimed, Down, Killed, Vaporized", and something like a grenade says W3K. That means grenade damage starts at "W"ounded, caps at "K"illed and every 3 points of your attack roll is under your skill the damage goes up a level. Thus a PC with Throw-12 rolls a 9, 3 under 12, and kicks the damage on the target up to Maimed. Armor reduces damage by it's rating, if that target was wearing kevlar of armor 2 that Maimed would drop to Snafued. Congratulations, you now know 90% of what you need to play Paranoia.

Name, Clearance, Sector, Clone: Bob-O-DOOMED-4
Gender: uncertain
Service: Housing Personnel Development & Mind Control
Tics: giggles in combat, loves hand grenades, occasionally argues with imaginary friend (and loses every time)
Mandatory Bonus Duty:

Management -- 4
- bootlicking - 8
- chutzpah
- con games - 1
- hygiene
- interrogation
- intimidation
- moxie
- oratory
- deflect blame - 10

Stealth -- 7
- concealment
- disguise - 11
- scam radar
- security
- shadowing
- sleight of hand
- sneaking - 1
- surveillance
- find hiding spot - 13

Violence -- 8
- agility - 12
- energy weapons - 12
- demolition - 12
- field weapons
- fine manipulation - 12
- hand weapons
- projectile weapons
- throwing - 1
- unarmed combat(O5K)
- vehicle combat - 12
- barricade - 14

Hardware -- 4
- robot engineering
- chemistry
- electronics
- habitat engineering
- mechanics - 8
- nuclear engineer - 1
- vehicle mechanics
- weapon & armor maintenance
- technobabble - 10

Software -- 9
- bot & AI programming
- c-bay - 1
- data analysis - 13
- data search
- financial - 13
- hacking - 13
- computer ops
- vehicle programming
- cause memory overflow - 15

Wetware -- 6
- bioscience
- bioweapons
- cloning - 10
- medical
- outdoors - 1
- pharmacy - 10
- psychology
- suggestion
- improvise prosthetic part - 12

Mutation: Matter eater (can safely eat & digest anything)
Power Level: 17 (unknown to player)
Registration: unregistered
Secret Society: PURGE (kill the Computer, kill all computers, free intelligent beings, terrorism & sabotage)
Secret Society Rank: 3
Alpha Complex Access: 3 ('player' doesn't know this number)

Secret skills
- uncommon: demolition - 12
- unlikely: gloating - 16
- unhealthy: twitch-talk - 10
- propaganda: PURGE - 6

Equipment
- personal: ME card, red jumpsuit, red baseball cap, red running shoes, xantrick (wakey) red pill, red grenade(W3K 20m)
- assigned: laser pistol body(W3K 60m), red reflec armor overalls(E1 only lasers <=red), Series 1300 Personal Digital Companion
- treasonous: biohazard sign sticker, rolactin (very very happy) blue pill, kevlar(I2 & under reflec)

Credits, Perversity, Treason: $75, 25, 1

Traveling Bob from classic Traveller. A simple fast easy 2d6+skill (or -2 if you lack the skill) to roll over a target number system. The insistence on hexadecimal notation is, honestly, a bit silly and over the top. It's also optional. Instead of "9th level" we'll age him 9 years.

Scientist -- looking at the skills I'm thinking xeno-archaeologist with a focus on mechanical engineering and precursor machines.
755AC9 (str 5, dex 4, end 4, int 10, edu 12, soc 9)
Age 46 -> 55
7 terms
Cr 13,000

Skills: Carbine-3, Computer-1, Electronics-1, Jack-o-T-1, Air/Raft-1, Mechanical-4, Survival-3
Learning: medical-1, xeno-medicine-1 (seriously, 4 years to learn them at 1 then another 4 to keep them)
Current: self improvement (dex & end get +1s in another 3 years, made the throw to keep with it)

Benefits: 8,000/yr Retirement Pay, Carbine, Lab Ship

Ship:

Basic Ship Characteristics
Tonnage/Hull 400 tons. The ship is unstreamlined.
The lab ship requires a crew of five: pilot, navigator, medic, and two engineers. The pilot also operates the pinnace. Gunners may be added to the crew if the ship is armed. Additional crew are carried to execute the research functions.
It has jump drive-D, maneuver drive-C, and power plant-F, giving the ship a performance of Jump-2 and 1-G acceleration. There is fuel tankage for 90 tons, sufficient to supply the power plant and one Jump-2.
One ship computer Model/2 with software package is installed adjacent to the bridge.
2 hardpoints (4 possible). On the forward face of the pods are hardpoints for the turret weaponry if called for.
No turrets or weaponry are installed, but two tons of space have been reserved for later installation of fire control equipment for the ship's two hardpoints.
The ship carries one 40-ton pinnace and two air/rafts. Two air/rafts are carried in compartments on the ring hull. They provide access to world surfaces, both for specimen gathering and for routine errands. The 40-ton pinnace is carried at the end of a central spoke, making mating easy even if the ring is rotating.
Refueling: Since the lab ship is unstreamlined, and cannot skim fuel itself, this task falls to the 40-ton pinnace. It is assigned the routine of skimming fuel from a gas giant and ferrying it to the ship. On worlds with refined fuel available, the pinnace ferries the fuel from the starport to the lab ship.
There are twenty staterooms and no low berths. Cargo capacity is 23 tons. An additional 85 tons are available within the ship for use as lab space.
The ship costs MCr159. It takes 16 months to construct.

Let's say we're modestly successful and can spend 4.5 years of retirement pay on a robot helper.
36,000 cr

pilot-4, navigator-4, ship's boat-4, gravitics-4 [$7200 space-16/16/16/8] 72-54=18
power interface, program interface, brain interface, video record & display, basic sensor package, voder [$6300 power-17 kg-15]
low data logic (no learning, requires explicit commands), full natural language command [cpu-5 storage-15 $8000 int+2]
linear cpu-5, standard storage-31(can only load 16 space of programs at a time) [liters-16.5 $9750 kg-3.6 power-1]
urp-4 fuel cell [power+50 liters-60 kg-95 $1400 fuel-liter/hour-0.3d fuel-kg/liter-0.07]
2x light arms 2x legs [20% chassis volume, power-4, liters-2, kg-12, $1070 dex+4 str+10]
transmission-50 [power-25 liters-25 kg-50 $750, dex=4]
chassis-6, large adult torso size, box, armor as mesh [150 liters, 15 kg, $1500]
spotlight [power-1 kg-1 $50]
500km radio [power-1.5 kg-1 $500]
subtotal: $35970, power-0.5, kg-194, liters-47
fuel space 100 hours [liters-30, kg-7.5]
free space 16 liters -> let's put a bunch of little drawers and cabinets in it

total: $35970, 201.5 kg, large adult torso size, box, armor as mesh, 2 arms, 2 legs, int 2, str 17, dex 8, edu 3, runs 100 hours on a fuel cell, has 16 liters of storage compartments. Two visual sensors, two audio sensors, a speaker for talking, bi-directional power cords, data/ethernet jacks, video camera & display screen, spotlight, and 500 km range radio. Skills are pilot-4, navigator-4, ship's boat-4, gravitics-4.
Well it's pretty dumb and only runs one skill at a time, but it's good at doing what it's told and accepts natural language commands (although you do have to be pretty specific). Good for heavy lifting too. Plus we can buy more programs for it to use since it has to swap them out anyways. I suppose we could have gone for better CPUs and intelligence and financed it, but a $75k bot mortgages at $4500 a year for 20 years and this is just simpler.

And from now on I'm referring to the DtD40k7e characters as Diplomat Bob and Gun Whore Bob...

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-23, 04:09 AM

There's a thing where more point-buy like systems can go really super focused into one thing. Like the characters I put up, one is very spread out (that's the character concept anyways) and the other is super focused on maxxing out just a couple tricks (fighting & one school of magic) but they both have the same amount of XP. The "matured fully into their schtick" is really... subjective? I guess?

It's really no more difficult than D&D (AD&D with a bunch of options turned on, 3e, 4e, 5e with all books in play). It looks whonky because I over describe a bit and this way I don't have to refer back to any documents, I can just scan back to my posts. Also, in my rewrite and for my running the game I've built an assortment of simulators, so when I want to do something like convert the tarrasque into DtD40k7e numbers I can easily run tests to set it at the correct level of danger. It's like having a CR calculation that actually works.

Any hoo, the Paranoia and Traveller characters.

Paranoid Bob from Paranoia. A simple, fast, easy d20 roll under the number system. Instead of "9th level" we'll say ol' Bob here has survived five missions.
The only complicated thing is weapon damage. There's a list "Ok, Snafued, Wounded, Maimed, Down, Killed, Vaporized", and something like a grenade says W3K. That means grenade damage starts at "W"ounded, caps at "K"illed and every 3 points of your attack roll is under your skill the damage goes up a level. Thus a PC with Throw-12 rolls a 9, 3 under 12, and kicks the damage on the target up to Maimed. Armor reduces damage by it's rating, if that target was wearing kevlar of armor 2 that Maimed would drop to Snafued. Congratulations, you now know 90% of what you need to play Paranoia.

Name, Clearance, Sector, Clone: Bob-O-DOOMED-4
Gender: uncertain
Service: Housing Personnel Development & Mind Control
Tics: giggles in combat, loves hand grenades, occasionally argues with imaginary friend (and loses every time)
Mandatory Bonus Duty:

Management -- 4
- bootlicking - 8
- chutzpah
- con games - 1
- hygiene
- interrogation
- intimidation
- moxie
- oratory
- deflect blame - 10

Stealth -- 7
- concealment
- disguise - 11
- scam radar
- security
- shadowing
- sleight of hand
- sneaking - 1
- surveillance
- find hiding spot - 13

Violence -- 8
- agility - 12
- energy weapons - 12
- demolition - 12
- field weapons
- fine manipulation - 12
- hand weapons
- projectile weapons
- throwing - 1
- unarmed combat(O5K)
- vehicle combat - 12
- barricade - 14

Hardware -- 4
- robot engineering
- chemistry
- electronics
- habitat engineering
- mechanics - 8
- nuclear engineer - 1
- vehicle mechanics
- weapon & armor maintenance
- technobabble - 10

Software -- 9
- bot & AI programming
- c-bay - 1
- data analysis - 13
- data search
- financial - 13
- hacking - 13
- computer ops
- vehicle programming
- cause memory overflow - 15

Wetware -- 6
- bioscience
- bioweapons
- cloning - 10
- medical
- outdoors - 1
- pharmacy - 10
- psychology
- suggestion
- improvise prosthetic part - 12

Mutation: Matter eater (can safely eat & digest anything)
Power Level: 17 (unknown to player)
Registration: unregistered
Secret Society: PURGE (kill the Computer, kill all computers, free intelligent beings, terrorism & sabotage)
Secret Society Rank: 3
Alpha Complex Access: 3 ('player' doesn't know this number)

Secret skills
- uncommon: demolition - 12
- unlikely: gloating - 16
- unhealthy: twitch-talk - 10
- propaganda: PURGE - 6

Equipment
- personal: ME card, red jumpsuit, red baseball cap, red running shoes, xantrick (wakey) red pill, red grenade(W3K 20m)
- assigned: laser pistol body(W3K 60m), red reflec armor overalls(E1 only lasers <=red), Series 1300 Personal Digital Companion
- treasonous: biohazard sign sticker, rolactin (very very happy) blue pill, kevlar(I2 & under reflec)

Credits, Perversity, Treason: $75, 25, 1

Traveling Bob from classic Traveller. A simple fast easy 2d6+skill (or -2 if you lack the skill) to roll over a target number system. The insistence on hexadecimal notation is, honestly, a bit silly and over the top. It's also optional. Instead of "9th level" we'll age him 9 years.

Scientist -- looking at the skills I'm thinking xeno-archaeologist with a focus on mechanical engineering and precursor machines.
755AC9 (str 5, dex 4, end 4, int 10, edu 12, soc 9)
Age 46 -> 55
7 terms
Cr 13,000

Skills: Carbine-3, Computer-1, Electronics-1, Jack-o-T-1, Air/Raft-1, Mechanical-4, Survival-3
Learning: medical-1, xeno-medicine-1 (seriously, 4 years to learn them at 1 then another 4 to keep them)
Current: self improvement (dex & end get +1s in another 3 years, made the throw to keep with it)

Benefits: 8,000/yr Retirement Pay, Carbine, Lab Ship

Ship:

Basic Ship Characteristics
Tonnage/Hull 400 tons. The ship is unstreamlined.
The lab ship requires a crew of five: pilot, navigator, medic, and two engineers. The pilot also operates the pinnace. Gunners may be added to the crew if the ship is armed. Additional crew are carried to execute the research functions.
It has jump drive-D, maneuver drive-C, and power plant-F, giving the ship a performance of Jump-2 and 1-G acceleration. There is fuel tankage for 90 tons, sufficient to supply the power plant and one Jump-2.
One ship computer Model/2 with software package is installed adjacent to the bridge.
2 hardpoints (4 possible). On the forward face of the pods are hardpoints for the turret weaponry if called for.
No turrets or weaponry are installed, but two tons of space have been reserved for later installation of fire control equipment for the ship's two hardpoints.
The ship carries one 40-ton pinnace and two air/rafts. Two air/rafts are carried in compartments on the ring hull. They provide access to world surfaces, both for specimen gathering and for routine errands. The 40-ton pinnace is carried at the end of a central spoke, making mating easy even if the ring is rotating.
Refueling: Since the lab ship is unstreamlined, and cannot skim fuel itself, this task falls to the 40-ton pinnace. It is assigned the routine of skimming fuel from a gas giant and ferrying it to the ship. On worlds with refined fuel available, the pinnace ferries the fuel from the starport to the lab ship.
There are twenty staterooms and no low berths. Cargo capacity is 23 tons. An additional 85 tons are available within the ship for use as lab space.
The ship costs MCr159. It takes 16 months to construct.

Let's say we're modestly successful and can spend 4.5 years of retirement pay on a robot helper.
36,000 cr

pilot-4, navigator-4, ship's boat-4, gravitics-4 [$7200 space-16/16/16/8] 72-54=18
power interface, program interface, brain interface, video record & display, basic sensor package, voder [$6300 power-17 kg-15]
low data logic (no learning, requires explicit commands), full natural language command [cpu-5 storage-15 $8000 int+2]
linear cpu-5, standard storage-31(can only load 16 space of programs at a time) [liters-16.5 $9750 kg-3.6 power-1]
urp-4 fuel cell [power+50 liters-60 kg-95 $1400 fuel-liter/hour-0.3d fuel-kg/liter-0.07]
2x light arms 2x legs [20% chassis volume, power-4, liters-2, kg-12, $1070 dex+4 str+10]
transmission-50 [power-25 liters-25 kg-50 $750, dex=4]
chassis-6, large adult torso size, box, armor as mesh [150 liters, 15 kg, $1500]
spotlight [power-1 kg-1 $50]
500km radio [power-1.5 kg-1 $500]
subtotal: $35970, power-0.5, kg-194, liters-47
fuel space 100 hours [liters-30, kg-7.5]
free space 16 liters -> let's put a bunch of little drawers and cabinets in it

total: $35970, 201.5 kg, large adult torso size, box, armor as mesh, 2 arms, 2 legs, int 2, str 17, dex 8, edu 3, runs 100 hours on a fuel cell, has 16 liters of storage compartments. Two visual sensors, two audio sensors, a speaker for talking, bi-directional power cords, data/ethernet jacks, video camera & display screen, spotlight, and 500 km range radio. Skills are pilot-4, navigator-4, ship's boat-4, gravitics-4.
Well it's pretty dumb and only runs one skill at a time, but it's good at doing what it's told and accepts natural language commands (although you do have to be pretty specific). Good for heavy lifting too. Plus we can buy more programs for it to use since it has to swap them out anyways. I suppose we could have gone for better CPUs and intelligence and financed it, but a $75k bot mortgages at $4500 a year for 20 years and this is just simpler.

And from now on I'm referring to the DtD40k7e characters as Diplomat Bob and Gun Whore Bob...

I dub thee bob's armada.

Quertus

2023-03-23, 07:20 AM

You could do it like that, but the idea is to have a character that has matured fully into their schtick and is starting to need to advance horizontally.

Yeah, that's... On the one hand, it's hard to call a 9th level 3e character "fully matured" compared to a Wizard 20+. OTOH, oldschool D&D, 9th level is where they start being forced into horizontal advancement (why does that sound dirty?).

Hopefully, some other Playgrounders will play some of the same systems (obviously especially D&D) that I've made characters for, to give some range to the responses. And also some range to what power level they think is appropriate for this challenge, as mine might be kinda random.

Some cool characters man. I'm especially excited to see how the vulcan, mtg, and m&m mutant can do. Depending on what challenges the "gm" gives us i can totally see any of these being useful.

Those are certainly the 3 most likely to be able to solve the arbitrary challenges (the other M&M character being about equally likely, actually). The challenge of the thread, however, is to find out just how fun it is for each of them to succeed (or fail). Or, well, I suppose, how much of what kind of fun it is.

solidork

2023-03-23, 08:29 AM

Ah a fellow rules light systems guy. Curious how james bond chuubo edition will compete with my trivia ninja risus edition.

I probably could have made him "better" but where's the fun in that? I'm mostly curious to see how far his Gadgets will take him. Maybe I'll write up a Miraculous character, which will put the lie to "rules light" pretty quickly. Mortals are simple though!

Also not really a character, just "can I McGyver a solution out of Magic cards?" I suspect that this not-a-character will give the strongest "Magical MacGyver" feel of any of my submissions.

This is a really fun idea, and I'm not just saying that because I'd be obnoxiously good at it. Finally an adolescence compulsively memorizing Magic cards pays off! It'd be kind of interesting to give yourself a mana limit, so you can still have a "build". Or give yourself a score based on how much mana you used?

Telok

2023-03-23, 11:41 AM

I dub thee bob's armada.

I picked it up from the Reduced Shakespeare Company. If you don't want to remember a name, they're Bob.

Also helps a bit in GMing. If I say an NPC's name is anything but Bob then they're important in some way, not just an extra from central casting.

Quertus

2023-03-23, 12:31 PM

This is a really fun idea, and I'm not just saying that because I'd be obnoxiously good at it. Finally an adolescence compulsively memorizing Magic cards pays off! It'd be kind of interesting to give yourself a mana limit, so you can still have a "build". Or give yourself a score based on how much mana you used?

Yeah, putting all that memorized knowledge to use in other contexts does feel nice, eh? :smallbiggrin: Ah, feel free to one-up me after I post my answers for this lack of a build. I suspect I was actually going to score myself on a) number of cards required; b) speed/effectiveness; c) real-world card cost.

So, how much of their deck space did they need to dedicate to solving this problem, how quickly and thoroughly did they solve this problem, and how much would I have to spend to pick up these cards today?

For that last one, I was secretly planning to try to limit myself to "cards I could have picked up for a dollar", with a clear preference for "card I could have picked up for a nickle". But... there's a lot of really expensive cards I used to be able to get quite cheap, so that's not as pauper a card list as it sounds.

Feel free to use whatever limits you choose - your mana limit sounds much more... hmmm... "conventionally accessible", and, by giving yourself different constraints, you'll produce different answers than I do. Which might make reading our different responses more fun for everyone else?

Or, heck, just enter your "mana limit mage" as its own entry, and then one-up my "pauper mage" after I post my answer! :smallwink:

animorte

2023-03-23, 12:42 PM

I picked it up from the Reduced Shakespeare Company. If you don't want to remember a name, they're Bob.
Ah, you too? Love it

Peat

2023-03-23, 01:22 PM

NichG

2023-03-23, 01:35 PM

Right, this.

Although I have to say I simply didn't get that. Level 9 D&D characters still have 11 more levels of their schtick to go in my book.

I mean, by Lv9 you've usually had a chance to enter whatever PrC you're most interested in, you can fairly easily have a +15 to +20 modifier in the skills you're most interested in, etc. You certainly haven't finished the game by then, and of course someone could come up with a build that only comes online and is playable by Lv23 or something, but at least for the kinds of scenarios I'll be posting I would say that by Lv9 in 3.5ed D&D there are plenty of interesting tools available to interact with them. You'd surely get a few more notable tricks going all the way to Lv20, and if someone wants to run a higher level character through the scenarios its not like that's a problem, but Lv9 feels about right for these things being addressable but maybe requiring a bit of head scratching even for the T1 characters as to how exactly they want to go about it. That said, I wouldn't say these scenarios would all become entirely trivial for a Lv20 party either, so if someone did want to bring in an epic wizard or a deity or whatever I guess go for it! It'll definitely be more on the easy mode side, especially if you're generous about self-DMing Wishes and Planar Bindings and such.

Telok

2023-03-23, 03:00 PM

I mean, by Lv9 you've usually had a chance to enter whatever PrC you're most interested in, you can fairly easily have a +15 to +20 modifier in the skills you're most interested in, etc.

Oh yeah, totally fair. I think we all pretty well know what it's trying for. But there's just the diff between games that a healer/cleric type gains 1xp and hits level 8 suddenly getting doubling their 4th levels spells a day (from among 100+), a stat boost, and a new super power, versus games where you buy up skills or abilities that might be super focused or really spread out. It'd be like a 9th level D&D character with 2nd level hp, saves, skills, but able to cast Shapechange, Gate, and Contact Other Plane.

Like for DtD40k7e, there's a theory op build to get to 5th (max in that game) level for 1300xp after chargen finishes. But that character mostly just has good animal handling skill, good unarmed to-hit rolls, a mostly cosmetic druid-like wildshape (looks + movement mode + swap two physical stats), and a decent (not impressive on PC levels but ok-to-good on NPC levels) combat animal pet. They don't really have anything that makes them what you'd think of as a "high level" character. The "full power 20th level" character in that game is closer to 7000xp post chargen.

I'm pretty sure a good Gurps optimizer could probably get a classic wish granting genie in a lamp for surprisingly low points.

NichG

2023-03-23, 05:22 PM

Oh yeah, totally fair. I think we all pretty well know what it's trying for. But there's just the diff between games that a healer/cleric type gains 1xp and hits level 8 suddenly getting doubling their 4th levels spells a day (from among 100+), a stat boost, and a new super power, versus games where you buy up skills or abilities that might be super focused or really spread out. It'd be like a 9th level D&D character with 2nd level hp, saves, skills, but able to cast Shapechange, Gate, and Contact Other Plane.

Like for DtD40k7e, there's a theory op build to get to 5th (max in that game) level for 1300xp after chargen finishes. But that character mostly just has good animal handling skill, good unarmed to-hit rolls, a mostly cosmetic druid-like wildshape (looks + movement mode + swap two physical stats), and a decent (not impressive on PC levels but ok-to-good on NPC levels) combat animal pet. They don't really have anything that makes them what you'd think of as a "high level" character. The "full power 20th level" character in that game is closer to 7000xp post chargen.

I'm pretty sure a good Gurps optimizer could probably get a classic wish granting genie in a lamp for surprisingly low points.

Yeah for GURPS I just picked a random number since as I said, I have no GURPS experience. I do think its important that the character (for GURPS and probably other point buy systems) have some unspent XP sitting around for each scenario though, since not all systems are like D&D where you could just go buy a scroll and get a new spell if you need to.

Quertus

2023-03-23, 07:16 PM

I do think its important that the character (for GURPS and probably other point buy systems) have some unspent XP sitting around for each scenario though, since not all systems are like D&D where you could just go buy a scroll and get a new spell if you need to.

... But... different systems will have different rules (or no rules at all) for just how long it takes to spend that XP. So, can I learn to make a rocket or a quiche from scratch in a week? Depends on the system. Can I purchase a rocket or a quiche in a week? Depends on the system. So I think that the amount of time you have baked into these challenges will allow the systems to answer, "can we respond with what we have in that timeframe?". In other words, the question you are asking is more complex than the question I think that you are asking. The answers you will get (from me, at least) are of the form, "Given a GM creating scenarios in complete ignorance of the underlying system, what will the viable responses from the PCs (with players also fairly ignorant of the system, at least when compared to a Playground Determinator if not entirely so) look like?"

Also, I'm being a ****, and not leaving my characters with a whole lot of GP/XP/whatever to spend compared to what I expect others using the same system to do in this com...parison. Yes, comparison. That's totally the word I initially said. :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, I'm generally leaving myself rather short on "liquid assets" because, well, IME that's just the way most of these systems are played at an actual table. Unless the scenario is something like, "you know you need to deal with the Demon King's flying pyramid fortress guarded by dragons... next year, in the meantime you'll be gaining 15 levels", PCs rarely save up to afford to deal with massive unknown challenges. Others are welcome (and strongly encouraged) to make "better" characters in any of these systems. In fact, I think that this thread would be better if there were more overlap, more "characters per system" than "systems per participant". I just went a little overboard, because I was really curious.

That said, you can add "cheating time" to the list of ways I'm likely to state how I'm blatantly cheating in this thread. Sigh. Guess I should get some actual stats to some of those ideas soon, huh?

Also, ****, 2e characters can't really craft most items until 11th level. :smallfrown:

NichG

2023-03-23, 07:30 PM

... But... different systems will have different rules (or no rules at all) for just how long it takes to spend that XP. So, can I learn to make a rocket or a quiche from scratch in a week? Depends on the system. Can I purchase a rocket or a quiche in a week? Depends on the system. So I think that the amount of time you have baked into these challenges will allow the systems to answer, "can we respond with what we have in that timeframe?". In other words, the question you are asking is more complex than the question I think that you are asking. The answers you will get (from me, at least) are of the form, "Given a GM creating scenarios in complete ignorance of the underlying system, what will the viable responses from the PCs (with players also fairly ignorant of the system, at least when compared to a Playground Determinator if not entirely so) look like?"

This is a factor I did want to investigate though, because one of my thoughts about D&D vs GURPS on skimming through GURPS was that you can pivot much more quickly in D&D because things like spells don't require character build resources to acquire, whereas in GURPS learning any new spell would cost points and time. The scenarios range from 1 day to 1 year of time available.

For liquid assets, IIRC I did explicitly say you should have half a level's worth of XP available for doing stuff with that costs XP, and a few sessions worth of extra bonus points that don't carry between scenarios for the point-buy systems.

Telok

2023-03-23, 08:04 PM

...Also, ****, 2e characters can't really craft most items until 11th level. :smallfrown:

Yeah. For magic crafting in AD&D you want a cleric. It'll take more time but they don't risk losing 1-2 CON to make a +1 dagger. I always figured most of the lower/common magic arms & armors had a religious symbol fairly prominent but nobody reall cared because !magic!.

The poor schmucks I'm running I'll give them one buying spree ahead of time. I'll have to decide if they get general shopping and surprised by the scenario or if they see the scenario and then shop. If I can't decide, flip a coin. Probsble assume that Paranoid Bob came off a mission, roll on a handy random reward chart, maybe do a little IR-market shopping if Bob got a monetary reward. Traveling Bob, probably about the same, check rewards of published short adventures, maybe prorate on how successful they were at the last one.

DtD40k7e has abstract wealth and shopping rules, so it'll depend on the scenario if Diplo-Bob or Gun Whore Bob have time & access to big enough markets. But it has rules for sending underlings shopping for you too (just adds extra time if I recall). Not that they really need more stuff, but at least they have places to put it.

Quertus

2023-03-23, 11:53 PM

Yeah. For magic crafting in AD&D you want a cleric. It'll take more time but they don't risk losing 1-2 CON to make a +1 dagger. I always figured most of the lower/common magic arms & armors had a religious symbol fairly prominent but nobody reall cared because !magic!.

I "always" (by which I mean, "when my characters were able and knowledgeable and smart, so actually not all that often") used Magic Jar to have that Con be drained from some other body.

Quertus

2023-03-24, 12:46 PM

This is a factor I did want to investigate though, because one of my thoughts about D&D vs GURPS on skimming through GURPS was that you can pivot much more quickly in D&D because things like spells don't require character build resources to acquire, whereas in GURPS learning any new spell would cost points and time. The scenarios range from 1 day to 1 year of time available.

For liquid assets, IIRC I did explicitly say you should have half a level's worth of XP available for doing stuff with that costs XP, and a few sessions worth of extra bonus points that don't carry between scenarios for the point-buy systems.

- A Lv9 character of your choice from any D&D edition you like in a setting with magicmart access and standard WBL, with half a level worth of XP floating for any XP/component cost issues for each scenario.

Even ignoring that it matches the theme and purpose of this thread, I applaud you for the "half a level worth of XP" - really, all such threads should use this as the default, rather than always assuming "Just reached level X".

That said, do note how you didn't actually require the D&D PC to have any cash left over. So I'm mostly just leaving money for scrolls or potions, and really hoping someone more skilled at item and service book diving will save more money for clever economancy responses.

That said, for challenges where we've got a year, you can bet I'll be willing to cheat, and put "earn money" as an action. :smallwink:

- A 250 point GURPS character with say 10 floating points ready-to-spend in any given scenario (not cumulative) in a TL8-equivalent but fantasy-themed world

This sounds like an explicitly Fantasy challenge. I've been assuming "Federation (or other tech ship) discovers primitive fantasy world" or "character Isekai'd to fantasy world" were acceptable for this challenge; figured I should explicitly ask if that's in keeping with the spirit of the game. Sound fair?

That said, if I'm right about the fantasy setting, I haven't figured out what to do about my WoD Mage yet. :smallredface: Maybe I'll have to make a MtDA-type character instead.

- A character from another RPG of your choice, of around the same level of power (this isn't intended to be a contest or competition, so this is mostly here if you want to make a point or try the exercise with regards to how it feels)

It really would be a boon to the hobby if we could develop the concept of the "feel" of a game to the point of "8 kinds of fun".

The intent would be that these characters should be pretty versatile, but if you want to try a known non-versatile character build and still make it work that could be interesting too?

Yeah, I've been struggling with this. Some of my characters may be too versatile, others may not be versatile enough, to really show off how the system plays. Mostly, I'm hoping to make enough of a fool of myself that, if there's a second installment of this comparison, others will be more interested in showing how their system of choice really plays.

That said, if my character choice is too suboptimal, I may well cheat, and say something like, "the real game play here would be with an X, who would...", as that sounds like what this thread is after? Note this isn't "here's how you'd succeed at this challenge", so much as "here's the kind of character who might actually engage with this challenge, whereas my sample character doesn't."

For rolling off of lists, please only use it if you can reroll without serious consequence until you get the result you're looking for.

Ugh, that sounds important. But... some systems just don't work that way. 2e Wild Magic and WHF Mutations and Marvel FASERIP character creation and so on. I get that "Lol Random" doesn't give the same feel as "assume 75% as the threashold for success", but that's just the feel of some systems. Which is why having backup plans is important in some systems. And I think that's important to the general feel of the system, even if it isn't the specific general feel you were thinking about when you built this thread.

See also why I believe rolling stealth checks repeatedly for a Rogue is a good thing, whereas "Roll Stealth vs Castle" and "Roll Combat vs Troll" aren't interesting.

- Anything involving the possibility of combat I'll use either '(weaker)', '(equal)', '(stronger)', or '(overpowering)' to denote challenge - if you've built a combat-ready character you auto-win against (equal) and below in a straight fight and auto-lose against anything else. If you've built a more non-combat character you auto-win only against (weaker). If you can justify some sort of ambush/prep/situational advantage/weakpoint targeting/etc, go up one category. I'll leave it to the poster to evaluate for themselves whether their character is combat-ready in this way.

I suspect I'll handle things a little differently here, as (if it comes to combat) my characters have vastly different ranges... and, on rare occasion, the weakest might find something trivial that is impossible for the strongest. Feel free to comment if my responses seem out of line, and a different response would better suit the purpose of this thread.

The poor schmucks I'm running I'll give them one buying spree ahead of time. I'll have to decide if they get general shopping and surprised by the scenario or if they see the scenario and then shop. Not that they really need more stuff, but at least they have places to put it.

I expect NichG will give us enough details to know the answer to how "surprised" we are by circumstances.

That said, if I managed to roll up a character with terrible Wisdom / Wits / Intuition / whatever, I might well have them attempt a solution which wouldn't finish in time, "for realism". :smallbiggrin:

I'd suggest you're under-selling how much buying time the characters should have, but I must admit, I haven't looked at how much XP you spent, as I've been trying to flesh out my way-too-many entries some more. I don't think I'll be finished on time. :smallfrown:

NichG

2023-03-24, 01:16 PM

Even ignoring that it matches the theme and purpose of this thread, I applaud you for the "half a level worth of XP" - really, all such threads should use this as the default, rather than always assuming "Just reached level X".

That said, do note how you didn't actually require the D&D PC to have any cash left over. So I'm mostly just leaving money for scrolls or potions, and really hoping someone more skilled at item and service book diving will save more money for clever economancy responses.

That said, for challenges where we've got a year, you can bet I'll be willing to cheat, and put "earn money" as an action. :smallwink:

This is fair. So for things with a wealth-by-level/explicit wealth cycle, assume that you start each scenario with half of the additional wealth you'd expect to earn over that level for throwaway expenditures that won't carry over to the next scenario.

This sounds like an explicitly Fantasy challenge. I've been assuming "Federation (or other tech ship) discovers primitive fantasy world" or "character Isekai'd to fantasy world" were acceptable for this challenge; figured I should explicitly ask if that's in keeping with the spirit of the game. Sound fair?

The setting is going to be an explicitly fantasy one, but you can bring in whatever character. Just keep in mind that you'll have to be the one deciding how and if Federation tech and scientific understanding interacts with magic at all, for example.

With the exception of one scenario, even assuming 'my character's tech society exists somewhere else in the setting offscreen' for e.g. shopping is probably okay, though if it gets to the level of like 'I tell my superiors about the existence of this unguarded world and encourage them to come with a battlefleet to conquer it, then sit back and watch' I'm not sure you'll get all that much out of the exercise... So season to taste.

It really would be a boon to the hobby if we could develop the concept of the "feel" of a game to the point of "8 kinds of fun".

Agreed.

Yeah, I've been struggling with this. Some of my characters may be too versatile, others may not be versatile enough, to really show off how the system plays. Mostly, I'm hoping to make enough of a fool of myself that, if there's a second installment of this comparison, others will be more interested in showing how their system of choice really plays.

That said, if my character choice is too suboptimal, I may well cheat, and say something like, "the real game play here would be with an X, who would...", as that sounds like what this thread is after? Note this isn't "here's how you'd succeed at this challenge", so much as "here's the kind of character who might actually engage with this challenge, whereas my sample character doesn't."

Yeah, it'd be good to have something like this as a postmortem of each scenario anyhow, like 'in X game, the only way I could have engaged would have been if I played two out of the 15 classes available' or 'in Y game I would have had to know the scenario back as far as character creation' or 'I didn't do it, but in Z game there's an option that could just wish away this problem'.

Ugh, that sounds important. But... some systems just don't work that way. 2e Wild Magic and WHF Mutations and Marvel FASERIP character creation and so on. I get that "Lol Random" doesn't give the same feel as "assume 75% as the threashold for success", but that's just the feel of some systems. Which is why having backup plans is important in some systems. And I think that's important to the general feel of the system, even if it isn't the specific general feel you were thinking about when you built this thread.

Basically this is a constraint to make the self-DMing thing work, and in some sense to make the results something that others can independently verify that it makes sense to them without having to pass through a specific set of random outcomes. Like, 'I resolved the scenario because I guessed right in this timeline' doesn't tell us about the play experience that others would have if 95 times out of 100 you would have guessed wrong. But if you have some way in the system to let yourself try again or have a fallback so that the overall plan of action would have greater than a 75% chance of success, that becomes more meaningful.

So if you really want to explore a system that requires this, I think you have to do the thing as a full on branching flow-chart, so you can show that the overall chance of ending up successful is >75% when following a particular policy. Which is more work than I'd feel comfortable asking a poster to do just in order to participate, but that would be the way that's most in the spirit of the exercise.

See also why I believe rolling stealth checks repeatedly for a Rogue is a good thing, whereas "Roll Stealth vs Castle" and "Roll Combat vs Troll" aren't interesting.

I suspect I'll handle things a little differently here, as (if it comes to combat) my characters have vastly different ranges... and, on rare occasion, the weakest might find something trivial that is impossible for the strongest. Feel free to comment if my responses seem out of line, and a different response would better suit the purpose of this thread.

The thing that would be most in spirit of the exercise would be to assume that the 'locals' of the isekai scenario have their own system cheats that help them scale when it comes to pure measures of force. That may mean that between characters, the same guard captain is built very differently, but given the breadth of this exercise it would be totally pointless for me to try to put e.g. D&D stats to things. Of course the extreme ends may be very weird and require some mental contortions to get around, like if you brought in a Nobilis character then e.g. 'this warrior is a (stronger) encounter if you use combat as part of your solution' probably can't really make sense even if you pull out all the Theoretical Optimization stops.

I expect NichG will give us enough details to know the answer to how "surprised" we are by circumstances.

It might be ambiguous in some cases, so feel free to ask, or you can assume a day's worth of time to go shopping/etc.

animorte

2023-03-24, 01:25 PM

Even ignoring that it matches the theme and purpose of this thread, I applaud you for the "half a level worth of XP" - really, all such threads should use this as the default, rather than always assuming "Just reached level X".
+1

Mostly, I'm hoping to make enough of a fool of myself that, if there's a second installment of this comparison, others will be more interested in showing how their system of choice really plays.

I've been trying to flesh out my way-too-many entries some more. I don't think I'll be finished on time. :smallfrown:
Both of these points. That's exactly how I feel going into this. I feel comfortable enough with 5e while Risus and Equestria are simple enough that I'll have time to actually get those builds in and I shouldn't screw up the play too much. :smallamused:

Lord Torath

2023-03-24, 02:45 PM

Sorry, but the 2e portion of my brain won't let this go:
Stupid random stat rolls. I had to swap 2 of the stats to even be able to play a Cleric. As long as we're having fun with 2e, and get half the XP for the next level, I'll go ahead and spend a little of that XP on Fighter 2, requiring the purchase of Gauntlets of Ogre Power to successfully Duel Class. Normally, a character has a 75% chance of making people at worst "Cautious"; with a 15 Charisma, this becomes a 75% chance of making people at worst "Indifferent". With an 18 Charisma, that would be a 75% chance of at worst "Friendly". Diplomancy seems an option here.Can you dual-class in 2e AD&D if your natural stat isn't 15 or higher? As a DM, I'd say "No, stat bonuses that last only as long as you're wearing the item do not count when it comes to class requirements." What happens if you lose your stat-boosting magic item? Ignoring those points, did you really have the ability to purchase the Gauntlets at 2nd level, which is when you would need them?

That said, this is all a thought experiment, so it's probably not really out of line to just assume you had Str 15 before hand.

I'm contemplating my thri-kreen psionicist (Telepath) and my human dual-class Gladiator 3 Preserver 9, both from Dark Sun.

@NichG, do we get to include mounts and henchmen? (Not that either of those two characters of mine have any henchmen)

NichG

2023-03-24, 03:11 PM

@NichG, do we get to include mounts and henchmen? (Not that either of those two characters of mine have any henchmen)

Sure, either DM for yourself acquiring them from the setting, or if its part of your character build bring it in. If you're playing a system where e.g. spending 3 points says you have a TARDIS, then well, you'll have a TARDIS.

Quertus

2023-03-24, 03:25 PM

Sorry, but the 2e portion of my brain won't let this go:Can you dual-class in 2e AD&D if your natural stat isn't 15 or higher? As a DM, I'd say "No, stat bonuses that last only as long as you're wearing the item do not count when it comes to class requirements." What happens if you lose your stat-boosting magic item? Ignoring those points, did you really have the ability to purchase the Gauntlets at 2nd level, which is when you would need them?

That said, this is all a thought experiment, so it's probably not really out of line to just assume you had Str 15 before hand.

I'm contemplating my thri-kreen psionicist (Telepath) and my human dual-class Gladiator 3 Preserver 9, both from Dark Sun.

@NichG, do we get to include mounts and henchmen? (Not that either of those two characters of mine have any henchmen)

Hooray, someone else for 2e! :smallbiggrin:

You're asking about Hirelings and Henchmen, but I'm really worried about them, as we need a 75% chance of them not betraying us, else they betray us. :smalleek:

wrt the Gauntlets on Arma, I mean, it's always good to check my sanity (as I usually check it at the door), but 1) the Fighter levels are all but useless (as bonuses like BAB don't stack in 2e); 2) Armus, by second level, had more than enough treasure to buy *all* his items if spending money at "magic item shops" had been a thing in 2e, so yeah Arma can afford them; 3) you're the first person I've ever heard ask whether using augmented stats is reasonable; 4) yeah, it's a thought experiment, which is why I cheated and swapped rolls to have a Clerical Wisdom instead of the 4 or 5 I had rolled; 5) Elminster is canonically a Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Thief - if I had rolled like Ed's NPCs, I would have used 1d4+14 or something; 6) 2e characters at many tables used wish-boosted stats to qualify for numerous things, including class changes, and, in at least 2 cases at 2 different tables, I've seen PC children of former PC adventurers "inherit" their parents' stat boosting items in order to qualify for their original classes; 7) IIRC there's multiple published NPCs who use boosted stats for things like their spellbooks; but most of all 8) IIRC there's a canonical character who couldn't even be a Fighter in the first place without their stat boosting items. All in all, while I wouldn't bet the fate of the universe on it, I'm feeling pretty confident that saying "you can only use your base, rolled stats" is a house rule. And if you're gonna house rule, do so in favor of the PCs getting to do cool things. Of course, that's why multiple participants using the same system is so cool - with different assumptions, we'll get different results. Even if those "results" are the method by which we approach the challenge.

Telok

2023-03-24, 04:41 PM

I'm so not doing AD&D. The temptation to do a rastipede with the body modification nwp and a pile of spare gold is too tempting. Solve all problems by thring to modify the people involved into there being no problems... Yeah, I'd better not.

Quertus

2023-03-25, 12:21 PM

Well, I'm struggling to find my books (and I've lent some out), so let's see how bad off we are by attempting to evaluate what I'm dubbing "Challenge 0" from another thread:

We need to fortify this bridge before the enemy army arrives in the next few days?

Fortify a bridge? She lacks access to any "Wall of..." spells, but she can have undead laborers build a rudimentary wall, and plant a killing field of spikes in the ground. She could attempt to use her credit from crafting hundreds of potions and scrolls to buy higher-level scrolls, with spells outside her access, or items usable by anyone, or even hire an expert to use items beyond her skills (like a Lyre of Building, which would just put 100 of her undead a day ahead (or a third of a day for them, since they're tireless)). Assuming she takes this threat of an any army vs her undead army at the bridge seriously, she's most likely to buy that Cloak of Charisma to get recruits and bolster morale, while buying a few cheap 1-shot items like Quaal's Feather Token: Tree and scrolls like Mirage Arcana or Permanent Illusion. And a single scroll of Polymorph Any Object, because puns are sacred, and the floor is lava. If the battle goes against her, she'll use a "scorched earth" policy, sewing the battlefield with oil to burn the enemies, and even plan to destroy the bridge while the enemy army is crossing it, cutting their vanguard off from its support (if she takes the army seriously, she can fly to string ropes across the gap to get a new bridge started easily, so she cares less for the bridge itself than most people in this comparison probably will). Also, Arma would prefer to literally build a wall with their corpses during the fight, to weaken the invaders' morale, than to have strong fortifications built by this bridge.

There's definitely better people to hold a bridge in 2e, better skills and spells and items to use, better fortifications to be made by people with actual engineering skill and magic to back that up. But her army would be strong, tireless, and without morale issues, and can be good for targeting morale, which is a strong tactic against your standard conscripted army.

2e offers a variety of strategic, tactical, and economic choices.

Whizzy would likely use the gold he fleeced out of the 0-level townsfolk to buy a handful of scrolls of Wall of Stone, and as many vials of acid as the town can muster. He'd use 1 scroll to learn the spell, probably giving him 10 castings of a mix of Wall of Stone and the Stone Shape he already has with which to "build fortifications" (Whizzy has no skill at this - hopefully the scenario allows him to hire someone). The rest of the scrolls could be used either to bolster or repair those fortifications, or as BFC mid-battle. His undead would rain acid down upon the enemy army by the cauldron full. And rocks. And dirt. And spiders. Because everyone hates spiders.

There's a lot better answers, more efficient ways to spend money, and characters with actual skill at such crafts, but Whizzy wouldn't be the worst choice for this task.

3e provides the option to attempt numerous approaches,

Um... this character is extremely poorly suited to this task. But fine. He could try to convince the townsfolk to risk their lives on the front lines building these fortifications themselves (70% Diplomacy -> FAIL), using his Telepathy to sway attitudes, *and* using the grizzly deaths in town that night (his feeding, to replenish his mana) to convince them they're not safe here, either, and that things will just get worse when the army gets here (layered backup plans for the win). Or he could have his Cohort attempt to summon (Isekai) something to help. I think that the most helpful choice would be... animated construction equipment? Like the Constructicons. Of course, on a bad roll at the summons, they might show up as toy-size or hostile or something. But we have a few days to replenish mana and try again, with different summons, like Earth Benders or, as a "last day last-ditch effort" choice, some form of living/sentient fortification (please not a Living Wall!). Diplomacy to attempt to convince the various summons to help (build and fight), or at least build for us, offering from their own wealth, what the town has or (worst case scenario) even karmic wealth as an incentive. Mental powers as a fallback to assist, or as a last-ditch effort to force them to leave peacefully. Although some may be better, they have the (stolen) leadership and engineering skills to oversee the project.

This character really has no answers to this challenge on their own, only able to supervise the work of others. But with the presence of others to help, and their Cohort to summon, they could be helpful and pass the challenge. In character, they're much more likely to let the town die than risk summoning anything - summonings are costly, and a false move can be fatal. Other potential PCs could approach this problem a theoretically infinite number of ways, including being more willing and capable of summoning aid, but they rarely involve "voltron" solutions so much as atomic button pushes and backup plans.

Paradox involves crafting numerous approaches and backup plans.

Cutter would be... I don't even have the words... stymied and flabbergasted? by this request. Which would grant him extra mana. Then he'd wander about, dropping bouncy balls all over the place as he mumbled inane things like "I attempt to summon Cthulhu" and "what's a 12 letter word for love?". Once he thought he had enough mana, he'd scream something like, "SUMMON ANTI-AIRCRAFT TURRET!", and one would appear. Given a few days, this fantasy bridge would look like more like a bristling battleship, and the approach would be a killing field of landmines. When the army approached, cutter would be on the other side of the bridge, running in the opposite direction.

As expected, Cutter falls back to "build up mana, overkill" solutions to problems, which will just be overkill whenever he has time.

Paradox 2e is difficult to evaluate from my limited experiences.

Well, if it's just building fortifications, it should be safe for his eldest daughter to do some night work. And he can use his Disintegration to disintegrate the space between usable-sized blocks of a hypothetical mountain of stone nearby. However, if the threat the army posed were higher than that, or if it wasn't safe for his daughter, he could combine tricks to act like a WH40K Ork, and build an Adamantium fortress out of trees and shoe laces, while book-diving for the right extras to match the invading army's specifics (although "air conditioning" is probably a must if he intends to inhabit the fortress himself). Obviously, he'll use his wealth and guild master status to incentivize the adventurers to help out in the fight (if he thinks that's the optimal long-term play). Same with contacting the remaining Isekai classmates (normie and mutant alike) if he feels that's the way to go. On a really sad side note, anything where John has to roll, he'll need to spend XP (Karma) in order to hit the required 75% success rate. And this challenge isn't giving him that karma back.

Worse, as a caster, he takes double Karma hits from any consequences that violate the heroic code (house ruled to any consequences that violate his personal code). So this scenario likely represents a net loss for John Faseman, and is one that, in character, he'd likely avoid. Other Marvel FASERIP characters would likely approach this entirely differently, especially since only those with Super Speed or Hyper Invention could attempt to build anything this fast.

Marvel FASERIP offers a lot of variety, but doesn't really Voltron IME anything but poorly, and such poor Voltroning is especially active in the crafting rules.

Yeah, um, no. This character has no ability to help beyond muscles, and no time to create a new spell. Now, when they go out hunting game for the actual builders to eat, and the enemy army sees dragons' heads exploding, and finds the dragon bones by the bridge, where the workers obviously ate said dragons, that may incentivize the army to turn around, but nothing this troll builds would do so.

Oddly, despite arguably being a superhero system, poor Alex Daeus finds that his scientific method makes him least able/willing to rely on superhero physics. Rather than craft heavy fortifications at the edge of a cliff, Alex would start with transforming the stone in the area, building an estimated 6,000' of 10' high metal walls (assuming contouring the land, and providing bracing, stairs/ladders, and such). Probably a multi-layer ringed keep style of defense. Although that's probably less useful than his other tricks, like turning the land into quicksand or acid, or making the air toxic or corrosive. There's no need for Alex to put his wealth to use on this project, unless it's to hire some nearby mercenaries or something.

Well, 50 points of summons could probably summon more skilled dwarven miners than we could possibly use, so... Summoning 2(2) Variable (+1) Fanatic (+1) Multiple x10 Horde costs us 19 points, allowing us to have 1,000 30-point-base dwarf miners and 1,000 other 30-point minions, and leaving 31 points of magic to do other things, like maybe creating materials as needed?

Um... even pretending that the Chaos "bartering" system ("give me that, because I'm cool") could be used in this timeframe, to get a 75% chance of success, even if I was searching for expendable tools like land mines, I'd likely only end up with a single Ork land mine, which is actually just a grenade tied up with string between two hubcaps or something. So no help there. Also, this is a weakness of the trade system - it's "all or nothing, with a single target", rather than returning "here's what you found while searching for X" style of results. But, yeah, other than heavy lifting, a single Ork landmine is likely the only contribution to "fortifications" that this character can provide.

Other characters might have engineering skills, demolitions skills / explosives on hand, or even magic / psychic powers / mutations that might be helpful, but this little piggy had none.

Warhammer usually cares more about cover and sight lines and such considerations than many systems, but has few tools wrt the building of fortifications to facilitate such. That's not where the gameplay is here.

Boy oh boy, so many choices! There's all the obvious things, like "Fortification", and all the "Wall of..." spells that aren't living things (Wall of Stone and Wall of Spears being kinda obvious). However, for the way I look at things, that's answering the wrong question, because this Summoner doesn't want to be there during the fight, and doesn't want to leave their "cards" behind, which is conceptually what using those tools would require. So, instead... to create wall tokens on a budget... that sound like they'd be physical walls... um... well, Followed Footsteps was supposed to be part of the deck / sideboard anyway (whoops!). So I should be able to use Followed Footsteps to make plenty of Wall of Spears and Wall of Stone tokens. A Moat would obviously be nice, but that's expensive, and I think getting some kind of engineers, even if they're just Vedalken Engineers, involved in the project would be advantageous.

Obviously, with different rules / concerns, one could have made Fortifications with a Moat, or even a whole Castle.

Playing with Magic cards certainly has diverse array of options and outcomes, and strong Voltron potential.

With a little bit of technobabble, LtC Vir could have some force field generators powered by ambient neutrino emissions or something set up. Maybe recalibrate the dilation of the portable tractor beam to drive a few replicated duranium poles into the ground to slow the army's advance or to serve as the skeleton on which to hang further fortifications. With enough recharge time, even the hand phaser could probably dig some trenches, split some rocks, down some trees, or something. Also, Telekinesis doesn't have any rules for weight in the like 11 pages of rules for this system, so that could help with construction of fortifications, too.

While other players could doubtless do better, and even LtC Vir could do more if he had more materials or a full starship at his disposal, Star Trek technobabble seems largely "player skills".

A dubious system in general, it does provide at least the feel of multiple levels of evaluating the challenge.

So, one of the video game characters playing "Another World" got stuck on a "defend fortify the bridge" scenario? Huh. Well, it would take too many landmines to make a difference for him to be able to transfer them in from another game directly, and I'm drawing a blank on a single small object that would make a huge difference that (unlike a Cube of Force) actually exists in a video game. So, he can probably send a character or two to acquire land mines (just as many as they can carry, as he likely can't keep the connection open for long) from a different game to take to help. Maybe send a Minecraft spirit character to the site, to build the walls / set up the terrain? That should be plenty of hacks to let them pass the "fortify the bridge" challenge. I guess I'd have to say that sending the Minecraft guy is easy, but the acquisition of landmines has too many chances for Alex or the spirits to fail to count as a success for the purposes of this challenge.

Um... Harry can blow stuff up. That doesn't help much here. However, Harry can absolutely play a variant on "what's behind door number 3" and "the floor is lava", called "what's behind this dam is lava" by simply applying heat to stone (one with a (hopefully much) lower melting point than its container and breakable dam are made from). That should be a terrifying surprise for the invaders. Also, he can make a wall or a group of spikes invisible, or create an illusionary ("1 way mirror" style) wall for the defenders - kinda a nasty surprise there, too. However, to be fair, while each atomic action has a >75% chance of success, the only way Harry can not have a cumulative chance of failure >25% (which is really bad for a WoD mage, btw) would be to gather lots of townsfolk in a ritual to melt the stone into lava. All arguably much easier if they happen to have something with a low melting point (lead, perhaps?) as a local natural resource.

Matter mages would be much better at this challenge, able to raise fortifications directly themselves. But I think Harry the Happy Hermetic does all right.

WoD definitely has a "what can I do with the tools I have?" feel to it most of the time, with a little built-in Voltron (but more often gatekeeping) in its magic system.

Being AFB really hurts for the fine work, but broad strokes answers are usually possible, if prone to error from faulty memory.

There's a lot of the specifics of the challenge that I either make up, or that my characters' actions are dependent upon.

Most systems have terrible crafting systems, that the characters will want to avoid when attempting to make fortifications in just a few days.

I definitely need to put some more work in on a few of the sheets; others, the specific stats really don't matter much. But since we're after the feel of the system, it's a lot easier, at least for me, to eyeball the feel than it would be to actually play out the scenario.

These characters are more tech than fantasy. Whoops. That wasn't intentional.

And no, that "pun" wasn't a pun. I just don't know the word for what it is.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-25, 08:19 PM

Well, I'm struggling to find my books (and I've lent some out), so let's see how bad off we are by attempting to evaluate what I'm dubbing "Challenge 0" from another thread:

Oddly, despite arguably being a superhero system, poor Alex Daeus finds that his scientific method makes him least able/willing to rely on superhero physics. Rather than craft heavy fortifications at the edge of a cliff, Alex would start with transforming the stone in the area, building an estimated 6,000' of 10' high metal walls (assuming contouring the land, and providing bracing, stairs/ladders, and such). Probably a multi-layer ringed keep style of defense. Although that's probably less useful than his other tricks, like turning the land into quicksand or acid, or making the air toxic or corrosive. There's no need for Alex to put his wealth to use on this project, unless it's to hire some nearby mercenaries or something.

Well, 50 points of summons could probably summon more skilled dwarven miners than we could possibly use, so... Summoning 2(2) Variable (+1) Fanatic (+1) Multiple x10 Horde costs us 19 points, allowing us to have 1,000 30-point-base dwarf miners and 1,000 other 30-point minions, and leaving 31 points of magic to do other things, like maybe creating materials as needed?

[SPOILER=MtG - Elven Chronomancer]Boy oh boy, so many choices! There's all the obvious things, like "Fortification", and all the "Wall of..." spells that aren't living things (Wall of Stone and Wall of Spears being kinda obvious). However, for the way I look at things, that's answering the wrong question, because this Summoner doesn't want to be there during the fight, and doesn't want to leave their "cards" behind, which is conceptually what using those tools would require. So, instead... to create wall tokens on a budget... that sound like they'd be physical walls... um... well, Followed Footsteps was supposed to be part of the deck / sideboard anyway (whoops!). So I should be able to use Followed Footsteps to make plenty of Wall of Spears and Wall of Stone tokens. A Moat would obviously be nice, but that's expensive, and I think getting some kind of engineers, even if they're just Vedalken Engineers, involved in the project would be advantageous.

Obviously, with different rules / concerns, one could have made Fortifications with a Moat, or even a whole Castle.

Playing with Magic cards certainly has diverse array of options and outcomes, and strong Voltron potential.

With a little bit of technobabble, LtC Vir could have some force field generators powered by ambient neutrino emissions or something set up. Maybe recalibrate the dilation of the portable tractor beam to drive a few replicated duranium poles into the ground to slow the army's advance or to serve as the skeleton on which to hang further fortifications. With enough recharge time, even the hand phaser could probably dig some trenches, split some rocks, down some trees, or something. Also, Telekinesis doesn't have any rules for weight in the like 11 pages of rules for this system, so that could help with construction of fortifications, too.

While other players could doubtless do better, and even LtC Vir could do more if he had more materials or a full starship at his disposal, Star Trek technobabble seems largely "player skills".

A dubious system in general, it does provide at least the feel of multiple levels of evaluating the challenge.

Being AFB really hurts for the fine work, but broad strokes answers are usually possible, if prone to error from faulty memory.

There's a lot of the specifics of the challenge that I either make up, or that my characters' actions are dependent upon.

Most systems have terrible crafting systems, that the characters will want to avoid when attempting to make fortifications in just a few days.

I definitely need to put some more work in on a few of the sheets; others, the specific stats really don't matter much. But since we're after the feel of the system, it's a lot easier, at least for me, to eyeball the feel than it would be to actually play out the scenario.

These characters are more tech than fantasy. Whoops. That wasn't intentional.

And no, that "pun" wasn't a pun. I just don't know the word for what it is.

Nice to see the flexibility of m&m on display. The 2 most flexible powers that the 2 builds represent are as strong as ever.

Of course mtg cards have the solution to this one. Apparently it's possible to make a functioning computer with mtg cards tho i forgot how.

Star trek tech is as useful as ever.

I'll do this challenge too.

Now to preface I'm gonna "cheat" since i don't know how to calculate dice probability so instead I'll try to just aim for stuff that feels like it should be around that range.

1st off my ninja hires builders and mercenaries with her legendary 6d6 wealth then gets in contact with good wizards with her 6d6 "i know a guy" to cast some enchantments on the wall. Maybe they will be slippery or perhaps they burn those in the enemy army while ignoring my army. Then during the battle i assassinate the enemy leader using my 6d6 ninja trait. Causing disarray among the enemy forces.

It's a hard fought fight be we should have the advantage. Overall as a legendary ninja triva king with a equally legendary amount of contacts and cash this isn't too difficult in risus.

Kane0

2023-03-25, 09:17 PM

Ooh, okay sounds neat, i'll roll up a 9th level 5e character of some description.

I'm using my homebrew, see sig.

Level 9 Lizardfolk Fey Wander Ranger, Pirate background
Rolled stats, Str 10, Dex 18, Con 16, Int 14, Wis 18, Cha 12 after increases
Gave up +2 Con to get level 1 feat
Walk, Climb and Swim speeds of 30
Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Medchamy, Lore, Perception, Persuasion, Stealth, Survival
Tools: Cooking, Navigation, Naval Vehicles
Languages: Common, Draconic
Feats: Dungeon Delver, Psi Adept
Fighting Style: Druidic Warrior
Ranger Boons: Trapping I, Primal Connection I
Favored Enemies: Monsters and Fairies
Other things: Darkvision, Cunning Artisan, Natural Explorer, Bad Reputation, 1-Month perfect memory, Beguilding Twist, a chunk of combat stuff
Cantrips: Control Flames, Druidcraft, Guidance, Mending, Shape Water
Spells: Alarm, Charm Person, Detect Magic, Fog Cloud, Snare, Speak With Animals, Locate Object, Locate Plants, Misty Step, Pass Without Trace, Safeguard Shelter, Silence, Dispel Magic, Tidal Wave
Rolled magic items: Nature's Mantle, Amulet of Proof Against Detection, Weapon of Warning (Spear)

To summarize: Druidic Feytouched (in the head) Pirate Chef Lizardman Ranger, with traditional dungeoncrawling experience and random loot.

NichG

2023-03-26, 01:00 AM

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-26, 03:26 AM

It's Sunday somewhere, so Scenario 1!

Scenario 1: Needle in a Haystack

Your employer is a kingdom that was engaged in ceasefire negotiations with a powerful lich, who was threatening to release a wightpocalypse upon the countryside as a guarantee of safety in the negotiations. Unfortunately some idiot didn’t understand phylacteries or wights or anything like that, and destroyed the corporeal body of the lich during the negotiations. The kingdom’s spies have identified the phylactery as a steel needle placed in the unknowing care of a peasant farmer from the wheat-farming region of the country. You whatever time you are willing to risk to prepare in the capitol and a teleport waiting for you to send you to the scene find the phylactery and destroy it/talk the lich down from pushing the doom button/betray your employer and join the lich/whatever you like.

Unfortunately, on approaching the farmer you discover that they lost the needle during the recent wheat harvest. It might be anywhere in one of the hundred haystacks produced from the chaff of the harvest, or it might be in any one of three wagonloads of wheat sent out on three separate roads.

You have not personally seen or handled the phylactery, but of course the farmer has.

You have 1d10 days before the lich reforms a corporeal body and follows through with their threat.

Read the following to DM for yourself, but your character does not know these things without having a way to find them out. In the following, there are choices you can make with regards to the difficulty of the scenario - a given character might turn out to do well in the easy version but not the hard version, for example.

The lich will reform in 5 days.

The lich should be considered (stronger) against most characters if combat is part of the solution. However, their first act on reforming the body will be to ‘push the button’, which involves casting a Sending to an ally of theirs who is waiting in a ruin 100 miles away from the location of the phylactery and is already sitting on a bundle of trapped wights onto a local population center. The ally should be considered (equal) strength as a combat encounter.

Details if it matters: what the lich wanted in the negotiations was for the kingdom to expel the church of Pelor from its borders, as they were hunting the lich and generally being a nuisance. Otherwise it just wants to sit and do research and not be bothered. However, it is completely impassive to brotherhood-of-man moral/ethical considerations.

Details if it matters: The farmer holding the phylactery has had contact with the lich in mortal guise and basically thinks favorably of them as a person they met (but doesn’t know they were a lich and might not understand well what a lich is). They received a good amount of money to ‘hold onto the needle’, which they took literally and fashioned it into a hair accessory that they wore during the harvest. If you feel like you can persuade them to give this information (via guilt, compulsion, whatever) you can learn that the accessory was stolen by a magpie clean off their head, and the needle likely fell out along the bird’s flight path – if you can work out the flight path or somehow interrogate the bird.

Easy mode: The needle is in one of the haystacks.

Normal mode: The needle itself is not actually in any of the haystacks, but got sent off with the grain, and is somewhere within the stores of the outdoor marketplace of a larger city 16 hours away on foot for a normal person.

Hard mode: It’s a dead man’s switch, and even if you destroy the phylactery, this person will release the wights if they don’t receive an ‘all clear’ Sending.

]

Ok. This was tricky at 1st but i think i got a plan. Though it falls apart at the end.

Finding the needle is basically impossible for my character. So instead he uses his 6d6 wealth to hire a bunch of watch guards. They are not to approach. Just wait for the 1 to 10 days the lich to appear and to press the teleport stone they have so that the teleporting stone i have teleports me to their location (all bought with the same wealth.)

The watch guards are surrounding the outskirts of both this town and the towns the wheat has been sent to.

I'll aporoach the lich with my hands up and tell him the idiot who killed him has been punished and the deal can still happen.

From here none of us got diplomacy skill (the lich does not seem veey social) so in the "inappropriate skill" text box. We'd both get 2 tempory dice to the encounter. If one of us did have a social skill then the 2 bonus dice would be added to it.

Here my character fails because it's 50 50. My best bet is to convince the gm that being a ninja taught me social etiquette given ninjas come from a very polite society. Which I'd say is allowed. But i don't know about other gms.

If we go with the social etiquette interpretation then it's probably way more then 25% so I'd succeed at convincing the lich to stand down.

So conclusions.

1 i should really make a uber rich villain some day because money is more useful then you think.

2 overall it's a pretty simple affair. After coming up with the creative plan you just kinda have to roll like 1 or 2 skill checks then just succeed at social combat.

3 the system is somewhat dependent on gm flat. Traits are vague in nature thus the end of the encounter requires the gm agree with the ninjas having social etiquette interpretation for you to succeed.

animorte

2023-03-26, 03:49 AM

Ah, I was hoping I would get these in before you dropped the scenarios! Oh well, I declared what I would make previously so I think it's fair to assume I didn't attempt to cater these to the circumstance.

Panaka (level ?)

Hide and Seek (6d6): Highly elusive, knows all the best hiding spots, and hunts down others with expertise.
Pyrotechnics (6d6): Inspired by the d&d spell. Blind with fireworks, obscure the battlefield in smoke, and light things on fire.
Sketch (6d6): Copy something else you have witnessed recently. Keep it until you decide to copy something else.

I pretty much just took this awesome guy from my current Risus game on here, leveled him up a bit, and changed one of the Clichés. Really looking forward to how creative I can get with this one.

Yakul Tardy, Esquire (level 5)

Stamina: 26

Body: d6
Mind: d20
Charm: d6

Friendship tokens (5):
Friendship Tokens are used after you roll the die on a challenge or test and fail. Depending on
the number you spend, you can achieve one of three effects.
1 Token: You can ignore the result, and roll the die again.
2 Tokens: You can ignore the result and roll a d20 instead of the original die (in the case of
having rolled more than one on a challenge, replace the lowest level die)
3 Tokens: You pass the test or win the challenge automatically with no re-roll needed.

Talents:
Telekinesis (d20): This talent lets Unicorns move light objects around as their horn glows a colorful light that matches the selected object. It also allows the unicorn to light up dark places, and as it levels up can move heavier objects.
Stun Ray (d20): A powerful ray of magic rolled against an opponent’s Body trait. The target loses a number of Stamina points equal to the amount you rolled if successful, but if you roll a 1, the Stun Ray backfires and you lose an amount of Stamina points equal to the opposing roll.
Teleport (d10): The ability to instantly teleport away in a flash of magic. Teleporting DC depends on the distance and the number of objects being warped. Yourself at a few feet at a time is DC 5, and every few feet adds an extra 1 difficulty to the roll. Failing a teleport means you teleport somewhere you didn’t wish to.
Forcefield (d8): Can create a magical shield to protect others from harm, requiring concentration. Creating a forcefield around a small object would be DC 4, a pony or pony-sized object DC 6, an entire town would be 12 or higher. The forcefield lasts as long as the pony that created it concentrates on it, or until it is broken. The shields can be broken via a Body (or appropriate trait) test with a difficult equal to the number the pony rolled against to create it.
Pony Sense (d6): The ability to predict things coming at you before they happen. May be used an equal number as its max value in a game session, ie 4 times for a d4 and 10 times for a d10. The difficulty of sensing what is about to happen is depending on the GM and the situation, but can be used to prevent what otherwise might be surprises from catching you flat-footed. The GM may also choose to simply warn the player of events himself without them needing to roll.

Items: 200 bits total cost (200b left)
Ponybalm: 20 (100b) 1/day
Simple clothes: (20b)
Scroll kit: (35b) upgrades die
Food: 5 meals (15b), 5 snacks (5b)
Saddlebags: (25b)

I honestly think this one is going to run over the opposition, no contest. Ponies are broken, dude. Another note, I took a minimum for friendship tokens, 1 for me per level (though the game itself provides 1 per level for each player at the table, including the DM).

NecroFist (level 5)

AC: 15
Hit points: 47
Initiative: 1d8+1
Attack Roll: 1d20+7

Strength: 10 (0)
Dexterity: 14 (+1)
Constitution: 11 (0)
Intelligence: 8 (0)
Wisdom: 9 (0)
Charisma: 14 (+1)

60 silver left
Linothorax (light armor): 13 AC, 20 silver, 1 encumbrance
Small Shield: +1 AC, 20 silver, 1 encumbrance (ignore shock 1/round)

Punch: 1d10+3, shock 1d6+2 on miss, heal 1d6 on hit

Skills:
Punch (2): Fight unarmed or with natural body weaponry. Punch, kick, grapple, or otherwise brawl without the benefit of man-made tools. This mode of fighting is inefficient at best without some special Focus to improve it, but it’s reliably non-lethal.
Magic (0): Cast or analyze magic and know things about famous mages or notable magical events. Classes that can’t cast spells obtain only intellectual and scholarly benefits from this skill.
Notice (2): Notice small details, impending ambushes, hidden features, or concealed objects. Detect subtle smells, sounds, or other sensory input. Notice cannot be used simply to detect a lie, but keen attention can often discern a subject’s emotional state.
Administer (1): Keep an organization running smoothly, scribe things well, plan out logistics, identify incompetent or treacherous workers, analyze records or archives, or otherwise do things that an executive or middle-manager would need to do.

Foci:
Unarmed Combatant (2): Your empty hands are more dangerous than swords in the grip of the less gifted. Your unarmed attacks are counted as melee weapons when it comes to binding up opponents wielding bows and similar ranged long arms, though you need at least one hand free to do so.
Level 1: Gain Punch as a bonus skill. Your unarmed attacks become more dangerous as your Punch skill increases. At level-0, they do 1d6 damage. At level-1, they do 1d8 damage. At level-2 they do 1d10, level-3 does 1d12, and level-4 does 1d12+1. At Punch-1 or better, they have the Shock quality equal to your Punch skill against AC 15 or less. While you normally add your Punch skill level to any unarmed damage, don’t add it twice to this Shock damage.
Level 2: Even on a miss with a Punch attack, you do an unmodified 1d6 damage, plus any Shock that the blow might inflict on the target.
Die Hard (1): You are surprisingly hard to kill. You can survive injuries or bear up under stresses that would incapacitate a less determined hero.
Level 1: You gain an extra 2 maximum hit points per level. This bonus applies retroactively if you take this Focus after first level. You automatically stabilize if Mortally Wounded, provided you have not been incinerated, dismembered, or otherwise torn apart.
Armored Magic (1): Usable only by Mage heroes who would otherwise be prevented from casting spells or using arts while armored, this Focus reflects special training in channeling magic through the hindering materials of conventional armor.
Level 1: You can cast spells or use arts while wearing armor that has an Encumbrance value of no more than two. You can use a shield while casting, provided your other hand is empty for gesturing.

Arts:
Consume Life Energy: By making a Punch attack or using a melee weapon you have spent at least an hour properly consecrating, you can absorb a portion of the damage you inflict on others as healing to yourself. For each successful attack you make with such implements, you heal 1d6 damage, up to a maximum of the damage done by the attack. You cannot drain more life than the target has remaining hit points.
Keeper of the Gate: At your discretion, creatures within twenty feet of you per character level that are Mortally Wounded will die instantly and cannot be revived by magic or medicine. Conversely, you can Commit Effort for the day to automatically stabilize any or all within that range, increasing their System Strain by 1 point. This benefit cannot aid creatures that have been dismembered, shredded, or otherwise suffered unsurvivable injuries.

Spells (2/day):
Enfeebling Wave (2):
A wash of debilitating force erupts in a 20-foot radius at a visible point within one hundred feet. All living creatures within the area must make a Physical saving throw or for the rest of the scene their movement rate is halved and they must make all attack and damage rolls twice and take the worse result. If the save is successful, these penalties apply only to their next turn.
Query the Skull (1): This spell requires a corpse with largely-intact organs of communication. The corpse cannot have been dead for more than one day per caster level. Once sorceled, the corpse will answer up to one question per caster level, with the caster understanding the answers regardless of the creature’s natural language. Corpses are laconic, and generally answer in no more than one or two sentences; their replies will be truthful, but tend to be literal and they have no power to hypothesize or make judgments. This spell may not be used twice on the same corpse.
The Excellent Transpicuous
Transformation (1): The mage chooses up to one visible willing target per caster level provided they are within 100 feet, though afterwards the targets can separate freely. The targets and all they wear or carry become perfectly transparent. Missile attacks against invisible foes are largely impossible, and melee attacks against them usually suffer a -4 penalty to hit rolls. The spell lasts for up to an hour per caster level, but it breaks if a subject performs some violent motion, such as running, attacking, or casting a spell. Once broken for one subject, it breaks for all.
Velocitous Imbuement (1): Unlike most spells, this one may be cast as a simple On Turn action, targeting up to one visible willing creature per caster level within one hundred feet. Enchanted creatures become incredibly fleet of foot, doubling their usual ground movement rate and becoming capable of running up walls and across ceilings without falling, provided they end their round upright on a navigable surface. They may also move away from melee opponents without needing to make a Fighting Withdrawal to avoid a parting attack, and may pass through and around armed foes who do not completely physically block their path. The spell lasts for the remainder of the scene and adds 1 System Strain to those who take advantage of it.
Conjunction of the Inexorable Step (2): A visible target within a hundred feet is immediately teleported to any visible, solid resting point within a half-mile, provided the target point has enough room to accept them and it is not a position of imminent physical peril. Unattended objects can be translocated by the spell, but they can be no larger than a horse. Unwilling creatures targeted by this spell may make a Mental saving throw to resist; on a success, it is the caster who is transported to the intended destination instead.

I'm quite sure I missed equipment a couple things, but I hope it's close maybe? If I understood the system well enough and really wanted to attempt handling as many different scenarios as possible, I would have chosen Expert with Polymath instead (probably with partial mage). Alas, that is not the case!

I decided not to run my 3.5e idea because it's... It's just a lot more work and I've had enough experience with it to have a satisfactory understanding. Also, while I really like my "Cantripologist" idea through 5e (Shadow Sorcerer/Celestial TomeLock/+), I decided I would rather put the effort into simpler systems I have less experience with and test them out. I could see myself adding this one in soon either way. Admittedly, it would be much easier than page-flipping hunting down all the character creation rules in something I'm not nearly as familiar with. (Looking at you WWN...) :smallsigh:

Kane0

2023-03-26, 05:13 AM

It's Sunday somewhere, so Scenario 1!

Scenario 1: Needle in a Haystack

Your employer is a kingdom that was engaged in ceasefire negotiations with a powerful lich, who was threatening to release a wightpocalypse upon the countryside as a guarantee of safety in the negotiations. Unfortunately some idiot didn’t understand phylacteries or wights or anything like that, and destroyed the corporeal body of the lich during the negotiations. The kingdom’s spies have identified the phylactery as a steel needle placed in the unknowing care of a peasant farmer from the wheat-farming region of the country. You whatever time you are willing to risk to prepare in the capitol and a teleport waiting for you to send you to the scene find the phylactery and destroy it/talk the lich down from pushing the doom button/betray your employer and join the lich/whatever you like.

Unfortunately, on approaching the farmer you discover that they lost the needle during the recent wheat harvest. It might be anywhere in one of the hundred haystacks produced from the chaff of the harvest, or it might be in any one of three wagonloads of wheat sent out on three separate roads.

You have not personally seen or handled the phylactery, but of course the farmer has.

You have 1d10 days before the lich reforms a corporeal body and follows through with their threat.

Well, luckily my lizardman has Locate Object as a spell and can use that for up to 50 minutes in a given day, which works out to good distance of 1,000 feet. It does just point to the nearest steel needle, but hopefully those aren't incredibly common in haystacks sitting in barns and fields. It should be feasible to check over those haystacks in a few days, plus i'd still have some some Detect Magic to narrow down any needles that are found so i'm sure i have the right one.
By level 9 I should be rich enough to just pay for those three wagonloads of wheat and have them returned so I can check them over without chasing after them, or at least use the kingdom's coffers if they're already teleporting me out to sort this out.
My guy would have no vested interest in buddying up with the lich so if he found the needle in time he's likely just send it back to the kingdom and collect his payment. He's fully capable of doing the talking though, if getting it back isn't as fast as him getting teleported in, but he would need some incentive to do the negotiations himself.

The lich will reform in 5 days.

The lich should be considered (stronger) against most characters if combat is part of the solution. However, their first act on reforming the body will be to ‘push the button’, which involves casting a Sending to an ally of theirs who is waiting in a ruin 100 miles away from the location of the phylactery and is already sitting on a bundle of trapped wights onto a local population center. The ally should be considered (equal) strength as a combat encounter.

Details if it matters: what the lich wanted in the negotiations was for the kingdom to expel the church of Pelor from its borders, as they were hunting the lich and generally being a nuisance. Otherwise it just wants to sit and do research and not be bothered. However, it is completely impassive to brotherhood-of-man moral/ethical considerations.

Details if it matters: The farmer holding the phylactery has had contact with the lich in mortal guise and basically thinks favorably of them as a person they met (but doesn’t know they were a lich and might not understand well what a lich is). They received a good amount of money to ‘hold onto the needle’, which they took literally and fashioned it into a hair accessory that they wore during the harvest. If you feel like you can persuade them to give this information (via guilt, compulsion, whatever) you can learn that the accessory was stolen by a magpie clean off their head, and the needle likely fell out along the bird’s flight path – if you can work out the flight path or somehow interrogate the bird.

Easy mode: The needle is in one of the haystacks.

Normal mode: The needle itself is not actually in any of the haystacks, but got sent off with the grain, and is somewhere within the stores of the outdoor marketplace of a larger city 16 hours away on foot for a normal person.

Hard mode: It’s a dead man’s switch, and even if you destroy the phylactery, this person will release the wights if they don’t receive an ‘all clear’ Sending.

Easy Mode: Not a problem, just takes time. Depending on which haystack, good chance to get it before day 5.
Normal Mode: Finding and dealing with the magpie is super easy (barely an inconvenience) tanks to Locate Animals and Speak with Animals, however getting the right information out of the farmer to begin with is the trick. With Charm Person and a very respectable Persuasion bonus chatting him up wouldn't be an issue, it's any relevant Insight/Investigation that has a notable chance of failure. As DM i'd say lizardman has the benefit of the doubt, and would likely get this method done faster than manually checking the haystacks.
Hard Mode: In a twist of irony his amoral lizardfolk mindset could be a great foil to the liches amoral mindset, and his talky skills are very respectable, but he doesn't have any personal stake in the matter and as stated would just get the needle back to the kingdom for them to deal with. Which means without a way to get it there instantly, the lich probably reforms in-transit. Likely a failure for the lizardman, but could be turned around if the lich was open to negotiate rather than immediately initiate wightpocalypse.

solidork

2023-03-26, 07:29 AM

You'd think that locating the needle would be easy with all the cards there are that search up artifacts, I feel most of those are flavored as creating a new artifact and not locating one that already exists.

Easy
Witness the Future to see where you'd find the needle after searching the hard way -> Oxidize to destroy the needle (2UG)

Medium
Same as Easy, just takes longer.

Hard
Witness the Future -> Messenger's Haste on yourself -> just walk to where the needle and wait for the lich to reform, I'm saying you win initiative because you have Haste -> Control Magic -> Red Elemental Blast to counter the Lich's counterspell (4UUURR)

There is a "Wight" card that corresponds to the D&D creature, and the way it works is that it exiles the creatures that it kills - this means some plan to solve the Wightpocalypse after it happens with something like Angel of Glory's Rise wouldn't work so well. If you summon enough Gavony Riders, you can give all your human citizens protection from Zombies (Wights are zombies in Magic) which is a fairly prudent countermeasure to any future attempts like this.

Wish only costs 2R in Magic, but that's no fun.

Quertus

2023-03-26, 04:24 PM

Scenario 1 - Needle in a Haystack.

It's danged hard not to taint my information here. On top of other threats, I accidentally quoted the Scenario post, then realized that it had the hidden information, which would show up in the editing window. Sigh. Happily, I realized it before I saw it.

This phrase
You have not personally seen or handled the phylactery, but of course the farmer has.taints my perception of events slightly. Still, initial reaction, only one PC will attempt "Peasant Locate Object" as a solution.

find the phylactery and destroy it/talk the lich down from pushing the doom button/betray your employer and join the lich/whatever you like.
Really cool that you seem to have let us set our own victory conditions here. Kudos!

It may vary by character, but I personally find this scenario kinda suss. Like, how does the Kingdom even know where the Lich's phylactery is? I think, in an actual game, I'd be rolling Knowledge:GM and Feel the Table, if not openly breaking into OOC chat, because we've got a ticking clock, yet I could spend quite some time just interrogating the officials of the kingdom about just how this came to pass... if things even are even remotely as they seem.

Absolutely nothing on the idiot who did this, or the events that led up to their foolish choices. Sigh.

The lich will reform in 5 days.

Really? That feels so lame compared to "1d10 days". Also, why didn't the envoys of the Kingdom mention this? Or are they complete buffoons?

their first act on reforming the body will be to ‘push the button’,

Well, that makes negotiations rather difficult. I'll just have to "win initiative", and take my "start negotiations" action first. :smallwink:

Hard mode: It’s a dead man’s switch, and even if you destroy the phylactery, this person will release the wights if they don’t receive an ‘all clear’ Sending.

Well, duh. Who doesn't do things that way?

fashioned it into a hair accessory

Hilarious - I had exactly the same idea! :smallbiggrin:

The farmer holding the phylactery has had contact with the lich in mortal guise and basically thinks favorably of them as a person they met (but doesn’t know they were a lich and might not understand well what a lich is). They received a good amount of money to ‘hold onto the needle’, which they took literally and fashioned it into a hair accessory that they wore during the harvest. If you feel like you can persuade them to give this information (via guilt, compulsion, whatever) you can learn that the accessory was stolen by a magpie clean off their head, and the needle likely fell out along the bird’s flight path – if you can work out the flight path or somehow interrogate the bird.

What the ever-loving ****, farmer dude(tte)? "all of humanity in this kingdom will die unless we find this pin", and you can't be bothered to volunteer relevant information, like "it might not be in this hay I said it was in", or even "it was stolen by a bird"?! Um... OK, this utter moron of a farmer has to die, and be sentenced to eternal torture in the new lowest level of hell that we dig out of the sub-basement of the former lowest level of hell. And that is far more important than dealing with any wightpocalypse.

So, on to the responses.

Those idiots. The world already ended, if they cannot act better than that, they don't deserve to hold on to their small bubble of reality. Definitely get to the bottom of what really happened; probably have her own undead dig through the hay, and be prepared to negotiate with the Lich. Depending on what she finds, Arma might well be planning on adding her own undead army to the wightpocalypse.Wightpocalypse. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Arma negotiates with the Lich for rights for those entering its saner, quieter bubble of reality. Likely offers to help exterminate any resilient churches of Pelor that survived the wightpocalypse. None of the other rolls or actions matter in the slightest. Also, her undead army do much looting on her behalf.A whole lot of wasted effort when looked at from the PoV of this comparison. In an actual game, it probably wouldn't have felt wasted - there would have been so many possible decision points, and options for ways to approach things. But, for this character, once the Lich revives, it always ends the same way. A different character could have done things very differently.

Whizzy would pay for divination services to make sure this was a good idea, except that he feels that that's on the kingdom that hired him. So he just assumes he's on the right path, and will burn everything to the ground: the hay, the farmer, the wagons, the wagon drivers, everything. If the Lich shows up, tell it they lost its Needle. If the Wights show up, farm for XP, loot former shops, profit.Whizzy teleports from place to place, burning everything to the ground by royal decree. This does nothing to the pin. Whizzy fireballs the ashes, this OTOH probably does destroy the pin. Easy and Normal mode, Whizzy is a big, obnoxious hero; Hard mode, wightpocalypse, Whizzy earns some extra XP and loot before teleporting elsewhere, unused Potion of Glibness in hand.There were a lot of options for items and services that Whizzy either couldn't or wouldn't use; for him, it was pretty straightforward.

If the needle isn't there, get it. Once it's there, no need to find it, open up a telepathic conversation with the Lich. Express extreme disappointment in their plan - revenge should always be targeted and deliberate. Convince the Lich to take better revenge, teach them about revenge, and/or rewrite their personality into a being that takes better revenge. Also, grab a light snack along the way.Having gotten the information about the attack out of the minds of those involved, the telepathic vampire needs a snack, and the farmer is the likely candidate. Gaining their memories makes him regret giving them such a quick and painless end. Regardless of mode, the Lich gets a telepathic earful long before it reforms. By layering multiple reasonable suggestions, and having telepathically rewriting the Lich's personality as a final nuclear fallback option, it is certain that some agreeable outcome is reached.

Much harder to adjudicate is the success rate of the aftermath. Whether "You killed him once, he should get to kill you once. It's only fair." becomes popularized in the immortal play about the second round of diplomacy with the Kingdom, whether the telepathic vampire is made chief diplomat of the Kingdom, the Lich, or both, and whether the Pelorites are banished, leave peacefully, or are burned as witches are all questions for the ages.

But that's a story for another time.It's standard Paradox feel - multiple fallback plans, layer your rolls to ensure that something works.

Gee, this really is a "take infinity" kind of problem, where Cutter can simply build up mana by failing his rolls to find a needle in a haystack, then dump all that mana into genocide on all Wights.Ugh, I can't even. There's no clear statement of what Cutter was hired to do. Mostly, he'd just wander around, dropping bouncy balls while mumbling inane things like "here piggy piggy piggy" and "I wonder what they put in Coke?" until suddenly shouting "TELEPORT LICH'S PHYLACTERY TO ME!". He'd stare at the needle for a moment before invoking . Then he'd stare at it a little more, get perplexed, then ask, "Now what?"

Cutter has 0 cares to interact with a hostile Lich. However, [Spirit Sight], a few divinations, and the Lich's general personality make me suspect that Cutter will decide that this won't be an issue. So he'll camp, build up mana (maybe spend a little to see relevant past events (and relevant future ones, why not), maybe spend a lot on that "Wight Genocide" spell), wait for the Lich to reform, and have a pleasant chat... where the Lich's 1st impression of "forest campfire" is almost immediately overlaid with magic "screens" each replaying a few seconds of those relevant past (and future) events, including scenes of the Lich attempting its Sending, and Cutter literally cutting the spell out of the air. Even if it takes until the Lich runs out of spells, eventually, they should be able to have a conversation about how to get the Lich some peace and quiet.Given any time, [S]a this 2e Paradox character run by me is gonna be OP. The question is almost always one of how the character wants to resolve the situation, not whether they can.

This sounds like a job for Superma... I mean, for someone other than a Guild Master. But fine. The Kingdom calls. ... I suppose John Faseman can have the Guild issue something to the adventurers and townsfolk about Wights, and let his children track down the wagons while he Disintegrates everything.Wow, to my surprise, Hard Mode says John Faseman actually had the best answer from among my characters. Anyway, despite that, this one probably looks the stupidest, as, instead of wagons, it's grain silos. So his eldest daughter has to go and bring all the grain silos to John for him to disintegrate, or he has to go to each of them in turn to disintegrate their contents. Either way, it's a massive hit to his Karma.

Worse, the Lich is a sentient being. "Killing" it is probably against his moral code, even if he doesn't realize it at the time. So, most likely, a haunted future version of himself needs to learn Gate, travel back in time, and stop him from enacting this plan. And probably hand him a metal detector (either invented, or summoned from Earth), and a note to learn Gate, the Dr. Strange approved bestest spell ever.

Regardless of mode, John Faseman probably can't beat the Lich on initiative 75% of the time. And let's say neither can any adventurers or Isekai Heroes with him. So it's up to the informed, prepared populous to defend against the Wights. And/or up to his meddling future self to "thin the heard" enough that they don't actually pose a threat. That's the real fight - shattering the Lich will be trivial by comparison (John Faseman could trivially end the Lich himself, as could several of his children; however, the Lich could also trivially end any of them (even if not all with the same spell), so it's not an easy fight to choose to enter. Having others present really matters for defense.). But... then what? Ship the pin to the future with future John, else the Kingdom will claim it and destroy the Lich? Because, even if he doesn't believe it now, he'll end up just as haunted in the future if he just lets someone else kill the Lich.

So, before future self, it was "Lich dies in all modes, citizens and Adventurers and Heroes are prepared for Wightpocalypse of Hard Mode"; with future self, it was "Lich located and triggers Wightpocalypse in all modes; John Faseman and elite few are prepared to fight Lich; citizens and Adventurers and Heroes are prepared for Wightpocalypse". Now if only one of the well-trained Adventurers or Heroes uses Divinations wrt where the Wights will hit, they'll be even more prepared - perhaps even storming the bomb site and defeating the Wights and Lich ally before the Lich awakens.Well, this one is odd. Because... well, I'm running too many characters, and probably didn't RP this one correctly in my initial thoughts, it led to some time travel shenanigans. Which is kinda a sideways to say, there's a lot of tools to play with in a Marvel game, I guess. :smallwink:

Back home, this would be as easy as buying a metal detector, but here? Summoning spirits is an option for dealing with the 3 wagons, but this character has no options not available to the peasantry for dealing with finding a needle in a haystack.Once again, not enough time to invent a new spell, and no real tricks that the peasantry can't pull. --EXCEPT-- Since there's 5 days, if the Kingdom can pull all the grain to 1 location, this character can beat the Lich on initiative 75+% of the time, and simply blast them back to death. Repeatedly. Until the needle is found. Which solves Easy and Normal Mode. Hard mode, wights fall, everyone dies. Except the Troll.If all you have is a hammer...

Ugh. I guess Alex will hire riders to go after the carts while he spins straw into gold - or into marble statues of himself and other commemorative trophies of the day he saved the kingdom from the wightpocalypse. I think, once he found the needle - or if he even didn't find the needle, if his powers didn't just eat it without his noticing - Alex would probably want the Lich dead, and destroy the needle without caring whether there was a bigger picture.Well, Alex Daeus would be sweating bullets, but, with 5 days to work with, he'd have plenty of time to destroy the needle. Easy and Normal mode solved (even if the country now has a food shortage - that's what they get for being morons. I suggest they eat their dumb, starting with the farmer and the diplomat). Hard mode... unless the undead happen to be vulnerable to some material, like Silver or Jade (in which case, if someone told him, he made that out of the hay), that's bad news bears. Alex will be lucky to escape with his life in that scenario.There's not many problems that can't be solved with the application of money and matter transformation. The end of humanity might be one of them, however.

So many options here. 5 points for +20 search (fewer if I make the magic focused in a targetable object), another round of summons, retrocognition to where the phylactery used to be and follow its trail, magic or spirit sight, X-ray vision (doesn't work vs the needle (say, metal)), heck maybe even forcibly reincarnate the lich.

But I think the best option would be telepathy to have a chat (with some stat and skill boosters, and maybe some magic defense, from the rest of the magic pool)So, I'm personally a fan of keeping things simple here. If necessary, start with skill boosts to learn more about Liches. Probably split the magic pool between Retrocognition and Summoning just a few medium-strength creatures (mostly spirits, but Variable to summon a few options, like magnetic elemental or something, in case the needle is protected from one form of detection) to find the needle. Then split it between telepathy, magic defense, and Diplomacy boosts for the "still in needle form" confrontation. Easy, Normal, or Hard mode, it shouldn't be too hard to convince this particular Lich to play nice. The much harder part will be dealing with the Kingdom and the Church of Pelor, but creating my own contingencies and own custom monster apocalypse in preparation for that seems outside the scope of this comparison.Not everyone enjoys the math of creating magic powers on the fly from a limited pool, and balancing out far too few points (especially in the case where the Lich had been hostile), but, if you do, it's a unique (voltron-adjacent) feel.

Um... a little daemon summoning to go slaughter the cart drivers and bring the carts back, and an endless hail of plasma rifle fire to destroy the needle along with all the hay should do the trick, unless a precognitive spell or power says this was a bad plan. Not that Mr. T has any problem with the undead per se (most of my characters lack any Lore skills, and have no clue that they should be mortal enemies with certain things) - he'd rather talk it out, but lacks any way to communicate with the Lich or find the needle. Hmmm... OK, maybe just a big bonfire to burn all the hay, sift the needle from the ashes, and just talk to the Lich when it respawns. Hopefully team up with the Lich to kill whatever idiot started this mess.Seriously?!

Easy Mode: Local grain burned, phylactery found, Farmer ruined. Lich convinced or Lich and Phylactery destroyed (he spent his turn casting a spell that wasn't protecting himself or targeting Mr. T? That was super dumb).

Normal Mode: Anybody got a better idea? Otherwise, all grain burned, phylactery found, everyone starves, not my problem. Lich convinced or Lich and Phylactery destroyed (he spent his turn casting a spell that wasn't protecting himself or targeting Mr. T? That was super dumb).

Hard Mode: In the grimdark of the far future, the only way to save the citizens from the slow starvation Mr. T's destruction of their grain would cause is to unleash the quick death of a wightpocalypse upon them.In the grimdark of running Mr. T, victory is where you find it. As expected, he has few options not available to most.

Well, An-Zerrin Ruins or Engineered Plague would be really useful to deal with any potential wightpocalypse, but that's probably not in the cards with the rules I've set for this entry. Then again, if the kingdom really wants their help...

After getting the "full" story, Celestial Messengers should be good for getting the carts to return (but heaven help us if they dropped the needle on the trip like some
Ring of Sauron or something). Forget finding the needle, Shatterstorm should be good for simply destroying it. A Beacon of Unrest should allow for resurrecting the Lich and the Phylactery, so that they can talk things out.Ok, let me get this straight: the Lich can clearly see that the Elven Chronomancer has gone infinite, they've already killed and resurrected them, and their first action is to press the shiny button? They was hoping to pick up a few new cards, but "Brain-Dead Lich", "Brain-Dead Farmer" and "Brain-Dead Diplomat" just aren't worth playing. :smallfrown:

So I guess the Elven Chronomancer keeps time stopped with an endless stream of Beacon of Tomorrows, and send their endless swarm of elves to end the wightpocalypse. :smallsigh:

(also, why weren't they playing with Counterspells at the meeting with the Lich? I'm playing too many characters to play them well, dagnabbit, even if it is a better outcome in Hard Mode.)

The Elven Chronomancer can really appreciate the "just want to be left alone to research" attitude. I think the Lich will make a great minion.Definitely lots of options to dig through to figure out how to get the particular solution you're after.

1st thought: This is easy mode. Tricorder to locate the needle. Um... then what? And what if it's further away?

2nd thought (thank you serving under a Romulan captain, Staltek Vir can be taught): Telepathy to find out what really happened, send someone else with a tricorder (and land transport, even if it's "a horse from the employer"?), have 2 other people work on surveillance options, prepare technobabble stasis field.I can't even. After looking at the vacuums that are these people's minds, LtC Vir marks this kingdom down as an evolutionary dead end, a cautionary tale of what to make certain the Vulcan race does not devolve into in his pursuit of increasing their telepathic abilities. Or maybe it's something in the water - like lead or something. Or a disease. Definitely take lots of readings, try to figure out what's going on with this other kingdom. Order away teams to consume replicated rations only (and no happy fun times with the natives), implement full quarantine procedures with those who were sent out when they return.

AFAICT, while LtC Vir can learn its thoughts, he cannot communicate with the Lich until it reforms. So he would have to... abduct its ally via Transporter (never have it materialize until after negotiations). Negotiate with the reformed Lich (starting with HUGE signs saying something to the effect of "Don't send that Message" or something) with whatever backup the Mindless Kingdom can provide (pre-vetted with Telepathy, of course). Staltek Vir has no chance of getting 75+% on any social rolls, so... this is all on someone else to do the talking. And if the Mindless Kingdom ****s this up again, well, it's no big loss, and even defensible under the Prime Directive to let them die.Really, LtC Staltek Vir would just tell other people what to do, and not really do anything directly related to the main mission on this one, as he would focus on ancillary tasks of finding our what was going on. Which is done through two things: Telepathy, and Scientific Method (aka "guess and test").

Never has there been a more "talk to the Lich" option than Alex Knight. Spirit Magick to find the Lich (if necessary - simply "pulling up the map" (Correspondence Magic) or sending Princess Peach to use "the Princess and the Pea" magic to see if there's a foreign object in the hay should suffice), Spirit Magick to pull the needle out of Another World for a face to faceless, Spirit Magick to talk to the Lich's spirit, massive bonuses from Spirit Nexus added to social skills from being an influencer, plus even more massive bonuses by finishing my character sheet with more "Adept" Merits (even if not from beforehand, they're only 3 XP, and "in the face of a pending (video game) apocalypse, Alex Knight found that all his hard work as an influencer has paid off, and suddenly that event acted as the catalyst to make him realize just how easy convincing people to see his PoV really was" sounds epic, right? Oh, and send... someone really fast and convincing... to catch those 3 wagons, I guess, if necessary.Imma say Princess Peach with royal decree from Kingdom should be plenty sufficient to get the peasants behind the "Princess and the Pea" solution to finding the needle. Although "Nope, it's not in this silo" certainly makes things easy. Easy and Normal modes, that's another Spirit Alex Knight has befriended. Oh, I guess that's true on Hard mode, too, since he'll send the "all clear" signal once he gets back."It works because I believe it does" and "power of friendship" are some odd curve balls to throw at this problem, IMO; the biggest resolution issues for Alex Knight, as for any Summoner, is statting out minions.

Harry would love to be able to just throw money at this, burning all the hay to the ground. However, while he has the money to afford to feed a few Knight retainers, he's not exactly wealthy. Rather poor compared to most characters in this competition. So he'll send knights to catch up with and return the 3 wagonloads (without said knights, he'd use Magick to send messages to the drivers, or burn the wagons to the ground at a distance if necessary), and attempt a spell to use Magnetism to draw the needle to him; or, if that fails, to detect it like a metal detector. By sending away some of the knights, it makes his Magick less effective, so he has more need of backup plans.

Harry isn't the deepest thinker, and would probably destroy the needle without debating what the best course of action might be.Easy mode: It may require multiple backup plans to hit 75%, but Harry should be able to find and destroy the needle.

Normal mode: What?! ****, we don't have time for this. Teleport from silo to silo, multiple backup plans since he can't bring all the knights with him, desperately try to hit all 3 silos in 1 day, only survive because nobody attacks him without his escorts. Or... wait for the Knights to get back to the silos before teleporting there, I guess, would be smarter. A real pain, but probably a success with minimal Scourge.

Hard mode: Harry really questions his life choices. One quick attempt at Apocalypse From the Sky to stem the tide like dropping a nuke on an Antideluvian; if that doesn't work, it's time to find a new kingdom.Not much to this one, for Harry that is.

Telok

2023-03-26, 06:24 PM

1. DtD40k7e, Diplomat Bob, dryad vampire vice president of new markets for the Aztechnology megacorporation, with a personal space cruiser and a lot of contacts.

Ok, so the challenge works out all right. It's just a backwards planet we're trying to open for trade. Lich are a level 4 critter and we can easily say Sending in a lower level custom spell limited version of Commune. Issue: In DtD40k7e that would likely put it as needing a material component, but let's conveniently ignore that. This is a dumb lich, but it's from a primitive society so we'll give it a pass.

1a. DtD40k7e, Gun Whore Bob, gnome daemonhost mercenary, walking gunshow, filthy rich teleporting monster summoner who leads a bunch of mercenaries.

No changes required. Bob would have booked passage here for <plot reason> and probably not have access to space transport unless they'd wanted to stick around.

2. Paranoia, Paranoid Bob, R&D: gear anti- fold-able vibration bag... well random generators are random... http://orteil.dashnet.org/randomgen/?gen=https://pastebin.com/raw/0TqTjbpS . So about the mission... outside. I guess "lich" can be someone with an automatic cloning vat and a super-tech matter transmitter, the needle would just be a targeting aid for the transmitter. Wights... I guess boiwarfare infectious fast zombie virus? It's close enough, same result anyways.

3. Traveller, Traveling Bob. Traveller is full no-magic but does have "Precursor Race Super Tech" tropes... Got it. Insane precursor race A.I. in ancient ruins somewhere on a planet that's fallen down to primitive tech. The needle is a 3d printer for a nano-drone hologram projector & EM field effect generator. We can go with the same zombie/wight virus thing as Paranoid Bob gets.

And I gotta go. People are a problem. Will tackle actual actions, plans, etc., later.

Edit: and six hours later...
1. DtD40k7e Diplomat Bob. Welp given the info available it'll be beam all the haystacks up and send agents to identify the grain wagons, buy the contents, and beam all those up. Then just give it a run through an incinerator, or a half dozen chaps with flamers, and run a strong electromagnet over it. Or the magitech auspex/tricorder might be able to ping it. Then it's just a bit of talking the lich down.

We could invoke the social combat rules but those are a bit on the formal & weighty side for a fairly straight forward chat. That said, while a default lich isn't unusually good at offensive social-fu their stats & skills make them quite tough social nuts to crack. Still, they're fairly ameniable to logic as long as they aren't the insane world destroyers. While this one will almost certainly start off hostile we can throw 9k4s vs 30 plus a reroll. If we want to offer up the idiot who roasted the lich during negotiations, make sure the lich respawns in a nice place (with a couple radio triggered grenades in the furniture just in case), we can probably get a first impressions discount or even a 2 or 3 die stunt without much trouble.

Assuming "find & talkies" fails the backup plan is to post a bunch of crew in different cities all over the planet with always-on com-beads and tracked 24/7. Given medevial-type cities and a two hundred crew we should get within an hour or two warning of the start of the wight-pocalypse. Then it's just a short 15-45 minute reentry to hover our ship a kilometer or two over the affected city, a minute to beam up our crew, then proceed to vaporize the city and anything trying to flee. Ugly, but better than letting our new market get trashed before we wring out all the profit.

1a. Gun Whore Bob's answer will be burn down/tricorder scan all the haystacks. Send people to track down and do that with the grain. If the needle is found it's gun muzzle diplomacy (the lich loses vs GWB's dropping a hero point to win initative,10k6 reroll 1s is 99.9% to hit lich's 27 defense and resilience 5 x hp 7 is 35 damage to one hit KO which is... huh, 5k5 from the lascannon is only a 30% chance for that. Well we can have some of our troops roast him with common lasguns too. About 85% hits, 96% one wound and 80% two wounds. Well looks like it only takes six or so mercs catching the lich in the ooen to burn it down with full-auto laser fire anyways. Risks of being a glass cannon I guess.

Of course GWB can't really do anything about an army of wights. With only 100 troops, a tyrannosaur, AT-ST, and vehicles it's time to get out of Dodge if negotiations fail. Luckily modern antigrav transport is good for getting far enough ahead and into a defrndible spot to let us ritual cast gate over 6-8 tries (there's an extra check going where you haven't been before) to pop over to another habitable planet/moon in the system. If the ship they took to get here is still likely to be in system that would be the first choice. Luckily paying for express shipping is well within Gun Whore Bob's ability.

2. Paranoia Paranoid Bob is screwed.
Edit: perversity is a meta resource in Paranoia. You gain more for making people laugh and double for hilariously dying. In exchange, before any roll, you can spend it to increase or decrease the die roll. At an actual table game there can be perversity bidding wars during debriefing. As GM this is hilarious so I'm pretty generous with handing out perversity. Paranoid Bob will utterly burn through it to make critical rolls here since it's a "solo game".
Been sent OUTSIDE alpha complex for the first time ever. With a R&D mad science techno bag that came with the instructions for how to operate a forklift, some orange laser barrels, a few grenades, and an assortment of outdoor gear based on old pre-apocalypse TV advertisements, and an Outdoors skill of 1/20... PB is likely having issues handling just being in a place without 24/7 artificial lighting and flush toilets. There's a non-zero but not great chance to make an electromagnet if materials are available. About as good a chance of Bootlicking the lich into agreement if they could find it in time. Then handling a wight/zombie apocalypse... actually with a 10/20 Pharmacy skill, but no, this would almost certainly fall under Bioweapons. If and only if PB could find the needle, identify it as connected to an insane A.I., then PB's strong Hacking and Cause Memory Overflow skills would come into play.

But all that's disregarding really important stuff. Namely, what do his work group and secret society want? PURGE wants anything likely to screw the Computer, and a zombie apocalypse virus counts. Although fragging another computer AI or trying to mind-meld the insane o e into the Computer would be a good thing too. HDP&MC... Without other troubleshooters to screw over I'd say... Heck I dunno. Honestly though this is looking a lot like a time to take the very very happy pill and hit the big red button on the "in case of emergency" standard issue outdoor survival box. The one with the radiation warnings and "minimum safe distance: 30 km" label on it.

3. Traveller Traveling Bob is reasonably well situated for this. It's basically first contact with a lost colony type situation. There's been an incident with the natives an an "immortal regenerating skeletal wizard" is causing issues. Step one, scan scan scan the area and planet for advanced power sources, transmissions, and radioactivity. Step two, explore the precursor civilization ruins. Step three, computer play or socialize with the A.I. We may end up needing to use our jack-of-all-trades skill to MacGyver up some quick explosives once we've found the specific mechanisims of function here.

If we assume failure we're still well positioned for the wight-apocalypse. Since this is hard-ish sci-fi without magic the lab ship & medical stuff is well positioned to deal a virus, nanotech, or really with anything short of pure psychic mind control (and even that's not off the table as there exist psi-blocker drugs, just not sure if a lab ship could make enough to matter). Almost runs like the Chamax Plague adventure. Of course there'll be the inevitable escape of a specimen into the access tubes. But as that's a classic adventure featuring a lab ship too and TB has been around in this lab ship for a while. Well we've been there before and have a nice lock down & vent atmosphere protocol saved in the computer. Plus carbine-3 is a really really good shot.

Moar edit: just reread the "GM eyes only" stuff. No real changes except if the characters get into talking to the lich which
Diplomat Bob freaking hires it to do magic research. Give it a nice cabin, transport it to a nice civilized Aztechnology research lab, let it do it's thing. I mean "we'll give you a competent loyal assistant who will write up monthly reports on how it's going, we'll monetize any interesting discoveries and you get a cut that we can just plow back into your budget if you like, if you don't want to work with us I can just transport you and your whole lair to some place these rubes can't bother you". Heck, trading out a cargo hold for a strong immortal spellcaster ally on your ship is a pretty good option too.

Gun Whore Bob offers to gate the lich anywhere in the system. Anywhere. We can put up the portal in your lair and my troops will just move everything through for you. No really, my boys love missions where they get paid and nobody is trying to kill them. No I won't sell Bun Bun, he may be a six ton, barely house broken, irritable apex predator, but he's the company mascot.

Paranoid Bob... is still pretty screwed. Next clone please.

Travelling Bob probably doesn't change much. The issue is likely the locals poking around in the ancient ruins and disturbing the A.I., which is probably an entire installation. The only hope would be logically proving that the A.I. was just a machine that wouldn't do anything if left alone, to a bunch of religious, witch burning, zealots. So, no hope of compromise. Looks like the wight/zombie apocalypse is upon them. Hope the medical tech and skills are up ti finding a fix.

Quertus

2023-03-27, 08:26 AM

This seems a good time to talk about expendable resources, which are, if not at the heart, then perhaps at the kidneys of the "Voltron Solutions" concept.

Part of what started this thread was the 3e-centric concept of "X is a problem? Oh, you can just buy Y and Z, now your problem is solved." And, yes, ostensibly at least, the specific feel under investigation is one where Y and Z were not explicitly designed to work together, neither was designed with X in mind, but it happens that you can put them together to solve X. Like... using a Decanter of Endless Water and a Scroll of Wall of Stone to make a dam to power a waterwheel to grind bones to make your bread to deal with an undead labor shortage or something.

Anyway, the most common / most obvious expendable resource is Wealth. D&D has "real wealth", discretely tracked units of money, which are directly tied to both "character power" and "solutions"... at least in 3e, and in all editions for the purposes of this challenge. Which is a little odd. Other systems may use discrete wealth, or may have an abstract "wealth stat", where, even if you have nothing left to spend today, you might be able to purchase the most expensive item of your character's career tomorrow, for no other reason than because your wealth reset. Other systems may or may not tie character wealth to character power... and, if we're being fair, perhaps such things should be tied together in this challenge; perhaps a WoD character ought to be able to make wealth rolls to purchase Talismans / Relics / etc. I'll have to think about that. (Another wrinkle is, most of my characters explicitly aren't in their home system / home world anymore. I'll have to give this more thought.)

Spending Wealth requires time and location - you have to be at the right place, and you have to have enough time to make the purchase. And, in some systems, even if you have the time and the money, getting what you want isn't guaranteed.

Next is Experience. A 3e character can spend experience to create magic items (power/solutions). A point-buy character can spend experience to directly increase their innate power. A Marvel character can spend experience to alter die rolls. A Shadowrun character can spend experience to influence/befriend spirits. A Paradox character can treat experience like another currency.

Spending Experience... is trickier. Maybe it requires time. Maybe it requires "a coincidence". Maybe it requires "Training". Maybe it requires "research". Maybe it requires "an inciting event". Maybe it requires GM permission. Maybe it happens automatically. There's not much to generalize here.

Probably the next most common resource is Luck. IIRC, FATE has a whole tempo based on expected Luck usage. The way I'm playing Paradox 2e has a similar tempo with Luck === Mana. But most systems use a "refresh and expend" system rather than a "build and flood" system of luck.

Then there's a whole bin full of things like good will, street cred, and favors.

There's also resources we don't usually think of in the same way, like Health, Mana, and Ammo. And rare resources like Stamina or Focus (or whatever Lina Inverse calls it, that ability to handle multiple tasks / spells / whatever at once).

But I think the point is, Wealth and Experience are the two resources most likely to allow the character to look outside their limited character sheet at a potentially huge range of abilities, to add them as options to solve a particular problem.

And I'm bored. Thoughts?

Satinavian

2023-03-27, 08:52 AM

Experience is tricky because for point buy that basically amounts to "I only build the character after i know the challenge". And that runs very much counter to the whole setup.
I am pretty sure that the the opening post has unspent xp only as a crafting budget and i think we should keep in the spirit of this.

I propose that characters do get unspent xp similar to the D&D concept but are only allowed to use it to fuel abilities if such a use in the system exists, never to purchase any permanent character modifications to overcome the special challenge after knowing the details.

And yes, that means that a SR caster can't learn new spells during the challenge.

As for use of wealth, well, some systems have rules for it and treat it as character ability. That should work. For other systems, well, the 9th level D&D character is still wealthy, so it is difficult to demand everyone else is poor.
But i would suggest that equipment that is not bought before knowing the challenge be limited in rarity to what makes sense to buy in the scenario as detailed. Which for generic scenarios should preclude any system specific items.

animorte

2023-03-27, 09:26 AM

I know I haven't run my characters through the challenge yet, but I was in a similar mindset about the concept of wealth while creating my characters and focusing on the difference between what one could potentially have available at that level as opposed to what one starts with. I ultimately decided on just leaving my starting gold. Just outright buying resources won't be as simple an option for me and my PCs because it's not a part of their build to be wealthy.

Sure they still have that option, but I was fully planning to reference my relevant source books for the information on what is available to me based on what I have left.

InvisibleBison

2023-03-27, 09:35 AM

This looks like an interesting experiment/challenge/experience. I'm sorry to have missed the first round, but I think I'll make some Blades in the Dark characters for subsequent weeks. Given how integrated the Blades mechanics are to its setting, I'm not sure how well they'll do, but that's kind of the point of the puzzle, isn't it?

solidork

2023-03-27, 05:45 PM

Skills:
Secret Agent 4 - Run. Jump. Shoot. Brawl. Drive. Pilot. Sabotage. Lie. Look good in a suit.
"The name's Bond. James Bond." 2 - Catchphrase for making an impactful first impression, often for seduction or intimidation.
Cool 2 - This is gives a penalty to anyone who tries to directly mess with Bond.

Affliction: Gadgets - It's a law of the universe that James Bond happens to have just the right gadget for whatever insurmountable problem he's faced with.
Bond: "I am driven to become romantically entangled with dangerous women." - Bond gets a boost to his seduction when there is competition or a good reason why they shouldn't be together. When this tendency gets him in trouble, he gets a boost of resources to spend on doing things.

Bonus Perks:
Power Up: Secret Agent - 2x per scenario Bond can treat his Secret Agent skill as a level 2 Superior Skill, letting him push it to superhuman levels.
Chi-Boost - 1x day Bond can spend an MP to get a +2 tool bonus to a skill he has at least 2 points in.
Extra Tough Health level.

Will: 8
Health: 2 Normal, 3 Tough

Bond goes into see M and she gives him the lowdown on the scenario and says to stop by the armory because Q has something for him. He gets down there and witnesses a normal looking horse breathe some fire, but Q tells him that isn't ready yet and pulls out some glasses. These Spectral Spectacles reveal the current and past presence of the undead - you'd be able to follow a ghost all the way across the kingdom if you needed to. Bond pockets them and then takes his normal horse out of the stables and heads to this farm.

(The nitty gritty details of how Bond's "Gadget" affliction stipulate that he generally acquires them in this fashion, but in a pinch a device he's already got could reveal an unexpected feature. The miracle that creates these things is limited to 1-2 invocations per scene and is entirely in the hands of the GM to decide when it happens. This also makes it very difficult to take away his gizmos - a miracle will intervene if you think to try and take off his watch and you've got to beat it with another miracle.)

The way actions work in Chuubos is that you take your Skill, spend some will (in amounts of 1 2 4 or 8, spending 4 or 8 injures you) add them together and consult this chart - you're guaranteed everything up to the level you hit. Difficult situations might level a penalty. You get 1 spent will back when you're done doing the thing.

0 - You attempt to do the thing, but only make it worse.
1 - Use your Skill in such a fashion as to please yourself and make yourself happy.
2 - accomplish a task; have a tangible impact on the world.
3 - do something "correctly"; impress people
4 - do something effective - something that moves you closer to your goals.
5 - do something productive - something that makes your life better.
6 - do something that looks dang good - impressive, dramatic or cool
7 - do something really effective, moving you a lot closer to your goals.
8 - do something really productive - it will make your life a lot better.
9 - do the "right thing", for some fuzzy definition of right.

Normal:
Bond rides out to the farm and meets with the farmer. Bond might flirt with his catchphrase, but he's only going to spend one will so there's just some good sexual tension. Bond applies his Spectacles and spends 2 Will with his Secret Agent skill to start locating the needle - there's a level 1 obstacle since the farmer wore it and has been all over the place. The GM might make Bond take a couple of days to search the whole farm, and bond might make some XP actions foreshadowing the stacks or comforting the farmer when he tells them the truth about what the Lich is and is doing. He uses his Secret Agent skill and some Will to evaluate if the Lich has got some plan for when the phylactery is broken - he doesn't think so. He breaks it and rides off into the sunset.

Medium:
Same as above, except he uses his Chi Power to boost his intention to 8 and claim "move a lot closer to his goals" so he can easily follow the trail of the needle carried by the bird. He still doesn't think the Lich has a failsafe so he breaks the needle.

Hard:
This time he's sure that the Lich is ready to get revenge if he's destroyed so he waits for the Lich to reform. Some stats for the Lich:

Skills
3 Necromancer
3 (Superior) Undead
2 Evil Overlord

Bond: I'm driven to uncover the secrets of death.
Affliction: I must return from death as long as my phylactary exists.

Bond pulls out all the stops to convince the Lich that the kingdom has agreed to his demands (4 skill + 4 will + 2 Chi boost - 1 Obstacle = 9), the Lich does his best to see through the ruse (2 Skill + 4 Will - 2 Bond's Cool) but doesn't stand a chance. Even if he nearly killed himself by spending all 8 will, he still wouldn't see through it because of Bond's Cool. The Lich can send the message without depleting his Will any further (I"m saying its Obstacle 2 for a Necromancer to speak through one of their minions).

At this point Bond needs to keep the Lich from sending the signal to kick of the Wights, and the GM honors his Affliction and tells him that his Glasses also function to disrupt Necromantic magic; he starts doing so with a level 6 intention (4 Skill + 2 Will). Since the Lich only has 4 Will left he can't send the message or do anything fancier like become ethereal and escape. He doesn't have any relevant skills to physically overpower Bond or escape the mundane way so he gets a silver hand crossbow bolt to the head and the kingdom is saved.

Conclusion: Having a level 4 Skill and a way to add applications to it on the fly is very powerful, as expected. If I had made his Bond something like "I'm driven to use my Gadgets to protect the Realm" he'd be able to easily take on most things that aren't miraculous.

Also, using Chuubo's rules is going to make pretty much every spell caster much weaker than they would be in just about any other system. In Chuubo's magical always faces an obstacle, so if something can be accomplished without magic then you're much better off. If you're a Fire Mage, lighting a candle is likely going to cost your resources unless you're a "professional" (level 3). You can't fling fire around in combat reliably without hurting yourself unless you're a once in a generation talent (level 4), or you've got a Bond or a Tool to help you.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-27, 06:05 PM

Bond goes into see M and she gives him the lowdown on the scenario and says to stop by the armory because Q has something for him. He gets down there and witnesses a normal looking horse breathe some fire, but Q tells him that isn't ready yet and pulls out some glasses. These Spectral Spectacles reveal the current and past presence of the undead - you'd be able to follow a ghost all the way across the kingdom if you needed to. Bond pockets them and then takes his normal horse out of the stables and heads to this farm.

(The nitty gritty details of how Bond's "Gadget" affliction stipulate that he generally acquires them in this fashion, but in a pinch a device he's already got could reveal an unexpected feature. The miracle that creates these things is limited to 1-2 invocations per scene and is entirely in the hands of the GM to decide when it happens. This also makes it very difficult to take away his gizmos - a miracle will intervene if you think to try and take off his watch and you've got to beat it with another miracle.)

The way actions work in Chuubos is that you take your Skill, spend some will (in amounts of 1 2 4 or 8, spending 4 or 8 injures you) add them together and consult this chart - you're guaranteed everything up to the level you hit. Difficult situations might level a penalty. You get 1 spent will back when you're done doing the thing.

0 - You attempt to do the thing, but only make it worse.
1 - Use your Skill in such a fashion as to please yourself and make yourself happy.
2 - accomplish a task; have a tangible impact on the world.
3 - do something "correctly"; impress people
4 - do something effective - something that moves you closer to your goals.
5 - do something productive - something that makes your life better.
6 - do something that looks dang good - impressive, dramatic or cool
7 - do something really effective, moving you a lot closer to your goals.
8 - do something really productive - it will make your life a lot better.
9 - do the "right thing", for some fuzzy definition of right.

Normal:
Bond rides out to the farm and meets with the farmer. Bond might flirt with his catchphrase, but he's only going to spend one will so there's just some good sexual tension. Bond applies his Spectacles and spends 2 Will with his Secret Agent skill to start locating the needle - there's a level 1 obstacle since the farmer wore it and has been all over the place. The GM might make Bond take a couple of days to search the whole farm, and bond might make some XP actions foreshadowing the stacks or comforting the farmer when he tells them the truth about what the Lich is and is doing. He uses his Secret Agent skill and some Will to evaluate if the Lich has got some plan for when the phylactery is broken - he doesn't think so. He breaks it and rides off into the sunset.

Medium:
Same as above, except he uses his Chi Power to boost his intention to 8 and claim "move a lot closer to his goals" so he can easily follow the trail of the needle carried by the bird. He still doesn't think the Lich has a failsafe so he breaks the needle.

Hard:
This time he's sure that the Lich is ready to get revenge if he's destroyed so he waits for the Lich to reform. Some stats for the Lich:

Skills
3 Necromancer
3 (Superior) Undead
2 Evil Overlord

Bond: I'm driven to uncover the secrets of death.
Affliction: I must return from death as long as my phylactary exists.

Bond pulls out all the stops to convince the Lich that the kingdom has agreed to his demands (4 skill + 4 will + 2 Chi boost - 1 Obstacle = 9), the Lich does his best to see through the ruse (2 Skill + 4 Will - 2 Bond's Cool) but doesn't stand a chance. Even if he nearly killed himself by spending all 8 will, he still wouldn't see through it because of Bond's Cool. The Lich can send the message without depleting his Will any further (I"m saying its Obstacle 2 for a Necromancer to speak through one of their minions).

At this point Bond needs to keep the Lich from sending the signal to kick of the Wights, and the GM honors his Affliction and tells him that his Glasses also function to disrupt Necromantic magic; he starts doing so with a level 6 intention (4 Skill + 2 Will). Since the Lich only has 4 Will left he can't send the message or do anything fancier like become ethereal and escape. He doesn't have any relevant skills to physically overpower Bond or escape the mundane way so he gets a silver hand crossbow bolt to the head and the kingdom is saved.

With the power of narrative logic james bond is unstoppable!

As for the discussion on wealth i guess it depends. Since 1 4th of my build is relent on it i feel fine using it. Since everything is at a legendary level (6d6) i feel fine with using it willy nilly.

Telok

2023-03-27, 09:30 PM

Re: wealth & xp

In all the systems I'm checking for "xp" or the skill ups you get for survival/success is all fooled with between game sessions. So there's no "middle of the session" stuff going on.

Paranoia doesn't truly care about money. Everything belongs to the Computer and thought crime to the contrary is all commie propaganda. Gear is assigned, R&D is insane, voulnteer mandatory bonus duty stuff is locked in. Besides, the IR/black market is typically inaccessible once the mission starts because, well, it's treason and so is walking off alone. Ok, walking off alone isn't technically directly treason, but it's a really really good way to get framed for everything and that's the same thing.

Traveller uses money but you're looking at basic (if high teched) civillian stuff at the level these things care about. A 40 year mortgaged 30 million credit spaceship is a plot driver & enabler, not a pile of fungible cash burning a hole in your pocket. Heck, the useful but dumb robot helper was new luxury car levels of money and involved near five years of savings to buy outright. Good luck getting a better one on mortgage with 5% down in less than two weeks of shopping and negotiations. Plus these scenarios generally happening on more primitive planets will pretty heavily limit what you can usefully buy.

Dungeons the Dragoning tho... well that's a abstract wealth system but it's still limited by what's available and how long it takes to find stuff. Suffice to say it's likely not an issue in these scenarios. Nobody's selling magic items in a market this game anyway. The least artifact would cost as much as the best quality power armors and strain even a max wealth character to their limits, in addition to taking months (years if the hero isn't personally doing the looking personally) and needing a 10 million+ population major metropolis. Sure, Gun Whore Bob might be willing to trade that AT-ST for a favor and throw a few bags of gemstones around, but "buy a castle and noble title on an undeveloped backwater world without indoor plumbing" isn't very important or useful to that character.

NichG

2023-03-27, 10:58 PM

As far as spare build points in point based system, I think what would fit the spirit of the experiment would be amounts around the order of 'what you'd expect to have sitting around while you wait to buy the next expensive thing'. So e.g. if this were WoD Mage and you were saving to afford Arete 4 and then randomly a situation dropped that might require spending some XP, you'd have between 0 and 30xp saved. But you wouldn't generally expect to have like 80 points sitting around fallow.

As to the specific scenario responses, looks good, this is the sort of thing I wanted to see! For cases where there are details you'd like to know but I didn't provide, feel free to improv them (like why that idiot killed the lich during the negotiations and what was up with him, or how the kingdom knew about the phylactery but not exactly its location). For reference, the excuses I'd give as a GM would be 'yeah, that guy was a Pelorite plant' and 'Legend Lore was used on the lich and it gave something similar to the fable of Koschei the Deathless e.g. the soul is in a needle inside an egg inside a duck inside a hare inside a log on an island in an ocean, kinds of vague nonsense'.

For those who have run a lot of characters, do you think you could categorize the feel of thinking through the scenario across those characters/systems? Any hints of different quantifiable aspects of systems in that regard yet? It might be a bit early since there's five more to go...

Quertus

2023-03-27, 11:19 PM

Experience is tricky because for point buy that basically amounts to "I only build the character after i know the challenge". And that runs very much counter to the whole setup.

I feel like you've just succinctly stated the point I was getting at, while simultaneously dismissing it.

The "Voltron" feel ostensibly under investigation in this thread quite literally entails, "which systems have a huge catalog of abilities that you can shop for after knowing the challenge?". Granted, it's bigger than that, in that it also includes "that weren't explicitly written for the purpose of handling such challenges" and "that you can combine to handle the challenge in unexpected ways".

AND, (IMO), with some consideration of what gameplay would look like at an actual table. Just because a D&D character could enter the adventure naked doesn't mean that anyone at an actual table would ever actually do so. Whereas XP is much more likely to be sitting around in potentially useful sizes at actual tables, IME.

So, I'm potentially tainting my own results, but I walked into this expecting that the results would probably look something like, "D&D has huge Voltron potential on paper, but I'm too clueless and lazy to use it, and most actual characters at actual tables aren't going to save up significant funds ahead of time unless it's to buy the next big thing;" "Even then, characters are unlikely to trade large quantities of (resources for) long-term power for short-term benefits in a single scenario;" and "MtG, played with towns selling cheap spells like D&D sells items has HUGE Voltron potential". And most other systems saying "... Vole what now?".

That said, I'm more interested in a holistic look at the differences in how systems feel than just the singular focus of Voltron ability that this thread was created to investigate, so I'm not really focused on that one little detail.

Which is why I made that big post asking about the concept of resources throughout systems, to see if my take on the general feel of such resources rung true. It was my mistake to ground it too much in the specifics of this comparison.

icefractal

2023-03-28, 01:11 AM

So having already read the first scenario before deciding to play, I'm going to use some existing characters rather than make one for this purpose.

The power level seems roughly equivalent to (somewhat optimized) mid-level D&D in terms of abilities. The character is an inorganic shapeshifter, think like the T-1000 or Plastic Man in terms of abilities, including the ability to include slightly-above-modern technology in their form. And being in a comic-book style world, probably ended up in fantasy-land through an unstable portal, needs help to get back, and is doing stuff like this in the meantime.

Finding the needle is the easy part. I can turn into a big octopus with hundreds of tentacles that end in metal-detectors, so searching the hay bales is easy. If it's not there, I can fly at fighter-jet speed to the places the wagons were sent and search there as well. IDK if I'd spot the farmer's guilt, but it won't change anything really - I don't have a way to talk to a bird.

But then what to do with the needle? I don't have a high opinion of someone who'd use mass destruction as a deterrent, so if I was sure the Lich had no failsafe I'd just break the needle on the spot, or shoot it into the sun if it's indestructible. But I'm used to supervillains who often have dead-man switches, so I'm assuming that's a possibility.

If I fight the Lich, it depends largely on initiative, and seems quite risky. If I go first (probably +10-15 initiative in D&D terms), then I could grapple quite well and cover his mouth in the process. No buffs and no items, so the Lich isn't immune, and then I'm good if he doesn't have something like a Silent Teleport. But since this is an obvious weakness of coming back from a phylactery, the odds of having something like that prepared are pretty good. Actually with no buffs and no items, I could quite possibly just re-kill him, but that just kicks the can down the road and solves nothing.

This is the part where in practice I'd ask the kingdom whether they have any Lich-containment measures, but since this is supposed to be about the character's capabilities I'll assume they can't help.

So then my plan (after consulting with a couple sages) is to fly out in space at least 3000 miles or so (with the needle). That won't stop Greater Teleport, but it will stop regular Teleport. Then I turn into a room with (what looks like) a couple people in it. One of them is the assassin who destroyed the Lich at the meeting, now chained up. The other is one of the kingdom's officials, holding a big sign saying "We Surrender! Don't destroy the kingdom!" I'm hoping that will buy me enough time to talk to the Lich and find out what his terms for not setting off the apocalypse are.

Can I convince the Lich? I don't know. My social skills are decent but not godly. I can be extremely intimidating, but the Lich is immune to that. I do at least have some useful leverage - I can launch his phylactery into the sun. I don't think I have that much to offer him (bodyguard during the next negotiation, I guess), so it's more stick than carrot. If he sets it off immediately without waiting to talk, I guess I can still use that leverage for learning where it's initiated from. Unless of course he immediately teleports away. In which case, needle goes into the sun, good luck surviving your next death *******.

So if that fails, we go to Plan B - stop the apocalypse. This is a lot easier if the Lich told me where the initial spreading point is, but if not then I fly around the kingdom like a spy plane looking for signs of combat within a town. Wights are about zero threat to me (immune to energy drain, and aside from that they're chumps) and only move at normal human speeds, so if I can get there fast enough then I can just destroy them all, though some people in town will die so it's not a complete win. If they manage to spread to multiple towns (and here I'll say that being 1-2 hours away out in space is in retrospect a bad move, but since I had no knowledge of how the signal worked it seemed reasonable) then I think I can probably still stop it, but a lot of people are going to die before that, so that's more like a qualified fail.

All that said, I'm not sure how much this says about Hero System. The character has the right conditions for this kind of scenario (a somewhat broad but not unlimited portfolio, lots of utility abilities) because that's the kind of characters I like making. Other characters of the same power-level could be nearly useless in the scenario, or have such universal capabilities it's not even interesting.

That took longer than I thought, will add some more over the next few days.

Telok

2023-03-28, 02:17 AM

For those who have run a lot of characters, do you think you could categorize the feel of thinking through the scenario across those characters/systems? Any hints of different quantifiable aspects of systems in that regard yet? It might be a bit early since there's five more to go...

Well, as I said I'm sort of trying to translate the scenarios into Paranoia & Traveller as best I can while keeping as close to the original and in the spirit of it. DtD40k7e is super easy as it's D&D 2e & 3e smooshed up with WH40k, WoD, and a bunch of other stuff.

On thought processes:
Paranoid Bob is likely near clueless about a bunch of stuff. Especially anything outside Alpha Complex (outdoor life @ 1). Combined with the usual partially accurate briefing, alternately terrifying or useless R&D gear, conflicting orders, inane gear requisitions from the commissary... PB is a walking comedy of errors trying to survive and make a few explosions happen, as is only right and good given the system. Thought processes are semi-anarchist oppressed worker drone given a gun, a limited license to kill, massively incomplete and possibly wildly inaccurate information, and will be punished for failure by different factions with conflucting priorities.

Traveling Bob is a 60ish year old professional scientist with a laboratory spaceship and a (very limited but very skilled & strong) robot pilot. This character's thoughts are easy. Basically modern western human with some access to advanced tech. This is very much a field archeologist / disease control front lines / "it works or people die" mechanical engineer type of science, not academia or stuck in a lab insulated from downstream consequences.

Diplomat Bob is a vampire dryad vice president of an interstellar megacorporation. This comes closest to qualifies for "alien though processes". But really it breaks down into pretty simple sets. 1. Immortal therefore seek to survive, tougher than regular people but weaker than dedicated combat exalts, requires blood. 2. Collect power, followers, & allies, long term planning is on the table. And that's basically it. The things that are super variant from standard faux-medieval fantasy tropes are being high in the power structure of a major corporation and a willingness (& ability) to drop a failing situation and walk off without regret of blowback. So angle anything for personal long term advantage if possible and early exit if things go south, but has access to the resources of a megacorp for longer term planning.

Gun Whore Bob is pretty close to a traditional faux-medieval fantasy trope adventurer. More tech, more anti-grav moving vans, but basically similar to a high level AD&D fighter/specialist wizard (super mounts, magic items, elite troops, golf bag of weapons, great at hitting stuff).

The "AD&D" bit is important, before WotC wizards didn't (default rules) get automatic known spells, fast or flexible slots or recharge, unlimited potential, or easy access to new spells & magic item creation. GWB has five locked in spells and the two highest aren't foolproof. I do have rules for permanent enchantments and demon summoning, but those are 3-6 weeks or 1100-1300 hours of work per instance because GWB isn't optimized that way (even then you aren't getting them under a week or two for a mid range demon or 500 hours for a basic simple permanent spell).

What GWB does have is wealth, but the DtD40k7e wealth rules make rustling up useful stuff on primitive planets mostly impossible. Buy people off with gold bricks? Easy. But like the first scenario? It'd only be any real use buying a bunch of grain at a few markets (and that's just being nice about it & not taking it at gun point). The trucks to hop over to the next town at 75 mph and haul it in were way more important.

Edit: I think what I mean is that since these aren't straight combat scenarios you look at your characters "resources" and what they mean in the game narrative that's backed/promoted by the system mechanics, then you bring those to bear on the issue. So like a 9th level straight D&D fighter with just magic armor & weapons and good "can fight" resource is basically hosed. But if the character has a a noble title and is buddy-buddy with Gandalf/Elminster they have a chance if the system allows those things to have mechanical weight like you'd expect from a story narrative. If the system says all your non-"can fight" resources are roll 11+ on a d20 for personal skill, a npc commoner "squire", and the ability to talk to the mighty mage if you can find them (roll) and get to them in time (roll) and convince them (roll), then you're back to being hosed.

This means games that give you world connections to powerful individuals or factions and enforce that through actual mechanics are going to potentially have an outsized influence on the scenarios over basic "I have personal power". On the other hand we have supers games with ultra flexi powers and sillyness (if you assume an idiot savant GM who never says no) like dumping all your points into a 'luck' power, or some versions of D&D spell casters (3.5e - scroll of limited wish to psychic reformation to 50xp per level rewritten of feats skills and learned spells).

NichG

2023-03-28, 02:48 AM

Hm, I meant more like the player side, like... From what people have said so far I might identify four broad categories:

- The process is that the player decides how they will succeed (within a framework of constraints) and creates that directly, e.g. freeform powers, dramatic editing, etc. I'd expect the feel to be like 'make it up' improv.
- The player searches for a way to succeed in an external predefined set of elements and combinations which they can get access to. I'd expect the feel to be like engineering or charop.
- The player asks the dice if/how they succeed - what happens is not within complete control, or intentional sacrifice of control is fundamental. Feels like gambling, being surprised, ...?
- The player can mostly only make the decisions that would determine success or failure before they have the relevant information for those decisions, e.g. 'for a given character, the scenario decides if they succeed or fail more than the gameplay does'. Feels like... watching a Rube Goldberg device, simulation, etc unfold? Dunno...

The category probably applies more to particular builds than systems, but systems might have tendencies here as well given the responses so far.

Curious if there are others? Different breakdown? Are these corellated with the feel of solving the scenario at all?

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-28, 03:32 AM

Quertus

2023-03-28, 09:19 AM

Well, as I said I'm sort of trying to translate the scenarios into Paranoia & Traveller as best I can while keeping as close to the original and in the spirit of it. DtD40k7e is super easy as it's D&D 2e & 3e smooshed up with WH40k, WoD, and a bunch of other stuff.

And that has been a blast to read! :smallbiggrin:

I took the opposite approach, of magic is magic, because that's what I'm used to.

For those who have run a lot of characters, do you think you could categorize the feel of thinking through the scenario across those characters/systems? Any hints of different quantifiable aspects of systems in that regard yet? It might be a bit early since there's five more to go...

Hm, I meant more like the player side, like... From what people have said so far I might identify four broad categories:

- The process is that the player decides how they will succeed (within a framework of constraints) and creates that directly, e.g. freeform powers, dramatic editing, etc. I'd expect the feel to be like 'make it up' improv.
- The player searches for a way to succeed in an external predefined set of elements and combinations which they can get access to. I'd expect the feel to be like engineering or charop.
- The player asks the dice if/how they succeed - what happens is not within complete control, or intentional sacrifice of control is fundamental. Feels like gambling, being surprised, ...?
- The player can mostly only make the decisions that would determine success or failure before they have the relevant information for those decisions, e.g. 'for a given character, the scenario decides if they succeed or fail more than the gameplay does'. Feels like... watching a Rube Goldberg device, simulation, etc unfold? Dunno...

The category probably applies more to particular builds than systems, but systems might have tendencies here as well given the responses so far.

Curious if there are others? Different breakdown? Are these corellated with the feel of solving the scenario at all?

I dropped a knife back behind my stove. Can I reach it? Hmmm... is there a different approach that will let me reach it? Do I have any tools I can use to reach it? Can I get any tools to reach it? Borrow? Buy? Maybe I could ask someone with smaller hands / longer arms? Can I move the stove? ... Do I really care about that knife?

Most characters in most systems, including the poster <Quertus> IRL, you start with what is familiar and in-character, the atomic button presses that the character is accustomed to using. When those fail, you "get creative", evaluating less common buttons, combinations of buttons, the environment, resources you are willing to expend.

Because I'm running too many characters, I've kinda done a poor job of explaining all the details, like how different characters have different amounts of Knowledge, and how that affects their options (although, in the recent scenario #1, it seemed that the briefing covered most of the basics, and this didn't matter as much).

That said, I guess I can make a few comments and predictions.

Let's start by discussing Voltron Focus(?) and Character Growth

The characters who felt like they were shopping through a big catalog of options included the MtG Elven Chronomancer, M&M - Omni-Wizard, and Paradox Cutter Fyord. In MtG, I gave myself a limit on each card, attempting to optimize each atomic action, whereas in M&M, there was a total budget limit at any given time, and definite demands on that budget. Paradox, the catalog seems like a blank check, but is limited by the character's experience and imagination (and no other players seemed to understand how to use the system as safely or effectively as I did, so the character seems like some mad prodigy, safely casting dangerous Wild Magic to safely cast Wishes, to put it in D&D terms). The 3e D&D Wizzard Whizzy definitely felt that there was a catalog of options outside their own personal ability; however, aside from a Potion of Glibness that they never used, they didn't really touch that catalog in the Needle in a Haystack challenge #1.

In both the MtG Elven Chronomancer and 3e D&D Wizzard Whizzy, there's a definite sense that purchases of spells can lead to a permanent increase in the character's options moving forward (which is why the MtG Mage looks at the cost of each individual card, and the value of adding it to their infinite sideboard). OTOH, when the M&M - Omni-Wizard summons things, it can lead to a temporary (cannot summon again for a while if they die) or permanent (HOUSE RULE and RP - summons treated poorly (and their "relatives" and "neighbors") might be unfriendly on future summons) reduction in options. Paradox Cutter Fyord has a completely different set of concerns, as he's looking at how badly he's going to mess up the world, how bad things would be if turned against him, and what options are going to ensure he never ends up in a fight. Or something of that ilk.

Speaking of character degradation over time, John Faseman of Marvel has felt depressingly like the world is eating away at him, rather than that he's making progress, as these scenarios have definitely had much more potential for loss of Karma (XP) than for actual karmic gains. There's probably a reason he retired to be a Guild Master in a fantasy world.

One could argue that 2e Cleric of D&D Arma has the most access to catalogs of options, having both spells and items to pick from by the rules of this comparison, yet, by virtue of my experience with 2e, it feels much more appropriate to focus on individual atomic actions. So the options are there, but the feel isn't. But that's almost certainly a "me" thing, and might change by the end of this. And, from the meta-scenario I set, Arma is very concerned with the growth or degradation of the world (such as it is); her concept of "personal growth" has largely been replaced with a sense of Community.

Similarly focused on individual atomic actions are the Shadowrun Troll Wizard and Warhammer - Mr. T. I expect this to remain true for Mr. T, but to craft options that result in a growth of character options for the Shadowrun character.

The Paradox Telepathic Vampire has a very strong focus on the Environment. Granted, that's not a system thing, but a character thing - he is definitely the character most interested in making friends / allies, and he's always wondering where he'll get his next meal. :smallbiggrin:

I'm sure Paradox Cutter Fyord seems OP enough that one expects that he feels like, "the player decides how they will succeed", but that's due to the nature of the challenges; in a "suddenly, 3 goblins!" scenario, Cutter would be panicking (although, since he's not naked, a sane player wouldn't worry until at least "suddenly, 3 orcs!", and wouldn't start panicking until something closer to "suddenly, 3 ogres!"). However, from the way I set the meta-scenario of the "Another World" video game up, the weakest of my entries, Alex Knight, the WoD shut-in, actually is in the OP "decide how he wins" setup of feel; even though he pretends he's looking through a huge catalog of options, it's just a coincidence for his inevitable victory.

So that just leaves WoD Harry tHH, M&M - Alex Daeus, and Star Trek - LtC Vir. Staltek Vir... really ought to think in terms of backup plans, if we were looking at things from either a system optimization or intelligent scientist perspective, but that's rarely the Star Trek way. Instead, they just "75+%? Yes." their way through anything that doesn't involve convincing the natives of anything. Which, for Star Trek technology on a primitive world, is kinda appropriate. However, they are (in effect) shopping through the small catalog of "tools I remember from Star Trek", as opposed to the "writer adds a new McGuffin every episode" / "write how you win" feel that many Star Trek episodes use. Harry the Happy Hermetic has a whole array of things he can do with his Spheres and skills; I'm just limited by the lack of the book and related lack of having actually built his character sheet. I know roughly what the character should be able to do, and built him as "75+%? Yes" for magic... except that I'm winging it for "but how many successes does he need?". So when playing him, I'm having him look for solutions that don't require big successes, where "simply succeeding" is enough. Arguably, all 3 characters are looking through the catalog named "Science!" for their solutions, even if they each got different, contradictory editions of that catalog.

The role (heh) of Chance in determining the outcome is an interesting question. I'm tempted to make some big chance / scenario / character / [resources (which is actually secretly a fancy defined interface for "Player Skill")] theory here, but let's save that for after we've gone through more scenarios.

First off, the nature of the thread, the "assume 75+% -> success, below that is failure" actually greatly biases any conversation about the role of chance in RPGs. Just wanted to get that out there. That said...

When it comes to the role of chance, the easiest for me to talk about here is the Paradox Telepathic Vampire. Paradox (1e) is a great system for teaching people the importance of planning / having backup plans / thinking on your feet when your first plan fails. So, really, chance less affects your chance of success (unless you're a moron), and more affects how you succeed, what success looks like the narrative progresses, BUT you can make "all roads lead to Rome" easily enough, to where it's more "which way you made it to your objective" (and what you gave up along the way).

Which isn't to say that Paradox couldn't be played as "single attempt, pass/fail", or that in other systems characters don't benefit from having backup plans and fallback plans and such. Just that IME Paradox is at the sweet spot for evoking such as intelligent behavior, of having good cost/reward ratio at the table.

Still on the same character, there's something of a meta-layer. That is, I went in with the "assume the GM will make you roll" mindset, in part because of the nature of the comparison. But (especially) things like negotiations are often handled through pure RP, with the GM simply roleplaying the Lich and asking themselves, "well, gee, how would the Lich respond to this offer?". (And these meta-concerns, of Knowledge:GM and table culture and wasting people's time is something I'll post about here in a bit, I imagine, senility willing, if I don't make it part of this post).

Some systems give the player some degree of control over when they succeed. The Good Karma of Shadowrun, the Hero Points of M&M, the Luck Domain or Fate of One of 3e D&D. Actually, M&M can even give the hero some control over when they fail / the challenges they face, as (for example) my M&M Alex Daeus gained a Hero Point in Challenge 0 by declaring the added complication that they couldn't build their heavy fortifications near the edge of the cliff. Marvel goes so far as to give characters the option for complete control over when they succeed, as they can always spend XP to make any roll.

Then we get to the flow of events. Some systems only have the concept of pass/fail, while others have the concept of degrees of success (which is something I usually HOUSE RULE into almost any system). Some systems have the concept of costs or side effects of the attempt, even if that's only time or resources as opposed to change in narrative state, but some bake the question of whether there are such costs or side-effects into the roll.

The narrative flow chart can be controlled by the GM, controlled by the player, controlled by the dice, or controlled by the scenario. Arguably, different systems lend themselves to different choices here.

But, again, the "75+% assume success" conceit of the thread throws this question into flux, as in practice in this thread, there is no chance, no real narrative flowchart of rolls once the characters and scenario are set.

In practice, IME, Paradox lends itself to having backup plans, where the narrative flows through the flow chart created by repeated failures until you reach an acceptable state from which to continue. Certain systems, like Warhammer, lend themselves to "have everyone roll / keep throwing guardsmen/bullets/dice at the problem until it goes away, someone's got to succeed" loops. D&D and Shadowrun can certainly be played that way. As the origin of Combat as War, it should come as no surprise that D&D lends itself to a mindset where you collect the tools or build up the bonuses to ensure that we never need to roll. One would think that the limited resources and costs of failure in WoD would produce a parody of an old commercial, where everyone is standing around saying I don't want to use my power, he's your friend, you use your power, but, in practice, it's more of a case of when all you have is a hammer narrative reframing commandeering the flow. Which is definitely how my Shadowrun and Warhammer characters have felt thus far. In general, I'd say that characters in most systems are incentivized to attempt solutions where the fail states most likely return you back to the initial start state before attempting solutions where the fail state degrades the game state whenever possible, all other things being equal.

And this is getting really long. Does it make any sense? Thoughts?

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-28, 09:40 AM

Lotta words that i partly understand. You certainly put more thought into it then me Quertus.

I'd say for my risus character it was mostly about coming up with a plan then figuring out how that worked mechanically.

I needed to be able to talk to the lich so i hired watch men with teleport stones. I already discounted the possibility of having my gal find the needle.

Then i just needed to talk the lich down.

Step one hire guards with teleport stones.
Step two wait.
Step three use teleport stone.
Step four talk the lich down.

Very simple plan.

Mechanically it's 1, maybe 2 rolls to buy the equipment and manpower (depending on whether the gm separated the two purchases)

Then a simple social combat.

Essentially it's risus being itself. A really rules light game.

Telok

2023-03-28, 10:32 AM

But, again, the "75+% assume success" conceit of the thread throws this question into flux, as in practice in this thread, there is no chance, no real narrative flowchart of rolls once the characters and scenario are set.

Yeah, the 75% thing is a bit of an issue for me. I'm not holding real hard to it because many things in most scenarios for my systems wouldn't be sort of one-off do or die checks.

While Traveller is full on simulation mode the game 2d6+skill+mods vs target is variable enough to confuse stuff, not in rolling but in setting those +1 & +2 mods. Like I recall a computer hacking in one adventure that was something around Computers vs 10, but +1 if Int was 9+ and +1 if Edu was 10+ and +2 if Admin skill was 3+ and auto success if you had five hundred credits plus Bribery vs something on the person who usually did the job. Throw in that there's multiple paths available at once and you get limited retries... there's a lot depending on how actual individual checks get described because there isn't a strongly set difficulty chart. Technically you'd need to get the rolls down to 5+ on the dice, but that's hard for near anyone on a lot of stuff and the game isn't really about one roll solutions.

Paranoia has an issue with the 75% because the game is aimed at being funny, not successful and there's no simulationist modifiers on the die rolls. It's "rule of funny" not "rule of cool". Plus the peversity... economy is way way too strong a word... Basically, unopposed, Paranoid Bob could own two rolls a scenario by spending peversity points. But you're supposed to be riffing around the table gaining & using them all session which requires multiple people, characters in conflict, and... well it's really subjective. But by that 75% thing the only thing Paranoid Bob can ever do is the matter eater mutation. Which admittedly does let PB safely consume & digest a nuclear submarine, given enough time, but makes the whole scenario about "how can we use one weird trick to win because everything else is 100% failure".

DtD40k7e is somewhere between those. It runs mostly simulation but has the exalt resources that are a sort of in universe metacurrency, plus the actual hero point meta currency, and then the stunting that's baked in. It's set for characters owning normal/hard stuff in their focus and going full cinematic action hero at critical moments to do impossible stuff. You can start off being a faction leader in Sigil with the Lady of Pain on speed dial and own your own pleasure planet, or be capable of solo fighting a tarrasque if you focus on that instead. But while being a faction leader or ultra rich has mechanics in the game they're along the lines of "stuff fitting X level of narrative appropriate stuff", plus you can roll it like a skill with hero points and stunting. I could have built GWB as a divination caster spamming luck & reroll spells plus stunting to hit the magic 75% on basically anything they try.

NichG

2023-03-28, 11:46 AM

The 1st 2 categories are probably the strongest for solving the challenges tbh. Given 1 is ultra flexible and the other is highly optimized.

Btw which one would you say if my risus character?

To me I would expect it to feel most like category 1 ('this is a creative writing exercise, I have to figure out a story about how being a rich ninja lets me find a lost object quickly'), with the next closest category being 4 (if e.g. the GM is very strict on how skill names are interpreted, or if you didn't give yourself sufficiently broad concepts, then it could become 'welp, I guess I just brought the wrong character, anyone else got anything?'). Even though dice are involved, and you don't get like infinite rerolls in Risus (because failures and successes change your dice pool sizes if I remember correctly?), I would expect that the bulk of the player's mental activity with regards to the scenario would be more of the 'I have to come up with a plausible story about how I make contact with this problem' rather than like 'Imma draw from the Deck of Many Things and hope a solutions presents itself'

How did your own mental process feel when working out the scenario?

I dropped a knife back behind my stove. Can I reach it? Hmmm... is there a different approach that will let me reach it? Do I have any tools I can use to reach it? Can I get any tools to reach it? Borrow? Buy? Maybe I could ask someone with smaller hands / longer arms? Can I move the stove? ... Do I really care about that knife?

Most characters in most systems, including the poster <Quertus> IRL, you start with what is familiar and in-character, the atomic button presses that the character is accustomed to using. When those fail, you "get creative", evaluating less common buttons, combinations of buttons, the environment, resources you are willing to expend.

...

And this is getting really long. Does it make any sense? Thoughts?

In a sense, if the 'catalog' is your character sheet, I might call that category 4 - did you bring the stuff that will be needed? No? Well you should have predicted it! If the catalog is actually some external concrete set of information that can be perused, like book diving for a polymorph form that will solve your problem or even 'actual MacGyver gameplay' in asking the GM what sort of junk is lying around the scene so you can use it to build a homemade metal detector (but only if the components happen to be around, otherwise you might end up with a homemade flamethrower or homemade grain sieve or whatnot) then that sort of dynamic is what I was thinking of as category 2. If on the other hand, you're the one who gets to determine what junk is lying around and you just need a consistent and plausible story about how random junk could make a homemade metal detector, its category 1.

So like, when you talk about the catalog of 'Science!', is that literally a source book that you're perusing, or is that license to come up with anything that feels Science!-like as long as the GM would find it thematically coherent, and the sense of it being a catalog is through e.g. treating the whole of sci-fi/fantasy literature as things you could point to and say 'yes this is thematically coherent'? Also, I can see how in general OP-ness leans towards 'the player decides how they will succeed', but the distinction (I was making) between that and category 2 would be whether that OP-ness is because some existing pathways already take you there and just need to be found, or whether you can literally write yourself that pathway and make it take forms that you think would be neat (as long as you can get the GM/table to agree). Like the difference between using the allowed safe uses of Wish in a solution (category 2), versus going outside of those safe uses and just trying to come up with a Wish that sounds sufficiently clever that the people at the table let it work (category 1).

Anyhow, the stuff about the cost/risk of stepping forward (character degeneration for actually engaging with the scenario, or needing to very carefully plot out all sorts of counterfactual what if scenarios because otherwise the system might crash you into a wall) does seem to be a pretty distinct feel. I could definitely see some systems where its like 'don't even take the first action unless you've thought through the entire flowchart' because of a combination of rising stakes, low possibility to ensure or predict outcomes, etc. I suppose another categorization, taking the 'cares about the environment' point a bit further, is characters/systems who are extremely dependent on the long-term construction of specific relationships or infrastructure or knowledge in the campaign's play space. So this would be sort of like category 4, except that rather than it being destiny once character generation/build choices are done, the game is sort of like 'you know that there will be difficult tests coming, how quickly can you build up the knowledge, favors, etc so that when those tests hit, you will have a solution?'.

For example if someone was running a character from Crusader Kings 3 or something like that, they could be quite able - but only if the scenario took place in their world with their politics and allies and conspirators and so on in place. Isekai them and they lose their biggest feature (having a hierarchy of people owing them fealty), because the game is actually about 'a race to prepare faster than the other guys' rather than 'how do we actually fight when we finally have to throw down?'.

Telok

2023-03-28, 01:23 PM

Hmmm. How the action process feels from a player perspective... that's mostly player based, but the exercise cares about how the system affects it?

I, personally, have two distinct modes that are mostly exclusive based on time. In play I like running through the character's point of view. What does the character want? What do they know and feel? What do they feel able to accomplish? Then that proceeds into my translating character direction into mechanical actions. Which honestly does screw some characters over in some games.

Example
I have a celestial warlock in a D&D 5e game. Happy go lucky, 10 int, 10 wis, not interested in dying but does like hanging out with friends and helping them. So as a mechanic the character has a number of spells & ability picks making his life safer and more comfortable. Means we're not running at full optimization. Still contributes but... the character has no knowledge skills, he isn't the type. Highest skills are deceive and stealth, everything else is a +0 to +5. So I totally pass on stuff like arcana checks even if I could mechanically throw d20+3d4 +advantage +reroll at it. He prefers to concentrate on protective buffs and barriers rather than just pump out max damage in combat. I could totally +150% more damage to match the fighter while pumping my own defenses even more and still throwing around heals & debuffs. But it's not in that character to be that way.

Part of the screw job for the character comes from D&D 5e skills. Around 80% of skill checks fail out (low bonuses vs 15-25 dcs and not bonus stacking to make it) so the character basically relies on magic 100% and only occasionally offers anything skill related. The character, based on the character's history, starts out assuming anything they aren't using magic on will fail. It is a sort of self fufilling prophecy for the character, but it came up out of the results of the mechanics because it wasn't in character to be optimized for skill checks. So while the character has the highest invstigation skill in the party (+5) they still go stand behind a solid object when anyone opens a suspicious door because that's where all the traps are (this campaign) and the investigation check usually misses them.

Second mode is outside game where I have an idea of what the character is, their past, and their future. Then I decide a goal or path and look for ways to mechanically make that happen given the rules. Sometimes I want to explore a particular quirk or edge case of the game, sometimes I'm just doing my "choose stuff for awesome/characterization based on it's name without parsing the rules first" system test, sometimes I'm full on pursuing the character's goals. I'm a computer programmer, my entire job is taking different sets of rules and playing them to produce a desired result, I'm not bad at that and it translates well into dealing with game rules.

These scenarios all basically occur in the first mode because they're "in play". So it's look at what the character wants & thinks. Then what they know & feel they can do with what they have. Then put that through into a mechanical expression. System doesn't really change any of that... well, it dictates what the character thinks can/will succeed based on the (in this case assumed) history of the character's actions. So say Paranoid Bob gets into a "talk at other people" situation and reverts to trying bootlicking and blame deflection because that's what the character's "history" indicates will keep PB alive and/or out of trouble. But it doesn't change to suddenly using chutzpah instead because a game mechanic says that unopposed PB can just declare victory once a session.

NichG

2023-03-28, 01:43 PM

These scenarios all basically occur in the first mode because they're "in play". So it's look at what the character wants & thinks. Then what they know & feel they can do with what they have. Then put that through into a mechanical expression. System doesn't really change any of that... well, it dictates what the character thinks can/will succeed based on the (in this case assumed) history of the character's actions. So say Paranoid Bob gets into a "talk at other people" situation and reverts to trying bootlicking and blame deflection because that's what the character's "history" indicates will keep PB alive and/or out of trouble. But it doesn't change to suddenly using chutzpah instead because a game mechanic says that unopposed PB can just declare victory once a session.

I'd think the system and choice of character would change the feel of that first mode though. Like, if the character you chose to play was a user of magic in a totally freeform magical system where you can invent new spells at any time by coming up with a new rhyme, I imagine that would feel different even in a completely character-POV perspective than if, say, the character was an allomancer from Mistborn and basically had one or two metals they could burn, which in turn might be different than if the character was a lawyer on retainer for the forces of hell and worked via devil's deals and infernal contracts and such...

Quertus

2023-03-28, 04:38 PM

Scenario 1.1 - A New, Deeper Layer of Hell

So, as I pointed out, Hell needs a new, deeper layer in which to house the soul of that Farmer Dude(tte). So let's evaluate which of my characters could make headway on that most important of quests.

OK, in theory, the same tech that destroyed the world could potentially be used to destroy Hell, and, if successful, Hell could theoretically be rebuilt with an additional layer. But it would be completely out of character for Arma to even make the attempt (unless Hell really pissed her off somehow...), and, even then, such an attempt would have to wait until, you know, after it was proven that it was even possible that the world could be recreated after its destruction.

That said, one could theoretically research custom spells to accomplish similar ends, and a True Dwoemer to create a demiplane of Hell doesn't sound unreasonable. So, this probably isn't exactly within her current reach... although IIRC my brother had ways to capture and torture a soul with less than this level of power, so the Farmer Dude(tte) could well be placed in a "temporary hell" until renovations to make a proper space for them can be completed.

Also also, "a soul" is trivially within Arma's purchasing power, if she just wanted to buy direct instead of using spells to solve her problems.

Um... planes don't work that way, right? Lawful planes don't just grow on trees, or change in number, or anything like that, right? That would totally upset all cosmic balance. I can't imagine Whizzy even trying. Although he might do "spell research"-adjacent actions just to try to understand what that would even look like.

That said, "eternal torture" is easily achievable in many ways without having to go through the impossible effort of creating a whole new layer of Hell for that explicit purpose.

... OK, this attempt would represent an evolutionary moment to rival any Pokemon, or even his past discoveries wrt Telepathy on golems, undead, robots, and the gods. If he were to dedicate the energy to using Telepathy on Planar matter, understand the nature of Soul Stuff, and Transcend the limitations of Telepathy into true Soul Manipulation, combining Mr. T's understanding of the nature of reality with his own incredible personal power, he would become a transcendent being, finally walking among the gods. And, you know, be able to build that layer of Hell on a hunger-inducing whim.

Cutter will need to take the L here. His knowledge of D&D tells him that layers of Hell are infinite in size, and he has no ability to accumulate the infinite mana necessary to attempt such a feat.

Um... out of the entire roster of Marvel FASERIP powers, I don't think there's anything whatsoever to actually do this. The absolute best I can possibly do is have John create a pocked dimension inside himself to act as an appropriate Hell for Farmer Dude(tte), or... perhaps... use Power Granting to grant a daemon on the current lowest level of hell the pocket dimension ability, and have their body serve as Hell's new sub-basement. Yes, that should do the trick. And thematically match things I've seen in multiple D&D modules. So, he just needs to gain the power (study a spell for) power granting. Winrar.

Bwahahaha! Finally, a challenge without a time limit (beyond that of a mortal lifespan)!

Except... there's certain explicit limits to what Shadowrun spells can do. Like, a grand total of a whopping 2 of them. And this probably breaks both of them.

I am a sad panda. :smallfrown:

Um... *if* someone else brought him there (he does have money...), and *if* the planes are made of matter... then he can quickly accomplish what a muggle with a shovel could do. So impressive.

<chuckles nervously> Well, of course this is possible... just not while maintaining all the protective spells necessary to survive being in Hell. So... maybe... maybe Transform 10 would be enough? Maybe Transform 10(5) Transdimensional (+1) Subtle x3? Just need to add a few flaws to the power (and HOUSE RULE that powers above the point cap before disadvantages are possible, if they're not (I think that's a Champions thing, not an M&M thing)) (and remove the HOUSE RULE that prevents going over PL 10 even for non-attack powers), and, sure, it'll work. Really.

I mean, power is power, it's all a matter of collecting and converting it. I guess this would theoretically be possible as a quest and custom ritual spell, involving sacrificing entire cities and droves of daemons to power the creation of a new realm?

In the grimdark of running Mr. T, the road to Hell - and the new Hell itself - would all be paved with the screams of the dead sacrificed to achieve this goal.

... huh. I can't think of anything.

Not happening. With years of study, and a small fleet of ships, it might be possible to research some way in which the planes the natives have access to interact with subspace or some other technobabble, but it's unlikely that they actually do interact with his technobabble in a meaningful way.

If Another World is taken as a literal video game, then it's as simple as creating new content for it... although the existing content won't necessarily interact with the new content in a coherent manner. OTOH, if taken in the spirit of being an actual different world, it would (presumably, AFB) require 6+ ranks of Spirit to accomplish such a task of expanding a spirit realm. So, I'm going with "long-term goal", not "currently achievable".

Not a chance.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-03-28, 08:50 PM

To me I would expect it to feel most like category 1 ('this is a creative writing exercise, I have to figure out a story about how being a rich ninja lets me find a lost object quickly'), with the next closest category being 4 (if e.g. the GM is very strict on how skill names are interpreted, or if you didn't give yourself sufficiently broad concepts, then it could become 'welp, I guess I just brought the wrong character, anyone else got anything?'). Even though dice are involved, and you don't get like infinite rerolls in Risus (because failures and successes change your dice pool sizes if I remember correctly?), I would expect that the bulk of the player's mental activity with regards to the scenario would be more of the 'I have to come up with a plausible story about how I make contact with this problem' rather than like 'Imma draw from the Deck of Many Things and hope a solutions presents itself'

How did your own mental process feel when working out the scenario?

I just thought "how do i solve this" then i thought of a plan then i just did it.

Quertus

2023-03-28, 10:29 PM

So like, when you talk about the catalog of 'Science!', is that literally a source book that you're perusing, or is that license to come up with anything that feels Science!-like as long as the GM would find it thematically coherent, and the sense of it being a catalog is through e.g. treating the whole of sci-fi/fantasy literature as things you could point to and say 'yes this is thematically coherent'?

Eh, "Science!" as I was using it is more... things like the mass, melting point, viscosity, and "visibility" of certain substances? Only some of them aren't "real". And, occasionally, instead of "Oh, obviously, I put a battery in the flashlight", I have to ask, "how would a <system> character think about this?", and get a "Oh, in character, they're probably more likely to power the device with the ambient neutrino emissions of the technobabble, or with the psychic energy produced by the screams of a thousand simps". Which is not "con GM with technobabble into accepting solution because it sounds plausible", so much as "convert coherent answer into technobabble of 'Science!' used by character".

In play I like running through the character's point of view. What does the character want? What do they know and feel? What do they feel able to accomplish? Then that proceeds into my translating character direction into mechanical actions. Which honestly does screw some characters over in some games.

Yeah, at some point I should definitely try and evaluate just how in character a lot of these choices feel, just how much solving problems in these various systems qualifies as roleplaying, and see if there's any useful data to be pulled from the results. Although the actual outcome might be dependent upon a few too many variables for my results to be useful. I guess we'll see.

Telok

2023-03-29, 01:01 AM

I'd think the system and choice of character would change the feel of that first mode though. Like, if the character you chose to play was a user of magic in a totally freeform magical system where you can invent new spells at any time by coming up with a new rhyme, I imagine that would feel different even in a completely character-POV perspective than if, say, the character was an allomancer from Mistborn and basically had one or two metals they could burn, which in turn might be different than if the character was a lawyer on retainer for the forces of hell and worked via devil's deals and infernal contracts and such...

Ah, hmm. That's just system feels then. Yeah different systems feel different, and not just in mechanical application.

I was checking out Stars Without Number, been hearing it referred to as a space opera game. Made some characters and they get skills described as "professional level" and "high tech armor ac 15" and descriptors like "veteran soldier". Oh, and a d6+2 hp & d20+3 vs ac attack for the warrior class... then look at the 'wolf' type generic pack predator with it's 2d8 hp, ac 14, d20+2 attack... Someone finally mentioned it was a OSR that basically ran as first level AD&D in space. Made a heck of a lot more sense then. See it's been described online & in the rule book and looked like, oh maybe Shadowrun in space type stuff, where chatacters start as competent professional adults. That was the feel from the descriptions and art. Based on 30+ years of gaming I started getting "this doesn't match the advertised product" vibes on the first test character. If it had been described and illustrated as teen neophytes who hocked the family space-cow for second hand space-armor and cheap space-swords facing their first space-dungeon, then I'd have expected something more like the system math told me was going to happen.

Game is very different in feel from the Shadowrun in space theme I'd seen described, and even further from something like Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e where you start out as recently become an immortal badass with optional veritech space fighter plane or similar. But that's really more the default power level of the games than any specific mechanical implementation.

Hmm... Now I'm thinking about how that compares to Paranoid Bob or my D&D 5e warlock who starts at the assumption that any form of mundane normal attempt at a solution begins at failure and needs exceptional boosts, special "beyond mortal skill" abilities, or rules shenanigans to become worth attempting...

So my original approach for Paranoid Bob's reaction to the first scenario was looking at it from the character's perspective of being a complete fish out of water (or, ya know, troubleshooter outside of Alpha Complex, same thing). On approach from a purely mechanical function those 25 perversity points let us metagame that PB will ace any two rolls (because there aren't any other players involved). That would let you own a hardware roll to MacGuyver a super science electromagnet and then use the matter eater mutation to eliminate the lich, with a sure roll left over for bootlicking or deflecting blame during debriefing or trying to accomplish a secret society goal. As run in an actual game with other players & characters involved PB would be doing the "Three Stooges with a stick of lit dynamite" dance (and trying to sabotage other people, and trying to avoid being sabotaged, and being darkly funny) unless pure luck intervened. But played serious (blasphemy!) on a pure mechanics level the character can have a real shot at success.

Yeah, I can see the mechanics giving a different feel based on how functional or reliable a particular chunk of a system is. A game with one subsystem that calls for multiple 50/50 rolls between you and success and another subsystem that's "it just works" with charges will feel different in action from a system where you bet metacurrency & risk to one-roll a whole scene or may have the "yes" answer if you can just fit bits of your character to the problem in the right way. I think that's more just a sort of "how helpless and whim-of-the-dice enslaved am I" feeling than anything related to actual processes. You just either mastered or lucked out chargen to avoid the more failure prone parts of your system, or else you're in a system where it's set up that a character can succeed through your actions with little need to "win" chargen. I may have been confused because my actual in-character decision process is basically the same no matter the system and that bit won't feel any different except maybe if I feel that having to roll the dice means the character is currently in a failure state.

animorte

2023-03-29, 02:22 AM

Scenario 1 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25741998&postcount=50)

My builds! (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25742029&postcount=52)

Alright, that makes sense. I had a particular affinity with animals on Panaka's original Risus build. Naturally I removed that, which would have been directly helpful. Anyway, moving on...

His very first thought, "why are these fools attempting to negotiate with a Lich?" Either way, he's got no problem heading directly to the scene alone, wasting no time. Upon arriving, he seeks out the farmer and whomever else with ease, but makes sure to go unnoticed in case of any red flags. All clear. Social game is nothing to write home about, but he'll offer to help in exchange for the information. This is probably a day's worth of work, provided the farmer accepts. If so, he will Sketch a basic farmhand skill relevant to the hay. If the farmer does not agree to this, Panaka will threaten to light everything on fire instead. If he gets the information about the bird, he will try to Sketch one of the bird's skills to bridge the gap, but success is not expected here. Otherwise, he can put together enough clues to figure out which way the needle went, Seek. And this is where we break up the difficulty...

Easy: He either finds the needle while helping out or burning through the haystacks. The latter has a solid chance of destroying the phylactery outright.

Medium: A full day's work wasted, he will waste another two days traveling to the marketplace and rest. Then he'll provide the same there as he did for the farmer, offer to help out. At this point, he's probably annoyed at the entire ordeal and a "freak accident" causes the lot to go up in flames. Of course, he stays well hidden for the occurrence so as not to be immediately suspected. He will also help out in the clean-up to see if he spots the needle, which may have been destroyed.

Hard: The needle probably being destroyed by now, he has no additional information on the Wightpocalypse, aside from the original negotiations. In fact, he likely assumes that everything has been dealt with and will head back to the kingdom the following day. (If he is suspected of the fire instance, he will not wait a day.) The Wightpocalypse will very likely happen in this instance, but if it's conveniently in the populated marketplace he happens to be in, those Wights are in for one heck of a time. He's got enough tricks, being extremely elusive and controlling the battlefield, this will be one for the books. If it is in another populated location entirely, he'll move that way to help out as soon as he hears about it, but there will be casualties.

Conclusion: If he needs to deal with the Lich at any point (unlikely), he'll attempt to calm the situation by offering his services, strictly out of curiosity. He knows his own limits and a direct mental challenge is not in his best interests. He will attempt to make it clear that the kingdom will die before it goes against the church and the Lich should have sought out a better guard to begin with, "which is where I come in."

If the Lich doesn't agree to have him on board and it comes to blows for some reason, he's not in any real danger, as he has been known to escape some extreme circumstances. He will drop some smoke and dance around the battlefield, prioritizing self-preservation. He's (very likely) outmatched, so it looks like there's even bigger problems and he'll jump on the recruiting thread to bring together an entire party and clean up this mess. :smallwink:

Does a solid job of using out-of-combat abilities for the hunt. While it can't solo the Lich, it can still escape and has the best odds of dealing with the Wights.

Yet again, we have another circumstance where I had the opportunity for the perfect ability but I decided I wouldn't need it. One of the few Unicorn talents I did not include was Locate. (There's also a Speak with Animals talent.) I'm 0 for 2 on hitting the mark. Anyway, moving on...

Yakul is very proud of the kingdom and the Lich for attempting to come to an agreement. He is extremely disappointed in the particular somepony that got them in this mess. He'll agree to help them out and keep everyone at peace. He can sympathize with anybody willing to negotiate and talks to the farmer about the whole ordeal, also trying to present a semblance of respect for the Lich. I don't think the farmer will have a problem with that and offers up some help.

Easy: He can Teleport short distances between haystacks and Telekinesis to lift them to shake out the needle. This wouldn't take but half the day and he'll spend the rest of his time bringing the Lich back to the kingdom to reinitiate negotiations acting as a mediator.

Medium: He doesn't really have much luck with hunting anything down or following trails. He'll have to roll at random to figure out which path to travel so this will take some time. He should still find the needle before the Lich shows up (if barely), but probably won't get back to the kingdom in time.

Hard: Since he has no plans to destroy the needle, there will still be an opportunity to talk to the Lich and prevent this disaster in the name of friendship! Yakul offers to mediate the circumstance and will personally halt any interference. He can trade in two friendship tokens for a d20 Charm, so this should be fine.

Conclusion: The entire goal here is to mediate the negotiation to appease all sides, make friends. There should be no problem here and if somepony interferes again, they will catch a lock down of Unicorn talents until proceedings have been concluded. If, for some reason an agreement cannot be reached and Wightpocalypse happens, he is not equipped to handle it alone. This will take some more firepower.

If the Lich is not taken by the Charm and chooses not to pick up where negotiations left off, that's a shame. If it chooses to attack... We'll, it better not. Yakul is going to drop this fool. He has a maxed out mental stat and maxed out Stun Ray. If the Lich gets the jump on him in any way, Pony Sense will account for that up to 6 times, not to mention a Forcefield to diminish incoming onslaught. We also have 3 friendship tokens left to expend for an automatic success on a roll of choice. Yeah, that Lich is getting wrecked if it chooses violence. However, if the Wightpocalypse occurs, Yakul can't hope to deal with it all on such a large scale.

This has some reliable out-of-combat capabilities, but I had to get creative to be relevant here. Still, it can easily solo the Lich, but not the Wights.

Wow, in my initial build post, I mentioned something along the lines of this guy not being able to handle much out of combat. I did not expect this build to have the best answer, much less 2 good options. Yay!

So, NecroFist just rolls his eyes at this information. While quite amused, he still gets right to the point. "Where's the body?" He'll cast Query the Skull on the corpse, and the Lich will answer up to 5 questions truthfully. Some of this will include where the phylactery is, where the Wights are, reestablishing better communication methods, etc.

Easy: He accepts the teleport and walks directly to the haystack with the needle in it. If they came to acceptable agreements, he will bring it back to the kingdom and wait. If a positive circumstance was not established, he will destroy it on the spot.

Medium: He will request that the offered teleport be closer to where the needle actually is. If this is not possible, he'll just go get it. Then same as easy.

Hard: He will first collect the needle from wherever it may be and then take it directly to where the Wights are, assuming the friend is there. At this point he'll wait until the Lich comes back and make sure they're on the same page.

Conclusion: Now, I will mention NecroFist has good Charisma and the Administer skill so he will be able to efficiently organize a crew (likely planning to split some of his earnings) for hunting down the phylactery. This only really comes into play if, for some reason, the original spell idea doesn't work. Same results.

If the Lich comes back angry and wants to start a fight, it better get the initiative. As long as NecroFist makes the relevant mental saves, it has enough effective health to noodle-slap anything into oblivion before it can bring him down. As far as the Wights go, he has Enfeebling Wave to slow them down, but that's about it.

This one has the best out-of-combat solutions and I didn't even expect it! Can probably solo the Lich, but not the Wights.

On another note, if anybody has recommendations if I have misunderstood something (particularly in WWN), feel free to correct my understanding.

InvisibleBison

2023-03-31, 06:20 PM

Playbook: Whisper
Heritage: Iruvian
Background: Noble
Actions
Insight 2
0 Hunt
2 Study
0 Tinker
1 Survey
Prowess 4
1 Finesse
1 Prowl
2 Skirmish
1 Wreck
Resolve 3
3 Attune
2 Command
0 Consort
0 Sway

Special Abilities
Tempest
Warded
Ghost Mind
Ghost Fighter
Iron Will
Friend: Scurlock, a vampire
Rival: Flint, a spirit trafficker
Vice: Obligation (family members)

1 Attune
1 Skirmish
1 Wreck
1 Command
1 Study
Warded
Ghost Mind
Ghost Fighter
Iron Will
Playbook: Lurk
Heritage: Tycherois
Telltale: Hair turns into? emits? mist
Background: Law
Actions:
Insight 2
3 Hunt
0 Study
0 Tinker
1 Survey
Prowess 2
2 Finesse
3 Prowl
0 Skirmish
0 Wreck
Resolve 3
1 Attune
0 Command
2 Consort
1 Sway

Special Abilities
Reflexes
Ambush
Daredevil
Sharpshooter
Like Looking Into A Mirror
Friend: Rosly Kellis, a noble
Rival: Telda, a beggar
Vice: Faith (ancestor worship)

1 Prowl
1 Survey
1 Attune
1 Hunt
1 Sway
Ambush
Daredevil
Sharpshooter
Like Looking Into A Mirror
Playbook: Leech
Heritage: Severosi
Background: Military
Actions:
Insight 2
0 Hunt
2 Study
3 Tinker
0 Survey
Prowess 4
2 Finesse
2 Prowl
1 Skirmish
1 Wreck
Resolve 2

1 Attune
0 Command
1 Consort
0 Sway

Special Abilities
Artificer
Analyst
Venomous
Alchemist
Strange Methods
Friend: Jul, a blood dealer
Rival: Eckerd, a corpse theif
Vice: Gambling (dog races)

1 Tinker
1 Finesse
1 Attune
1 Prowl
1 Consort
Analyst
Venomous
Alchemist
Strange Methods
Electroplasmic saber: A fine curved sword, with a channel in the back of the blade that connects to a resevoir of electroplasm. When activated, the electroplasm fills the channel, causing the blade to deliver powerful shocks to anything it touches. This allows the sword to be effective against ghosts as well as being dangerous to living people. However, the resevoir only contains enough electroplasm to power the sword for a few minutes, and creating more of the particular variety of electroplasm the sword uses is a time-consuming task.

Flash Potion: A small vial of blue-grey liquid that hyper-accelerates a person's movement when consumed. The drinker moves several times faster than normal for a few minutes. Afterwards, they will be restless and unable to sleep well for several days. Also, there are those who notice when people manipulate time...

Unfindable Bag: A seemingly ordinary burlap sack, both the bag and anything inside it can only be noticed by the creator or others they've attuned to the bag. Anyone else will simply pay no attention to the bag or its contents, and dismiss them as obviously unimportant if they are pointed out. However, if anything is kept in the bag for more than a few hours, there is a chance it will dsappear without a trace.
Crew Type: Shadows
Reputation: Honorable
Tier: 1, strong hold
Lair: A hidden subbasement beneath a factory
Hunting Grounds: Charterhall, near the university
Special Abilities:
Patron
Pack Rats
Everyone Steals
Second Story
Ghost Echoes
Synchronized
Upgrades:
Prowess Training
Hidden Lair
Workshop
Quality Gear
Steady
Quality Weapons
Quality Subterfuge Supplies
Quarters
Thief Rigging
Secure Lair
Favored Contact: Fitz, a collector

Pack Rats
Everyone Steals
Second Story
Ghost Echoes
Synchronized
8 Upgrades:
Steady (3 upgrades)
Quality Weapons
Quality Subterfuge Supplies
Quarters
Thief Rigging
Secure Lair

I figured since I was making several Blades characters I may as well make a crew for them to be part of as well. I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle the next challenge.

NichG

2023-04-02, 12:47 PM

Alright, time for Scenario 2: Nautical Forgery

You are in the employ of a traveling exhibit of vehicular wonders of the world (a sort of combo museum and tech expo advertisement for shipbuilders), about to have its most important show of the season to the court of a magocracy. The exhibits are precision 1:4 scale mockups of real magical or technological vehicles (but without their actual functional bits). Unfortunately, a lightning strike and subsequent fire burned the gem of the collection – the Imperturbable – down to the waterline of the river you were using to transport it. You have 3 days to procure a suitable replacement to within the exacting standards of the eyes of the magesmiths and shipwrights of the magocracy.

There is scaling credit based on the degree of fidelity: The top score would be a fully functional, full size Imperturbable exhibit correct in every way. Below that, a scale mockup of similar quality to what the museum had before – basically something with all of the details painstakingly replicated from the real ship, but not e.g. the functioning weaponry or rare/expensive materials. Below that, something which is only visually correct but can’t be interacted with or boarded. Below that, some other ship or something where the details are wrong but hey at least its a ship.

Alternately, top score can be achieved if you somehow convince the three VIPs in attendance - the mage king, the royal magesmith, and the royal shipwright – to be impressed with the exhibit to the extent that they’re willing to order a similar vessel on commission from the shipwright of the original.

The location for the exhibit is a capital city on a river, with the ocean about 30 miles away.

The real Imperturbable is docked at a port on that same ocean 600 miles away and it can normally traverse about 150 miles a day under normal weather conditions and using normal trade routes. Its crew should collectively be considered Strong if combat is utilized. The ship’s current duties are to be ready to sail out in response to coastal raids that happen to that country around this time of year, so any attempt to negotiate or persuade the captain or the captain’s government has to take that into account and resolve it somehow. The actual Imperturbable is 100ft long, 30ft wide, and 30ft deep, and weighs 500 tons unloaded. It would have a bit of a problem with the river passage due to its draft, either requiring very skilled sailing, widening/deepening of the river in three particular difficult spots, or something modifying the ship’s means of movement so it wouldn’t matter.

The mage king's potential as a customer is mostly as a pissing contest with a rival monarch, and he's looking for toys to show off when they will meet next in six months at a summit meeting. He wants something that can show off more than something that can actually win wars.

The magesmith cares about the intricacy and correctness of enchantments, how things are worked together, and basically has a chip on his shoulder about things being 'an affront to magic!' or some-such. He's the one who is going to most annoyingly test any sorts of claims, 'accidentally' let loose a Reaving Dispel near the exhibits, etc. He won't even mind an illusion if the quality of the spellwork is good enough, but his standards of 'good enough' are a bit inflated - in D&D terms he can personally pull off 6th level spells, but it takes 8th level stuff to actually be 'good enough' and 9th+ to 'impress him'. Or things totally impossible within his understanding of magic, but they still have to be within the context of the exhibit itself, not just 'oh by the way I can do this thing that D&D magic doesn't allow, now look at this toy model of the ship'

The royal shipwright is the only one thinking about the actual utility and usability of the ship, and its appropriateness for potential war or other kinds of service to the kingdom. She actually doesn't like the original Imperturbable design because its lack of maneuverability means that a smart enemy could just tack around and kite it if you were actually trying to use it for defense, and while it can certainly carry enough weapons to reduce a port town to ashes if its given time to line up the shot, destroying cities is not the most useful of wartime acts in a world with highly mobile strike teams who are stronger than armies of regular soldiers.

Kane0

2023-04-02, 07:50 PM

Well mr Lizardman chef is pretty much screwed. He can't fabricate much more than basic tools nor is he a skilled shipwright, but he has a pretty good chance at winning over the VIPs if he can get something in the water to show them. Being an actual pirate sailor gives him an edge in judging ships himself, but that's only helpful if he can find something he can work with, or pay someone to work with, on such short notice.
A water-facing capital city is sure to have something, and with his excellent memory, sufficient charm and excess of money and muscle he should be able to acquire a serviceable ship, though it will cost valuable time.
So he has a basic vessel, that's the lowest bar to cover. There no chance of miraculously turning this into the best exhibit in two days, nor can he manufacture an illusion either, so all efforts go into getting some artists renditions as visual aids and charming the VIPs into taking his word for it. He will need a talented artist to assist, which again is valuable time and money, but at least that is within his capabilities.
Then it's all down to showmanship. +9 on a persuade plus guidance and advantage from circumstances up to and including Charm magic he can easily clear 'hard' DC 20, although the dice could be kind or cruel of course. 'very hard' DC 25 is certainly feasible, but 'impossible' DC 30 is likely out of reach.

Given the amount of uncertainty and outside assistance required, i'm not comfortable giving my guy more than a middling result.

Telok

2023-04-02, 08:44 PM

1. Summary exection of the fail sucker on fire watch.
2. Kill VIPs & take their stuff.
3. ???
4. Profit.

Well... maybe I'm just off today. I'll try again later.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-04-02, 09:34 PM

Here we go! Also renaming problem solver chan to ninja chan.

Ok ninja chan can't really build a good ship in just on week nor can she use ninja politeness to charm people so here's my 5 step plan.

1st buy a ship. Just a normal pretty good ship.

2ed buy 3 suggestiblity potions. Both shouldn't be lower then 75% imo but up to the gm how difficult it is.

3rd ask a mage i know to enchant the potion to be undetectable by spells like "detect magic." Hard but doable.

4th ask a reasonably charismatic person i know to present the event.

5th this is where i come in. I use my legendary ninja skills to sneak in their houses and replace their drinks with with a suggestiblity potion the nigt before the judging. Then boom i have succeeded.

Results. They judges are easily persuaded by my pal into thinking the boat is that good. This a short term solution but a good one nether the less.

3 things to note.

1st the "above 75% auto succeed below auto fails" really trivialises the randomness of the systems.

2ed my not knowing how to calculate dice odds and just winging it might be making things easier then they should be.

3rd this required about a minute of thought to come up with the plan. But there is the really difficult part of doing 3 hard stealth missions in 1 night. 1 is the king and another is the royal shipwright who both should have high security and the mage smith should have powerful magic defenses. So it's entirely possible i fail that step. It'd also be most of the adventure if this was an actual game of risus.

InvisibleBison

2023-04-02, 10:29 PM

At first glance, Reyyah's skill set doesn't seem directly applicable to this situation. She's good with manipulating ghosts or other spiritual forces, but she's no shipwright. However, she's got a great solution - the Ghost Echoes crew ability, which allows her to "see and interact with the ghostly structures, streets and objects within the echo of Doskvol that exists in the ghost field." With the standard setting-translation applied to it, this ability should let her see the ghost of the burned ship, and she's going to try to share that vision with the VIPs. She's rolling Attune to do so, so she gets three dice, and the roll is risky position, zero effect - she's trying to jailbreak the ability quite a bit, so she'll have to put some effort into it to make it work. She pushes herself to improve the effect to limited, and trades position for effect to shift the roll to desperate/standard. Since she has three dice in Attune, she gets an automatic mixed success. The VIPs are quite impressed by their tour of the ghost ship and agree to commission a similar vessel, but the strain of making the ghost ship manifest inflicts level 3 harm "Mind Shredded" on Reyyah. She uses the Warded ability to reduce the harm to level 2 "Disoriented". She's suffered some harm and some stress, but she's pulled off a top-tier performance.
Reginald's best skills, sneaking and shooting, aren't applicable here. But he's a pretty smooth talker as well, so he should be able to just convince the VIPs to order a ship even without having seen the model. This starts at risky/zero, but he can mark documents as one of his items to have a glowing letter of recommendation for the shipwright to improve effect to limited, and then push himself to improve to standard. Since he's got two dice in consort, he gets a mixed succes - the VIPs are convinced, but as a complication they insist on a significantly lower price. "After all, we are taking a risk by buying a ship sight unseen." Reginald can resist the consequence, though, and since it's a social consequence he'll use Insight. With two dice, the rules of the contest mean he takes 3 stress and finds a way to persuade the VIPs to pay full price. He's burned through half his stress, but he's put in a top-tier performance.
In theory, this job should be right up Oturug's alley. He's an engineer and a craftsman, so he can definitely make a ship. The problem is time. Three days is just too short a window for him to make anything really satisfying. I think the best he can do is try to make a very small scale model of the Imperturbable, aiming for the third-place "visually correct but can’t be interacted with or boarded" target. Assuming he has a copy of the ship's plans, making the model would require completing a crafting project. Crafting is normally a downtime action, but the three-day period is sufficiently downtime-like that I think he can make a go of it, though I'll only allow one roll. I'd guess the model has to be at least quality level 4, and with three dice Oturug gets a mixed success on his Tinker roll, producing quality level 1. Since the ship, and thus the model, have some magical capabilities his Strange Methods ability boosts that to 2, and he pays 2 coin to buy high-quality ingredients to boost it the rest of the way up to tier 4. He's able to produce a miniature model of the ship, only a few feet long, which is not ideal but good enough for a third-tier performance.

I don't think there's anything in the extra scenario info that significantly affects these analyses. Since the Imperturbable itself would presumably have impressed all three VIPs, Reyyah's ability to take them on a tour of its ghost echo should also do so. Reginald's presuasion is more abstract, because I chose to model it as him convincing all three of them with a single role. Knowing more details about them, perhaps I'd do it differently, but Blades does allow for a wide variety of granularity in problem solving, so I don't think there's any real issue. And Oturug's mini-model, while small, presumably can capture whatever aspects of the Impertubable would have impressed all three VIPs.

Telok

2023-04-03, 01:50 PM

Ok. Sorry about that first post. The weekend was full of other people time. If I'm lycky work has nothing in store but a couple telephonic meetings and coding so I can recoup from it.

1. Diplomat Bob

1. Have the person of fire watch on the wooden ship flogged. If nobody was on fire watch then have the person in charge of that executed.
2. "Ok, so bring out the backup model" & another flogging because they don't have one.
3. Piss and moan about having to clean up after other people's incompetence.
4. Starship has StarTrek style teleporters. Zorp the origjnal ship into place during the presentation. "Oh the model burned down, we'll just telepirt the original in here for the afternoon."
4a. If original ship is too big then zorp the VIPs to it.
4b. If VIPs are unlikely to be willing for teleporting see if original ship will fit in cargo hold (seems unlikely but maybe) for physical transport.
4c. Shuttle the VIPs to the original ship for a walkthrough. Call it an hour to bring the starship groundside, do that during presentation timed to arrive a the end, then a bit to load them up. A nice snack & show them the command deck for the about 2 hours to ascend to orbit & move to position, then 30 to 45 minutes to reentry & arrive fir the viewing. Orbit is excessive for the distance but we're going for the impressive stunt.
5. While we're at it introduce the technology & stuff for metal hulled ships to the primitive goobers. Use hologram records & diagrams of stuff similar to the USS Iowa & aircraft carriers to sell "let Aztechnology help you bootstrap up through a techno-magical industrial revolution" to our potential new client state.
6. If all else fails call it a day and try again on another continent while wondering what we're doing on this backwards planet when we could be horsing around in some degenerate flesh pit enjoying ourselves.

Really can't say as to rolls. Most moving stuff is just "do our length/mass limits exceed the target length/mass", which isn't really hard defined in this system so GM coin flip or player convince roll vs any GM skepticisim, not something any system measures. We have a 500m long starship with a teleporter and "big cargo holds" vs a 30 meter wood ship or 8 meter model. It's the GM juggling "awesome & yes" vs "how difficult to I want to make stuff".

Socially any roll vs roll stuff depends heavily on how the targets are statted up and if you think some parts count as favorable conditions or stunting. If I used the stats for Athasian sorcerer-kings then DB would be hard pressed but possible (they were really more focused on being bad-ass casters trying to turn into dragons), but if the targets are less 'ulta-mage who rules for power ups & lulz' and more 'generic mortal king who is also a caster' then DB is on even footing just on skills & stats before bringing the exaltation & resources & stunts & hero points to bear on them.

If the DB had been in charge from the start then it would have been a wine & dine in-person trip from the start or the models would have been stored in a stasis cube in the cargo hold with a guard on them and futuristic fire suppression systems in place (it's a starship, oxygen conservation and fire suppression are major considerations and engineering goals). That's standard "I'm reponsible so I'm taking care of it" stuff.

The other issue is that if we reworked this for a full scale TL12 civilization presentation there wouldn't have been a wooden model stored in an open air place where it could burn down. You'd be dealing with a kilometer long space battleship and either just move the thing for the presentation or start & end with the holographic walkthrough.

Heh, just checked, got 150' age of sail ship stats in DtD40k7e (not doing formatting, just copy paste)

SAILING SHIP (similar to a 1600s Caribbean pirate galleon)
Size: 33, Size Remaining: 0, Cost: 188, Price: Very Rare, HP: 25, Resilience: 33, Length: ~50m
Static Defense @M=0: 0, @M=1-5: 2, @M=6-9: 4, @M=10+: 6,
Maneuver: -10, Acceleration: 1, Speed: 2, 6 m/momentum, 2.16
kph/momentum, Drive: Naval (x3) May not leave the water without
crashing; if this is the only drive the size costs are halved.
Ramming: TN: 5+mom, Damage: 10k10 +10 +5x momentum.
Stuff: Open Top, Size: 0, Cost: 0, Effect: People can shoot in to & out.
Control System: Alternate Controls, Size: 1, Cost: 10, Effect: Use the Command skill & average Crew skills for piloting. 1x Luxury Passenger
Space: for the Captain, Size: 3, Cost: 20. 8x Passenger Space: 128 bodies total, Size: 8, Cost: 32. 10x Cargo Space: 250 m3 total, Size: 5, Cost: 40. Flaws: Fragile & Inefficient Controls & Junker & Unstable & External Power, Cost: -50, Effect: Vehicle HP reduced by 25% & Requires crew maintain control & Roll two crits instead of one & Double the maneuver penalty for momentum & Wind Powered (can only move up to half of wind speed or 1/4th wind speed when
tacking into the wind). 32x cannon portholes, Size: 16, Cost: 80 (discounted from personnel weapon mounts because they're just holes in the side of the hull). Weapons: 32 Age of Sail 12 pound cannon in two broadsides requiring a minimum of 2 crew per cannon.

12 pounder black-powder cannon - Heavy Primitive gun, Rarity: Common (discounted for being not portable at all and having loose explosive powder for ammo), Damage: 5k4 I, penetration 4, S/-, Range: base 240m (short <120, long 480-720, extreme 720-960), Ammo: 1, Reload: 4 full round(s) [about 1 in 4 shots will damage a 33 resilience ship, technically the cannon are sold separately but would probably be thrown in if you kicked the ship price up to Mythic Rare/Holdings 1].

2. Gun Whore Bob

Probably run steps 1-3 as per Diplomat Bob.
4. Declare a bridge as (or make a big "two tall masts, a magic carpet, and some rope") a portal and just cast ****ing Gate to bring the original ship straight over into some properly deep spot in the river. Personally wandering back and forth isn't an issue as we have a 195 kph (120 mph) air-raft to carry 8 people. Leave the gate open so it can go back any time if needed.
5. Then if we're still feeling pissy we can quick cast Gate (interior of ship's hull/port hole & bottom of river) or... hmm... the At-St chin gun only has a 64.3% chance per shot to hole a 160' wooden sailing ship and only a 0.5% chance to push a "crash & sink immedately" roll on it... guess we probably shouldn't be thatannoyed. Well, that is based on a 165' ship. Guess there'd be better chances... eh, still only 2.5% per shot at insta-sinking a 31m ship by the calculator.

3. Paranoid Bob

1. Briefing: an ultraviolet and a couple violet clearance bigwigs are going to view some models of a new 33 meter tall military warbot but the model had an electrical 'oops' and burned down. Your mission is to procure a replacement model and make the bigwigs happy and get them to Ok buying a bunch of stuff. You have 3 days. The original of the model is in another sector 1000 km away and is currently being used to hunt commie mutant traitors.
2. PL&C: does not have a replacement model. Lose 1 day filling forms.
3. R&D: random generator sez...
anti-soluble detecting device
hand-held interference scanner
wind-resistant chain-reacting machine
Hmm... a plan forms. Scratch day two.
4. Blow perversity points to use Access to rent a prototype warbot with no-fault insurance. Rest of our perversity spent to hack the chain-reacting machine to remove wind resistance & install the machine plus a high power fan with remote control into the borrowed bot (and maybe tape a couple grenades to it just to be sure).
5. During the presentation whip out the hand held interference scanner, cause a memory overflow, declare that commie mutant traitors are interfering with stuff. Point scanner at someone near an exit, declare them mutant commie & chase them out of the room. Remote control activate the fan so the chain reaction machine goes off.
6. If, as is traditional, such malfunctions result in a massive explosion (which we aren't in the room for) our secret society will be thrilled. Actually they're probably pretty happy anyways what with the general sabotage and destruction even if we don't explode the UV & violets. If there isn't a big kaboom we corner and kill our victim (we'll apologize to their next clone).
7. Debriefing: deflect blame, deflect blame, deflect blame, deflect blame, deflect blame.
8. Rejoice in a 100% successful Paranoia mission.

4. Traveling Bob

Up to ship.
Grab scannery stuff.
Down to original boat.
Scanning walkthrough.
Up to ship.
Dismount & jerry rig a 3d holo projector.
Down to presentation.
3d hologram walkthrough.

No rolls talked as everything not interpersonal is either "you got the gear & base skills so 100% ok" or impossible. Interpersonal depends on the exact framing of the talky talky. If it's set 2d6 vs 7 then probably +1 or +2 from stats then ok, but if -2 for no applicable skill then lousy, or it could be a multi-roll or contested or based on the other person's stats or...

Of course Classic Traveller doesn't have a dedicated social interaction structure outside of picking op or selling cargos. There's instances of it in adventures, but they're all sort of individual hand crafted & hand wavey 'best guess' sorts of things.

That's basically the best you're getting. There's no reason for a retired scientist-for-hire to be involved in modern space navy stuff so this has to be some random "tech help the low-tech locals for access to something we want". Robot carries heavy stuff and does the piloting.

Edit: ya know, I'm kind of waiting for a "Your task is to get a kitty cat out of a tree. The kitty is 300 miles long and hostile. The tree is Yggdrasil. Your client is Hera. She's having a spat with Freyja. Go."

Quertus

2023-04-03, 07:06 PM

Response to Scenario 2 - Nautical Forgery
I see several possible paths: rebuild, convince, investigate, sabotage. And combinations thereof.

... Hmmm... it seems I may have misunderstood the scenario. It may be less "Stark Expo" and more "Stark offering to upgrade the Helicarrier".

Also, why is the size of the Imperturbable under "hidden information"?:smallconfused:

Now, on to the actual responses.

Well, this one might be tricky. Technology or Magic, even with scrolls of Fabricate, Arma lacks the ability to build a scale Imperturbable. However, even if she has to get someone else to use the scroll, the cold black flames of the Unburn spell would make quick work of rendering building a new ship not an issue. Assuming the scale model wasn’t magical (which would make very little sense in 2e IMO), it'll be fully operational. Assuming, of course, that cutting away all the ice in the river won’t be an issue.

Regardless, that Cloak of Charisma will ensure the most favorable results possible when dealing with the prospective clients… so long as she doesn’t open her mouth, and make one of her classically stupid comments (never mind, she has high Wisdom, so that's probably not a concern).

It's not really rolls so much as RP, but I suspect "what we were already bringing" should meet with adequate approval with Arma behind it.

Well, this seems pretty easy - between potions of Guided and Divine, plus Scrolls of Fabricate, even Whizzy can build a high-tech laser battleship in a cave with a box of scraps. Which should be immune to any Dispel effects, and make the engineer happy. Winrar?

Even if he could somehow bring himself to care, there’s not much he can do here.

I guess... best case scenario, he could simply act as spokesperson, making the best lemonade pitch he could with the lemons they've been dealt. With an adequate understanding of the tech, magic, and combat, coupled with extraordinary social skills (and telepathy if absolutely essential, but in reality no), it shouldn't be too hard to polish that sneaker.

Cutter would stare at his employer, perplexed. “You want me to solve this problem?” He’d barely have time to drop bouncy balls into the River of poo sticks before his incredulity would be given away like a common cold, and his audience would find him succeeding multiple successive magic rolls. “Create 1:100 scale Indivisible!” “Create 1:100 scale Intractable!” “Create 1:100 scale Inventively!” Of course, he wouldn’t get the name right until he had built up enough mana to create a high-quality replica of the Imperturbable.

Although his employer would likely (and rightly) feel unimpressed with this solution, Cutter would go back to playing poo sticks in the river. However, with 3 days lead, he could easily have built up enough mana to implement the second step of his solution: a case filled with 1:100 scale dolls (think Lego characters) of generic people. And the Soul Projection artifact to let the attendees actually inhabit the dolls in order to tour the Imperturbable.

And if that didn’t produce adequately positive results, Cutter would implement phase 3 of his plan: a case filled with 1:100 scale Angels and daemons (really, just his 10 lbs of dream) to pilot the ships in a mock battle, to prove the potency of the Inflatable, or whatever it was called.

3 days? To build something? In Marvel? Hahahaha! Oh, wait, he has hyper speed. And gate. Yeah, no problem. 3 days later, he has a fully operational battleship, complete with new fire suppression features and lightning Rod. And in case they aren’t impressed, he technically could Gate in the Adamantium full-sized flying Imperturbable Mark 2 he built out of bubble gum wrappers and balsa a few days later.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he'll be using this conference as an excuse to improve his Popularity and Resources, trying to convince the King to let him expand his multi-city Adventurer's Guild into a multi-national Adventurer's Guild.

Although he'll probably spend Karma on a few of those rolls, this should result in an actual net gain in Karma... until he spends it all a hundred times over to improve his stats.

Another bad showing for Shadowrun (despite the character having (some) engineering skills). The only even remotely significant contribution would be the use of the custom "Create Bullet" spell to provide ammunition to any tech guns the Imperturbable might have.

No problem. Just show Alex the blueprints, and he can rebuild any muggle ship. Eventually. 3 days might be pushing it, depending on the size and complexity - hopefully, the original designer is good at project management. Anything that doesn't work on scientific principles, OTOH, Alex is useless for - unless "hire a Wizard" is an option. Although... he could always lace the food / drinks at the party with Happy Pills to encourage a more favorable reaction. :smallamused:

Initial Thoughts:... none?

Second pass: Retrocognition, Magic Sight, etc, to see what happened - adding an "Invisible" extra to everything possible so the investigation hopefully isn't noticed.

Oh, that isn't part of the challenge. Well, then.

Summons can certainly aid in the (re)construction; maybe use powers to "fake" any abilities necessary for the demo at the exhibit?

Any faked powers would easily get dispelled, so that's a bust. M&M doesn't have the best rules for building things to begin with, and afaict no rules for multiple people working on the same project, so... who knows?

Hmmm... I guess the silliest answer would be to simply "Heal" the lost HP of the model Imperturbable? That might trivially pass the challenge. Or time travel back to before the lightning strike, and attach a proper lightning rod. My other ideas sound like failure.

Um... if this actually mattered to the fate of the universe, then Mr. T could try to arrange a transport to collect the finished replacement, and use the Warp to get it back in time to the exhibit...

But since that's highly unlikely to be the case... if it were still "really important", Mr. T could attempt to summon Daemons powerful enough to possess the vehicle and give it the "Regenerating" property... which has less than a 75% chance of not ending in utter catastrophe (from his employers' PoV, but sounds like fun to me). Under an extremely generous GM, he could maybe have a fallback plan of convincing the Daemon to wreck havoc and thereby hopefully delay the exhibit until the replacement prototype was ready.

Worst case scenario, if he really believed in the project, he could heckle the other presenters while making them throw up in their mouths, to make the presentation of the Imperturbable look good by comparison.

In the Grimdark of running Mr. T, it's not about succeeding, it's about making everyone fail worse. At about 75% success, we get a Daemon wrecking havoc in the city, while the scent of vomit impedes anyone attempting to restore order.

One Blue: Reconstruction. Done?

Anything mundane, LtC Vir can simply replicate; anything "magical" is beyond his ability to understand, let alone help with. While there's about 0 chance of any foul play not coming to light with a telepath with Star Trek forensics around, that sadly wasn't part of the scenario. And, when it comes to the presentation, Staltek Vir lacks the social skills to convince anyone of anything. So, as usual, LtC Vir carves out his own small niche, and points to the natives, saying "the rest is up to you".

Huh. The spirits playing "Another World" keep running into the oddest problems. He really ought to research some way to get a GamSav artifact for them.

In the meantime... best he can do... hmmm... if the spirits want to spend their reward from the last mission (presumably translated into Quintessence, or the Spirit equivalent) to hire unaffiliated characters from another game (neutral spirits) to come help with the project, he could act as intermediary. If so, it's super effective. Unlike his other options.

Huh? "A lightning strike burned it to the ground/waterline"? Now, I'll admit that Countermagic in Wod is a farce, but, if lightning and electricity work like in the "real world" / like in the world Harry is accustomed to, simple precautions like a lightning rod, let alone his presence, should have made it all but impossible for natural lightning to have caused this problem. And the ship burning to the waterline while Harry was around should have been all but impossible, too. So I expect that if this isn’t a “the scenario is invalid” error, this is going to be more of a "apply car batteries to the genitals of those responsible until they talk" solution, rather than the approximately impossible task of him contributing to rebuilding a model ship.

That said, he could totally fake having done so, with illusions or whatnot, or maybe (get someone else to) convince the VIPs of the worthiness of the Imperturbable with video evidence of its trial runs. A “virtual tour”, I suppose.

Math... any "on the spot" illusions will fold like wet cardboard to even an apprentice's Dispel (almost every system is better at counter magic than WoD Mages, and it would show here), so this would be a really embarrassing failure on that branch of the interpretation tree. The "video tour" branch might be novel enough for the VIPs to want to tour the real thing. But the "I reject your reality - that never happened" seems most in keeping with the spirit of a WoD Mage, so I'm going with that. :smallbiggrin:

Telok

2023-04-03, 11:03 PM

Quertus

2023-04-04, 05:26 AM

@Quertus: your StarTrek chap has actually the perfect solution. Time travel is canonical in ST with a ship and a convenient star, thanks to the early movies. Zip back in time, scan, replicate, swap it out just before the lightning strike, let the nonmagic replacement burn, pop back to your original frame of reference, drop the original model back in.

OK, fair. I hadn't considered what he could do with the aid of a ship, as he seemed capable enough with the ground installation.

That said, there are some potential issues with this solution. For one, LtC Vir has no ability to know what effects the magic will have on, well, anything. Making it a huge risk to the starship that interacts with it. Also making it entirely possible that everyone present will know that it was only a model that burned. Lastly, I'm not sure how the Federation would feel about using time travel over so simple a matter, whether there's an equivalent of the Prime Directive wrt time travel, etc - and anything that goes to a Social roll, LtC Staltek Vir fails the 75% roll.

So the tech is there, but it'd take another player / character / GM to pull it off.

Telok

2023-04-04, 11:08 AM

Lastly, I'm not sure how the Federation would feel about using time travel over so simple a matter, whether there's an equivalent of the Prime Directive wrt time travel, etc -

They can't complain if nobody ever tells them. Though it does depend of crew and ship size such. I don't have the whole canon going, I'm pretty much an original series and the first 2-4 movies kind of chappy. Given the... oh geez... thirty to fifty years or so since then, I'm pretty sure you can wring a one person warp capable ship from somewhere in all the piles of stuff that's been put out.

Quertus

2023-04-04, 04:04 PM

From what people have said so far I might identify four broad categories:

I’ve been thinking about this some more, and I think it’s less mutually exclusive “categories” so much as… a set of sliding scales? Since this is a 3e-centric forum, I’ll use the 3e “lose at character creation” as my basis to explain, and word things in terms of how one loses.

So, the first scale I’ll discuss is, how much does the individual character choices determine success? How well can one lose (or win) at Character Creation?

And, well, I’d expect that all systems that offer meaningful choices will have some degree of “fail at Character Creation”, that a particular character lacks the means to solve a particular problem, or to solve it in a particular way. Or, to have a less binary view, to solve it as well, or as easily, via that method.

Certainly, “being a caster” opens up more doors of options in D&D - I’d argue more so in 2e than 3e, simply by dent of the expectations wrt having an economy. But the comparative difference in available options is no less true of Paradox - strike that, it’s even more true in Paradox. Skill selection has mattered significantly in all of those systems, as well as in Shadowrun and WoD, if to a lesser extent. Although Spell/Sphere, Gear, and “tradition” selection in those two systems have also played a part. “Color” would certainly affect your options significantly in MtG, although I think both of us participating in evaluating that one have chosen “all”. For Marvel FASERIP and Star Trek, powers and stats, respectively, are very important - and both are generated randomly at Character Creation (and created/improved with experience).

Another big thing holding Star Trek LtC Staltek Vir back is the inability of his system/setting to interact with magic. But it’s not just magic - a D&D character might lack context for technology, for example. So you can fail even before Character Creation, at System Selection. Which, since we’re comparing systems anyway, should probably be worded as something more like System/Setting Conceits. My favorite example of this is Call of Cthulhu: it’s not that CoC monsters are scary, it’s that CoC characters are scared. And I’m not saying that if I turned a corner and found myself face to eyestalk with a 2-headed tentacle monster, I’d be some unflappable juggernaut of tranquility, but simply that by choosing CoC, you are limiting yourself to characters that are incapable of accepting that they are not alone, and that that’s not the only option. D&D, MiB, Star Trek, Star Wars… heck, most systems, the protagonists pretty much just accept as a matter of course that they are not alone.

To speed things up a bit, the other easy to discuss levers / metrics / sliders I can think of are Chance, Player Skill, and Character Personality. Hopefully those are pretty self-evident.

The harder / more nebulous ones that I’m debating include Advancement, Hoarding, and Time. Advancement is kinda a twin to Character Creation, but for how much choices presumably made during play in previous scenarios affect the outcome of the next scenario. Hoarding in this context largely refers to how Dragon-sized a stockpile of resources (wealth, XP, whatever) the character/player has kept “liquid” affects scenario outcome. And Time would then measure the impact of the immediacy of the problem on the viability of various solutions.

EDIT: and I think Cost is gonna be an important factor to consider, too, although it might just be a different dimension to Chance, Player Skill, and Character Personality.

Anyway, that’s what’s in my head. I’ll probably try out ranking the systems I’ve used in these metrics soon, to explore this idea further.

NichG

2023-04-04, 04:30 PM

Edit: ya know, I'm kind of waiting for a "Your task is to get a kitty cat out of a tree. The kitty is 300 miles long and hostile. The tree is Yggdrasil. Your client is Hera. She's having a spat with Freyja. Go."

That'd be a good one!

I’ve been thinking about this some more, and I think it’s less mutually exclusive “categories” so much as… a set of sliding scales? Since this is a 3e-centric forum, I’ll use the 3e “lose at character creation” as my basis to explain, and word things in terms of how one loses.

So, the first scale I’ll discuss is, how much does the individual character choices determine success? How well can one lose (or win) at Character Creation?

...

To speed things up a bit, the other easy to discuss levers / metrics / sliders I can think of are Chance, Player Skill, and Character Personality. Hopefully those are pretty self-evident.

The harder / more nebulous ones that I’m debating include Advancement, Hoarding, and Time. Advancement is kinda a twin to Character Creation, but for how much choices presumably made during play in previous scenarios affect the outcome of the next scenario. Hoarding in this context largely refers to how Dragon-sized a stockpile of resources (wealth, XP, whatever) the character/player has kept “liquid” affects scenario outcome. And Time would then measure the impact of the immediacy of the problem on the viability of various solutions.

EDIT: and I think Cost is gonna be an important factor to consider, too, although it might just be a different dimension to Chance, Player Skill, and Character Personality.

Anyway, that’s what’s in my head. I’ll probably try out ranking the systems I’ve used in these metrics soon, to explore this idea further.

Yeah, I wasn't going to mention it for a month yet, but I wanted to do a survey at the end of this asking people to rate the systems they used on a scale from 0 to 6 (which is sort of like, the number of times across the 6 scenarios that this concern was relevant), and then do like a high dimensional scatter plot of the various systems to see which things are correlated and where there might be unexplored design space.

For me, so far based on the responses I've read, I think I'd ask (overlaps with several of yours):

- (For each system) how many of the scenarios were difficult to play (self-GM) because of the removal of randomness? E.g. how often did 'not being able to have a rare lucky thing happen' or 'not being able to have a small chance of failure' seriously warp the system for you?
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios were difficult to play because of the lack of interaction with GM who could answer questions, take on roles, adjudicate things, or introduce new information? I've noticed several of the responses have had comments like 'the GM would need to decide how good of a negotiator this character is' for example, whereas others are more like 'yes, I literally have a spell that says it does this'. So this is the 'how necessary is the GM for the actual dynamic of play?' variable...
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios could you tell definitively, 'oh, my character can't interact with this because I made the wrong character gen choice' or 'oh, I made a character gen choice that just totally resolves this'? This is your 'fail at character creation' category.
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios required you to perform either a literal or mental book dive for specific options that weren't on your character sheet (as opposed to e.g. brainstorming plans for using the stuff on your sheet already)? Call this a 'research' category I guess?
- (For each system) in how many of the scenarios does it feel like the character would come out behind even after resolving the scenario, the 'I should have stayed in bed' factor?
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios did you feel your character could actually deal with? Overall 'surface area' the system permits.

Quertus

2023-04-04, 04:55 PM

Telok

2023-04-04, 05:38 PM

Yeah, I haven't really been going on the 75% = autosuccess thing. That would warp stuff out of all recognition in the systems I'm using.

It would be fairly min/max, but not extremely so, to build a DtD40k7e character to throw 8k6 at all mental and social skills (80% success for target 35/"impossible") plus have enough left over for extreme wealth, a thousand soldiers with lasers and a spaceship. Except the current characters mostly aren"t doing that, they're basically actual play level of characters, so they'd top out at target number 20 or less for the autosuccesses before adding hero points and exalt resource points. But then the Paranoia and Traveller characters would be assumed to autofail literally everything except a very few narrow abilities or skill checks (mechanical & wilderness survival for Traveller and barricade, gloating, memory overflow, & matter eater for Paranoia).

There's also an issue that DtD40k7e and Traveller aren't as heavily weighted towards single roll binary success/fail situations as D&D is. You can totally do those rolls, but the systems play closer to their intended themes and proper function with multi-roll activities (notable not just repeating one roll a bunch but varying what's rolled) and margins of success/failure with partial successes and complications. Paranoia is closer to D&D's succeed/fail paradigm, but it's a humor game where you're suoopsed to be one of the Three Stooges hot potatoing a live grenade. You're supposed to fail rolls often and hilariously until you luck one out and resolve the scene/encounter/whatever.

NichG

2023-04-09, 12:09 AM

Scenario 3: Gotta be the Economy

Your character has been cloned and isekai’d into the role of an independent Count-level noble in charge of a small territory with a single town of 5000 people as well as a handful of smaller communities, outlying farms, etc. Unfortunately, the area is slowly sliding into desolation as the local environment has been getting both hotter and drier, glaciers on nearby mountains disappearing and rivers and streams dwindling. Ultimately this land is slated to become a desert.

The world you’ve been transported to does have magic and other such things, but is effectively an ‘E6’ world if we were talking D&D, 1500s technological equivalents if we’re comparing to the real world, or for other systems you can imagine that there’s a cap on the most expensive/hardest individual abilities that characters in the world can have that is below the level of the stuff you took.

The [Overpowering] random omnipotent bastard who sent you here offered to help you(r clone) ascend to godhood (but not in time to help with the rest of these scenarios) if you can make your territory self-sufficient despite the shift in its environment within a year’s time. The ROB isn’t physically hanging around and watching you do this, but you could try to locate them and directly mess with them to whatever end if its within your character’s powerset to do interplanar/interdimensional stuff.

The territory does not border the ocean or any large lakes, but there are neighboring countries which do not have this heat problem.

The neighbor to the east is about 6 times the size of your territory and has a major lake that is unaffected by the environment shift, as well as forests along the lake’s perimeter that remain lush and productive. There are other nations on the far side of the lake that the neighbor trades with.

The neighbor to the west lies on the other side of a high mountain pass that is somewhat hard to navigate for large convoys or transporting heavy goods. They are still getting the rain (whereas you’re on the rain-shadow side of those mountains), but are feeling mild impacts from the drought. Also to consider is that they’re significantly stronger militarily than the forces of your county, though the pass makes movement in your direction somewhat impractical for large-scale military action without something to be gained for them. If your county becomes too obviously prosperous, that might change, so a full self-sufficiency answer to the ROB’s demands should include the ability for your county to either not look like an attractive target, or to actually fend off their forces.. Their military units have magical support (if we’re talking D&D, every set of 25 soldiers is accompanied by at least one Lv6 wizard, one Lv6 cleric, and one Lv6 bard, but the power scale doesn’t go above that) with their total military being about 3000 soldiers.

To the north is a ruler with two county-sized territories who is also being severely affected by the drought, though they have better trade connections.

To the south is a very hostile trackless waste that goes on for about a hundred miles and is largely unclaimed, on the other side of which is a relatively prosperous kingdom with ocean access.

Make your territory self-sufficient and thriving!

The cause of the warming in the region is a naturally forming portal to the Plane of Fire deep within the depths of the mountains near your territory. If you can somehow figure this out and could permanently close the portal, you could set the environmental changes on a course to revert themselves. The portal is submerged within lava in a lava tube that has been slowly extending upwards, so simply burying the portal in rock and stone would not close it or prevent its growth.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-04-09, 02:07 AM

Telok

2023-04-09, 01:42 PM

Definitely a case of gm flat here.

Just run them over with a car a bunch of times. You can flat any GM.

Diplomat Bob

Ahh... pulled out the resources from our backgrounds and class feats/completion. Well that's fair, happens to everyone at some point. Glad we're a photosynthetic dryad though. Being dropped in sunny-ville at a random time could really suck for most vampires.

Still, fairly simple to solve. Dig lots of wells, teach decent irrigation, and transition to crops that do better in arid conditions. It's a bloody basic argicultural society.

More options:
Convince the dragons. So the peer & good reputation bonuses carry over. Our knowledge of advanced babking systems plus the fact that dragons are freaking rich and want to get richer makes this pretty straightforward. It won't be a "one year" thing but we're already immortal that's independently capable of being a serious demigod and possibly (depending on local rules of reality) ascending to godhood on our own. Anyways the plan is to turn the nation into a super rich banking center with dragons backing it through charm at 7k5r1 & persuade at 9k5r1 plus skills are cheap to raise xp wise plus we can drop blood points for +2k0 plus we can use hero points to lower target numbers by 5 or 10. Now DtD40k7e dragons are seriously rough in social combat, way more competent on the dice than 5e D&D dragons but probably about even with 3e D&D dragons with full social skill ranks. But if we keep it out of social combat and keep it in friendly talkies we can hit the 30 (charm) & 35 (persuade) target numbers over the 75% threshold and occasionally hero point or go full blood points & stunts to get to 40 & 48 at those 75%s. Oh, and we're leaning on the mages plus our previous knowledge on Aztechnology recruiting/training mages to get a divination fast communications network up within 10 years.

Know our way out. Drop two blood points and a hero point on knowledge checks, basically 7k4r1+5 vs 35(impossible) on arcana and academic and forbidden lores. At 95% 35+ and 75% 48+ we'll call that a go (plus repeats on changing the situation by hitting up for more knowledge or dropping chump change xp on skill-ups). So that learns of the portal. Then we just talk people into closing it for is (see Dragons above or hire adventurers until some of them succeed). Also, if I'm interpreting right, that portal will not just adjust the local climate but in fact create a permanently active volcano in a while. We can leverage plus diplomacy that to get local people (monsters by D&D terms but regular non-mook people in DtD40k7e) over the "e6" limit to help.

Diplomat the solution. Basically leverage our social skills to marry the leader's kids of soon-to-be-desert-land to has-a-big-lake-land. Then we talk their evil grand vizers (they have those right? kinds a trope) into killing the current leaders and taking over while we "mysterious stranger" some adventurers into killing the grand vizers. We could just do direct ninjas but that's no fun.

Magic solution. Arcana 7k4r1+10 & two rerolls for the 75% of 40+ (more with some "aid another" type assists) to handily beat the "impossible" target number to create a new "e6" magic ritual that lets us used massed casters to control the weather for a year. Oh, and then we'll do it again to make a "nuke an army out of existance if they're on our hereditary lands" ritual.

Yeah, we got tons of options here with reasonable chances of success and still we're already immortal that's independently capable of being a serious demigod and possibly (depending on local rules of reality) ascending to godhood on our own.

Gun Whore Bob

I think GWB's gonna call it in on this one.... no wait. Original DtD40k7e handwaves stuff like creating permanent enchanements, all GM fiat there, but I worked up some rules that... well... it's possible but PCs don't normally want to take the time to do it. Let me put... let GWB run a quick low threat adventure for a handful of xp and buy up a point of arcana skill... now let me put GWB and "permanent Gate spell" into the calculator. We'll gate ourselves around the planet & solar system for a while to find a nice unclaimed & uninhabited giant freshwater lake/sea.

Hey, a 99% success rate taking 1250 hours of work to design, prep, cast, debug, and repeat for 26 to 30 iterations. Permanent Gate of whatever size we think we need to bring in as much fresh water as we need. Checking... 157 days of work at 8 hours a day. And we fettered (reduced casting power) to avoid all the warpy crap. Honestly that's all going it alone too. We could just team up with smarter and more skilled arcanists for the design phase to cut the time down.

Well, sounds like focused point buy to high end conjuration powers for the win.

Paranoid Bob

Umm... lets check this poor troubleshooter's random R&D gear before wormholing PB to Nevernever Land...
toxic anti-grav tin box
inflatable shrinking spray
... lol-random is lol-random.

Assume the bugger who summoned us explains, in terms PB can understand, things like magic & gods & no clones & no Computer &... You know, I think the bugger could have picked a better summons.

Only thing I can think of is if PB can survive first contact with aliens (lets face it, this much culture shock is basically meeting near total aliens) and find someone who can figure out the portal thingy (PB 100% can't under basically any interpretation, even outdoor unregulated climate is alien to him), get PB to the portal, and get PB to survive the surrounding environment long enough... PB can eat the portal.

Basically someome else uses Paranoid Bob as a magic item to solve the issue. That's the only way.

Travelling Bob

No resources outside self and personally carried gear...

Survival 3, mechanics 4, int 10, education 12 (system is 2d6 so averages are 7s)... we're back to digging wells and building pumps. Thankfully that actually works to save a small pre-industrial agricultural nation. Made easier by applying real science to magical infinite motion engines, but still just fixing agriculture with deep wells and irrigation. But that volcano in a few years is going to be a real problem.

Edit: ah, misread a bit. There's basically no real local people resources because 5000 is a itty bitty small town. Well ditch everything requiring assistance from any local magic users in my answers. And Paranoid Bob just shrugs and leaves then.

Kane0

2023-04-10, 05:44 AM

Lizardman is an established cook, and cut his teeth (pun intended) on finding exotic new monsters to kill and eat. That alone isn't going to do much but it is an avenue to pursue.

Given it's an E6 world his casting up to 3rd level spells is on par with what anyone else can muster, and he can make good use of goodberry, create/destory water, purify food/drink and plant growth to stretch resources plus skywrite and animal messengers for communication and diplomacy. Given who and what he is lizardman isn't really picky about the people of each neighbouring area, but does like large bodies of water. More to the point, training up a team to head through the badlands is going to take at least 10 weeks out of an assumed 52, but its an investment and risk worth taking to get a working trail southwards or at least information on what's there. If there be monsters, well that's just a bunch of lemons waiting to be turned into lemonade.

But on to neighbourly relations. With three different options at presumably differing DCs i'll say each one takes 4 weeks for a round trip and he passes at least one of the three checks to get some trade and goodwill happening. He is a very charming lizardman after all.

After training up a proper expeditionary team and making the diplomatic rounds the remainder of his time will be spent turning this town's folk into something more impressive, and more importantly marketable. Lizardman has a broad array of skills he can share with the populace including basic natural magic, medical/alchemy training, psychic knacks for those gifted and good old fashioned survival skills of all kinds.

So it largely comes down to DM discretion how much output Lizardman can get from this education and training. Lizardman isn't much about culture, aside from the culinary arts he is a deeply practical individual and those practical skills are what he's going to be passing onto his people. Emphasising and teaching self sufficiency to as many townsfolk as possible will generate a societal shift of its own. You won't visit this town to engage in philosophy or gawk at the architecture, you'll go to hire professional navigators, hunters and the odd exotic chef or seek the services of druidic spellcasters. As a by-product of this process the populace as a whole will become that much more resilient too, so invading this place will likely just turn anyone not immediately killed into extremely dangerous guerrillas, an important factor to take into account for potential threats (on top of the fact that not much is actually being done on the fight-the-drought front, unless everybody can be taught to cast create water which feels like a stretch even if it's a first level spell).

Overall, there's no way Lizardman can make the cause of the problem go away, but he's more than capable of opening up friendly relations with at least one neighbour. The rest of his time he spends training up his towns worth of people into something a bit more respectable and valued for trade, and if he's lucky he can either break a path through the badlands to the south or get enough basic spellcasters amassed to counteract the worst effects of the drought.
45 litres per casting of the 1st level Create Water spell is respectable, it's just a question of scale. If one 6th level caster per 25 soldiers is on the cards then one 1st level caster per 25 peasants seems somewhat reasonable, and with 5,000 people to worth with that's potentially up to 18,000 litres of water generated per day, or half that and 2,000 people fed per day.

Quertus

2023-04-10, 09:45 PM

Reposes to Scenario 3: Gotta be the Economy

Cloned and Isekai’d? E6? Aside from what you brought with you? Not in time to help with the rest of these scenarios? Hmmm… so, I’m interpreting that set of comments as follows: from the character’s perspective, they had been in the world of the previous challenges (per my setup many having been Isekai’d to get there in the first place) and then were Isekai’d (again) into this new world, where they will be dealing with the remaining challenges, and doing so with only the things they brought with them - and there is intended to be continuity between these challenges in the new world. However, the reality is, this isn’t the old character - the ROB created a copy of the character (presumably via the Creation domain or equivalent), for their own (nefarious?) purposes / amusement. Further, while everyone else in the world has e6 levels of limitations to their personal growth, the Isekai’d characters have no such advancement limitations. And this e6 status limits the characters' ability to purchase solutions to problems. That said, I may play around with the underlying mechanics and the cause of this difference between “PCs” and “NPCs” between characters.

Unless this completely ruins things, that’s the assumptions I’m moving forward with for these challenges.

Also, I mis-remembered the challenge, so I may not have fixed some of my responses from "profitable" to "self-sufficient".

Also, for once, the hidden information just makes me say, yeah, I figured it was something like that.

Little known fact: a 2e Cleric in a world without their deity a) cannot recover spells b) above 2nd level c) unless c1) another deity sponsors them, or c2) they use the Contact Home Power Spell. However, Arma is perfectly capable of casting that spell, so no issues for this particular character, besides a slight spell tax.

This whole "help with ascension" offer is perfectly par for the course for 2e... however, Arma isn't exactly savvy about that, and will view the ROB with great suspicion (lessened only slightly after her divinations suggest that that's just the way the world works).

Even so, as the "High" priestess, she's itching to get back home, and, given the time frame involved, to add Chronomancy to the list of Wizard spheres/schools/whatever that she has access to. Thus, she'll begin collecting components for her own polyhedron gateway tech.

Being on a different world, she doesn't have the built-up credit with the church for all the potions she's brewed over the years, so her spending options are limited... give or take what she brought with her, and what she can get from the peasants by being a Countess. Most of which will be spent on them, not her.

More importantly, her undead army is no longer with her. She'll need to replace it.

Anyway,

Objective: Return Home (learn time travel). Set to long-term goal, because time travel.

Objective: Be a good Countess.

Objective: Provide remedies to environmental changes.

Objective: Reverse environmental change (presumably by finding and murderhoboing its source).

Objective: rebuild undead army.

Just looking at some low-hanging fruit, some of the simplest things she can do would involve casting Polymorph Other. The first objective is to create some trees that don't need watering, drawing their water from the Elemental Plane of Water - or, better yet, that actively produce water by that same tech (Arma... has seen demonic trees that constantly bleed by using that tech, and Metamorphose Liquids can always be used to "fix" the fluid produced, I suppose). Different worlds have different rules; if she can use the spell on plants, she'll get skilled gardeners to pick out the healthiest "useless" trees to Polymorph; otherwise, she'll likely target criminals (bandits, people already in jail, heretical followers of other religions, whatever) as the subjects used. If the world allows her to Polymorph based on a set of criteria into a form she isn't personally familiar with, she can make water; otherwise, she's limited to blood.

At best, she could cast Polymorph Other... dang, only 2/day, with only a 70% survival rate for average peasants (should be way higher for healthy trees). And Metamorphose Liquids 6/day (so, max 54 gallons/day - that's not much). But the hope is that an arborist can get grafts / whatever of the trees to grow, and other casters can learn Metamorphose Liquids.

Anyway, next up would be ice trees, to produce both water and cold through similar planar connections. Seems an accidental perfect solution to counter the fire portal with lots of little ice portals. :smallcool:

Arma's next step would be to delve into dungeons near the epicenter of the heat wave, in the hopes of finding the cause of the problem, removing the curse from her Amulet of Perpetual Youth and Inexperience for the delves. Oh, um, having replaced her Undead army first, of course. Which she could do at the rate of, say, about 70 goblin skeletons per day (because D&D thinks math is hard). I'd say her "outings" and ignoring her duties to her people would make her one of the worst Countesses in history, but I imagine parties and fox hunts and such are the norm for nobles, and her sense of commitment to Community probably means she actually rates well wrt how well she serves the citizens in general in her roll as Countess. Sadly, unlike her trees, this dungeon-delving endeavor is fruitless (heh).

As an emergency fallback plan, if things get too bad too fast, Arma plans to offer to start Polymorphing the citizens themselves, into creatures more adapted to the climate. Gold Dragons seem a good choice. But afaict, the strategic ice trees mean that we should never make it to this ~30% fatality contingency.

So, she doesn't really bring anything special to the region, except a) perfectly countering the problem; b) being the only person in the entire world able to create healing potions. I'd say just the tourism, the money paid by powerful nobles from foreign lands to stay in the best inns while seeking her favor to brew them potions would boost the local economy. :smallbiggrin:

Also, depending on the ROB, she might try and establish a church of D&D while she's in town. Or maybe a hybrid Church of D&D / Church of Arma, to get started collecting followers?

So, assuming the area was self-sufficient before she arrived, it should be back to self-sufficiency, with some added money from increased tourism. I'd say she met her countess / environmental objectives (if accidentally) without too much trouble, and the biggest potential issue is simply hand-waving that the ROB chose a nation that would accept a daemon-winged priestess of a crazy 4th-wall-breaking religion building an undead army to protect them as their Countess.

None? I guess, if she really started to care (like I would if playing the character at an actual table), she'd (accidentally) be working towards becoming the Daemon Goddess of Icy Refreshment and Bloody Tears, with dominion over Water, Trees, and (maybe) Justice (if she used criminals instead of plants to make her trees).

Nothing much changes for Whizzy.

Objective: Live the good life!

Objective: Do enough about whatever problems arise (like the heat) that nobody complains too much (preferably, that they actually think well of his efforts).

Objective: godhood sounds nice. :smallbiggrin:

I'm sure someone has done a handbook of just what an e6 Artificer can produce; I'm just gonna take a wild stab and assume that, despite its 9th level caster level, they can somehow create a Decanter of Endless Water. If not, it's time to go on a mad killing spree against the neighboring kingdom (from a different direction, to attempt to make it look like someone / something else is doing this), killing their army for XP, to get to 12th level to get... Leadership, I guess, since that'll net more second-hand Item Creation feats than the direct route.

Anyway, once we have endless cool water, it's probably time to introduce the citizens to the endless joys of games like endless frog-smashing, or overcoming endless non-fatal obstacles in an obstacle course / house of moving floors, or other ways to game the system to ensure everyone caps out at e6+NI. That should insulate (heh) them somewhat against the worst effects of the heat, and improve their profit margins, increasing their prosperity, and the odds that they'll still be self-sufficient despite the hardships of global local climate change.

Um, sorry, what was the challenge again? Eh, it doesn't matter, Whizzy will just enjoy his time in the cool shade with his level 6 harem, hoping that everything will be fine, and using Wall of Stone to build up fortifications in case someone decides it's not.

Seems like he has produced a somewhat unstable solution to allow him to technically meet his low-bar objectives for the time being, with "researching divinity" added to his "to do" list.

I guess he's taking the first steps toward becoming the tainted god of belligerence and hedonism?

Probably the only character who could conceivably do anything to ROB, but almost certainly wouldn't. Although he would hold a grudge, as "abduction" is... "assault with a deadly weapon" / potentially fatal to a Paradox character, and he's one of the few who fully appreciates that fact (thus the fact that he is unknowingly a decoy, not the real McCoy, even for his 1st Isekai). And the whole "help with divinity" thing is actually kinda funny - he previously helped a demigod obtain divinity and, thinking about it, doesn't know that he couldn't just do the same thing to make himself into a god. He's just... preferred to remain a more low-profile, low-stakes kinda guy, and so has never considered it before.

Anyway, he'd try to get the ROB to tell him as much as he can - like, does the ROB know what is causing the climate change, or is it a mystery to the gods? Is figuring that out part of the intended challenge? Is he allowed to use his power to contact ROB or the other deities of the world (which, yeah, that's a thing he could do - no, seriously, he's done even crazier things before). Speaking of - is pulling the information from the minds of one of the gods or their minions considered "cheating"? At a guess, between various social rolls (both to convince to answer, and to "sense motive" to read between the lines), I'm guessing he'll know what he needs to know. Which isn't much, tbh - probably just the rules of the challenge, and the relationship of the gods to the challenge. (Which would be "we didn't cause it, do whatever you want (leave us out of it?)", I'm guessing.)

This will be a very tricky mission. Going with some random Isekai world elements... hmmm...

OK. So, if he doesn't have his companion with him, he'll ask ROB about that; if she's permitted to come, he'll contact her telepathically to establish the link so she can open a Gate to arrive. But I'll assume that won't happen, as this isn't the real character, just a copy. So it's copy companion, or a new one. If no copy companion (and lacking her seems to be in line with the "just you" vibe)... hmmm.... for his new companion, he'll look around town for someone compatible with his objectives, with Vampyrism, and with a Loyalty upgrade, and select a catgirl Thief in bad straits to gift with Vampyrism (because 75% rule said his first choice of "Mage" wasn't happening). Then he'll spend from his Karmic Wealth (:smallfrown:) to give her the Karma to be able to buy basic Magic. Which means she can do absolutely anything... approximately never. Then it's sharing a meal, and setting up adventurers to collect goblins (using slave cages) for "experimentation" (really, just to serve as meals for the 2 hungry Vampires).

Then, as meals allow, guiding her through attempting to use blood-powered magic to understand the problems they're facing. While he... does a decent job of being a Count with his social skills and business acumen, and an incredible job with adventurers, being able to mind link to teams of them to instantly collect/transmit information.

Really, after juggling things for a bit, he'd most likely pick one business to (secretly or publicly) take over. And which business depends entirely on the specifics of the world. Adventurers, Thieves, Assassins, Wizards, Slave Traders? Butchers, Bakers, Candlestick makers? Beekeepers, Woodcarvers, RPG writers? Pretty much anything but the church.

With a sufficient supply of blood, brought about by sufficient funds to hire adventurers / slave traders to bring in sufficient "donors", even his pathetic fledgling will eventually be able to craft the spells necessary to understand (and, in a mass orgy of bloody sacrifices, eliminate?) the source of the climate change.

Eh, on second thought... "eliminate" might be hard to prepare for a) without knowing the 75% rule was in effect b) unless the catgirl's skills improved significantly over the course of the year c) without as much "help" to the roll (technically, the cost) as possible.

So, for instance, the cheapest way to solve the problem would be to summon something that could dig down and release / reroute the lava pressure, making the natural portal close on its own. Whereas creating a countering permanent ice portal would require a gateway made of something cool (in both meanings of the word) and an insane amount of mana. Whereas even the intermediate cost effect, of attempting to affect the portal directly, would require bathtubs of blood even with some sympathetic focus (like a lava rock) to direct the spell.

Oh, and of course, we need to actually produce some results from all the "experimentation" on Goblins, so he'll introduce Sun Screen, or some trivial product like that; more (and more magical) if his Companion is able to level their abilities, and blood is plentiful.

So, it looks like he had...

Objective: acquire new companion.

Objective: resolve climate change.

Objective: improve local businesses.

Objective: take over one business / monopoly.

And, although I haven't decided for sure which business he wants to own (I'm guessing slave trade, on the "public secret" level, and sunscreen, quite publicly), I don't think any of this would prove too problematic. However, in order to make his... town and county?... be self-sufficient, he would have had to try (and discover that he's fully capable of) an entirely new trick. See, the biggest thing making businesses - especially medieval businesses, where peasants generally apprentice to learn a trade - really bad at being agile is the sheer amount of time necessary to gain skills, and the reluctance of skilled professionals to do anything other than their trade. But with his mastery of telepathy, he has no problem being agile, as, like an Illithid Savant, he can just eat someone who knows how to do the thing he needs to do, and gain their skills. What he doesn't know is that he can also grant skills to others. In D&D terms, he knows he can use Mindrape, but he didn't know he could use... um... Psychic Reformation or whatever that lets people choose differently. Point is, he can overwrite people's minds, changing their skillsets, allowing them to adapt to their new situation, and master whatever skills their challenges demand, so long as he has a sample of that skill to work from, and plenty of blood to power his abilities. So, not the quickest / most successful route, but still probably meeting his objectives.

If he cared to become a deity, perhaps he'd seem to be headed towards being the god of telepathy, vampires, bloodshed, and slavery, although his actual goals would include loyalty as his first choice of sphere of influence.

Objective: make town rich.

Objective: deal with heat.

Objective: transition from "give a man a fish" to "teach a man to fish".

Step 1: set the bouncy balls to fade away - a year's worth of permanent bouncy balls would likely be a worse (un)natural disaster than the heat wave.

Step 0: realize that he is a copy. Because he's got an app for that.

Step... 2? Get to know the world. Which I'll... grab some different random Isekai / fantasy elements for? Oh, mana potions are nice... for, like, anyone but him. Sigh.

Right, so... he'd sit there in his office, bouncing ephemeral balls about the place, while mumbling about "making money, making money, rhymes with honey, scrambles to 'on hey' or 'no yeh'... is that how your spell... what was I thinking about again?", building up insane amounts of mana... with no idea whatsoever what to spend it on.

Days and sleepless nights would pass, as Cutter Fyord desperately searched for inspiration, before finally quietly whispering, "... create Fremen stillsuit?"

Assuming "Science!" technology works in this otherwise medieval world, Cutter would create thousands of these, while getting the citizens to find / tell him of known natural caves for him to fill with water. With a "CREATE DECANTER OF ENDLESS WATER!", of course, because that's definitely cheaper in the long run than manually creating water.

After he got some sleep, Cutter would start building up mana for some better ideas, like "CREATE SOLAR PANEL!" and "CREATE AIR CONDITIONER!". Which he'd cast a few thousand times each, until (at a minimum) the entire population 5,000 town is air-conditioned.

But long before he finished that, he'd build up the mana for his only real economic idea: "STARFALL: RAIN WEALTH FROM THE SKIES!". Or something similar, to bring exotic metals from space crashing down to earth.

If large amounts of water, stillsuits, windfall from space, and solar-powered air conditioning aren't enough to make keep his people self-sufficient, well, Cutter will hold periodic town meetings to find out what needs to be done, and throw insane amounts of mana and questionable ideas at the problems until they go away. Also, sell air conditioners and solar panels to foreign nations (or even his own nation) at outrageous prices to ensure he has the funds to purchase solutions instead of throwing mana at them if that seems expedient.

If things don't fall apart too badly, he could build up insane amounts of mana to create mana-storage crystals to build up insane amounts of mana to... create a friendly sentient golem to create water and build air conditioners for him?

Ultimately, Cutter could come up with an OK solution to his objectives, but isn't very good at removing himself as an essential component.

Definitely a "god of technology", with a strange opulence / scarcity duality. Also, obviously, bouncy balls.

This is tricky. After expanding to being a multi-national Guild Master, John Faseman was looking to create a custom Self Duplication spell. If he thinks he got Isekai'd before he finished, then... I guess he'll rely on Gate to go back in time to not miss anything in the previous world. No biggie.

And, dagnabbit, he was just about to use his increased Popularity and Resources to try to get the nation that summoned him to teach him the "Summon Hero" spell they used to Isekai him in the first place! Well, I guess he'll keep his eyes and ears open in this world... and (sadly) I'm guessing the GM won't let him spend Karma to take the ROB as a Contact (as a way to access more ("divine") spells, and as an excuse to learn the Isekai "Summon Hero" spell)?

Sounds like it should be no issue keeping his Popularity and Resources when transitioning from a multinational Guild Master to a Count, even if that does make him quite the exceptional Count. Like Dracula. :smallwink:

I feel like he really wanted a spell or power of Power Creation at some point... oh, for creating the new layer of Hell. Right. Well, with that, he could grant "temporary" powers to adventurers, or even to farmers, to help them with their jobs.

And... it looks like he doesn't have Regeneration, so I guess he'll rely on local healers to heal up the damage he takes from creating new life, which is my first thought for "best tech" for him to use to approach this problem with.

Objective: empower locals.

Objective: research (and reverse?) climate change.

Objective: Obtain Isekai "Summon Hero" spell. (long-term goal?)

Objective: get back to previous world (long-term goal) (may transition to "self-duplicate to live in both worlds") (regardless, won't that be a 6th day surprise :smalleek:)

So, there's lots of potential for Lifeform Creation, but the best (most efficient) choice is... probably seeds for plants that prosper in hot weather? And of course a minigirl / miniboy child or three. And, in addition to random "temporary" buffs, if push came to shove, he could just grant some permanent heat-resistance powers to everyone in his domain, pretending he did some big magical ritual to make it permanent. But making it hereditary OTOH would be quite the interesting Power Stunt.

But that's fighting symptoms, rather than curing the source of the problem.

Sadly, short of building the universe's best magitech thermal imaging system out of rusty nails and ear wax in a few days time, John has no real way of knowing what's going on. Except, little known fact: Marvel Wizards can sense anything magical that is stronger than their magic rating. So, the weaker the mage, the more they can detect. If John can't sense things himself, he can doubtless make a child who can sense the formation of the portal. Once he does know, he can simply Disintegrate... he can build a device out of butterfly wings and elbow grease to mass-Disintegrate through the mountain (or Power Stunt to gain the power to swap around his range and AoE) faster than he can do anything useful with his existing Disintegration power. And just cross his fingers that lava doesn't kill him / melt his new device.

Regardless, he's in the best position to fix the problem (if he doesn't kill himself trying). Or to make ice cold lemonade out of those lemons. So reaching his objectives may cost a little Karma, but should be possible.

Seems like he'll accidentally pick up Nature, alongside being a god of Disintegration and Empowerment.

Finally, time.

This sounds like a golden opportunity to learn “create water” and “create ice”, and to teach them to as many people as possible.

But there's few characters as unsuited to sitting behind a desk as a public figure than the flying, invisible (inaudible, odorless, tasteless) (twice-)Isekai'd antisocial Troll. Although a Hat of Disguise, picked up in one world or another, might be enough of a confidence boost to actually allow the attempt.

As far as the economy goes, teaching them Alchemy, and getting them to make Oricalcum will certainly be a boon to the economy. Hopefully, that will allow the funds to trade for whatever they need - something the Troll has less skill to understand than the native peasants, in all likelyhood.

I may come back to this one later.

Real quick, oopsie, I talked about Alex as a "mutant" before because, as it turns out, in the last M&M game I ran, two of PCs were, shock and surprise, a mage with omnipower, and a mutant with matter transformation. These two entries aren't supposed to be those characters. :smalleek: Unlike that PC from the last game, Alex is actually (not so) "secretly" a demigod, which makes the offer of assistance obtaining full divinity very enticing to him.

Well, a little cheating, making cold rain or snow out of the air, could do wonders in the short term. But he really wants a solution that doesn't involve him actively... well, fighting symptoms.

Objective: identify and solve the root problem.

So, using his wealth to hire adventurers (because wealth is a stat, and maybe a Count would have similar wealth), he could set off towards the epicenter, and build monitoring stations to attempt to evaluate the issue.

I guess the best answer would be to, in effect, build a drilling station, turn it on, and run away. In practice, he may need to buy a robot ally, and (temporarily) lose the points if it "dies" to lava.

But there's not much he could do to increase the town's wealth / self-sufficiency - other than increasing their productivity with things like better tools - that wouldn't draw the attention of other nations ("why, yes, we did just find a gold mine..."), so he's but so useful in that regard.

Um... god of mumbo-jumbo? Science and abstract wealth for the "it's geek to me" response from the peasants who would never worship him?

Objective: Don't get burned at the stake.

Objective: Get someone else to do the "Count" job.

Objective: Deal with the problem, so it doesn't look like you're shirking responsibility, but "focusing on what's important".

Definitely the first step would be summoning nature/weather spirits, while boosting skills (sciences, magic, and social skills) to try to understand what's going on. Seems likely that, with enough spirits (enough to justify a "take 20" approach), that they'd eventually hit upon the correct answer as part of "other world magic theory". That said, they'd have to investigate a whole slew of wrong answers, too, so having a year is probably a good thing. Still, some thermal X-ray telescopic vision could quickly provide a whole lot of information here.

Probably the best solution to the Count issue is to spend XP on an Ally, summoning the perfect Count (so, probably not Dracula) to deal with that job, leaving our omni-wizard free to test the various theories about what could be going wrong with the weather.

Actually solving the problem... summoning a pair of lava wurms to dig tunnels to bleed off the pressure / local lava / whatever should do the trick.

As far as improving the town's economy... probably some AoE skill boosts would do wonders to keep the town in the (color of choice).

So, I guess that counts for hitting objectives... eventually.

Definitely a god of magic, summoning, laziness, and passing the buck.

Well, this sounds like a job for Chaos Cults! Simply by converting to cult economics, cultists can poke one another to acquire needful things. Supply doesn’t matter to the logic of Chaos, only Demand! (OK, it's probably just a bad abstraction of a bad economic model, but it’s thematically appropriate, and funny.)

This method, of creating a Water Guild, and never supplying said Guild with more than enough water to keep its members alive (its members might well be a lone duck), should solve the water problems, providing enough water to keep the people (but not necessarily the crops) from dying of dehydration, even in the worst heat / drought. With great cheese (like, making every citizen the leader of their own cult, to raise their Chaos prestige or whatever), maybe the crops could be saved, but let’s not go that far.

Next is food. If this were D&D, I’d say “dragons can eat anything”, and start a Dragon farm. In, say, the logical choice of Warhammer Fantasy, however, things are a bit rougher. But no problem: as a gestalt genetic engineer / Chaos Sorcerer, channeling the belief of the faithful into creating horrific new food sources should be dying child’s play. I say “should” because AFAIK there’s not really rules for this kind of thing; however, there are rules for more or less arbitrary rituals, and the XP cost is low enough that "it's fine", so we'll use that. I just need to make some appropriately horrific costs to the rituals, like [*REDACTED*], and it'll be a piece of cake to get this GM to agree to it.

With all the Chaos food and Chaos energy and faith floating around, doubtless the faithful will start to be blessed by Chaos, gaining mutations as a sign of favor from Tzeentch (and those other guys). My Count is totally unbiased, using their excess water to keep all colors of flowers blooming, including the white of Chaos Undivided, indicating that all (Chaos) faiths are welcome here. Just because the Purple of Tzeentch is also present / prominent / outnumbers the RGB of the other faiths just means there may be a smidgen of favoritism, that's all.

As far as building up the town, well, if the Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Dwarves can crank out plasma rifles, well, then gosh darn it, this town can learn to do so, too. Especially with a Chaos economy, where (when they're flush with food and water) they can just poke one another for a while until they come away with the necessary components. And while Mr. T powers his plasma rifles with his power armor, the faithful can power theirs with the screams of the starving children of the unworthy, or whatever. I'm sure this plan (and the primitive plasma rifles) won't backfire in any way.

So, it looks like

Objective: create city-wide chaos cult.

Objective: genetipsygeneer horrific new chaos flora to feed cultists (and overtake the desert - they should grow like weeds).

Objective: arm chaos cultists with high-tech weaponry.

Objective: rebuild town take up nomadic lifestyle after town burns down from plasma fire.

In the grimdark of running Mr. T, "self-sufficiency" is defined as becoming the ravaging beastman army.

(He'd probably earn both a Fate Point and a Blessing of Chaos for his two big successes along the way. I'll have to roll for the Blessing at some point.)

In the grimdark of running Mr. T, "Deity" is just what the Chaos gods call "lunch". I feel Mr. T would be aiming lower, to become a Daemon Prince or whatever. Just... he may be too mutinate for that to fly by the time this set of challenges is over. So... perhaps ROB's help will involve removing a mutation, or convincing Tzeentch to make an exception wrt maximum mutations?

So, doubtless some useless new cards, like Heat Wave, get added to the infinite sideboard just by virtue of the Elven Chronomancer encountering them. But the locals only have, what, spells related to a magic school, fairy tales, and an annulment park? I'll have to research the specific cards / sets, to see if there's anything useful among them. I'll get back to this one later.

Oh, wait: easy enough to cheat, and just say that "Heat Wave" and "Elemental Portal" are enchantments, or an enchantment and a artifact, respectively. Just hitting them with Naturalize (or sideboarding in a Desert Twister) would solve the problem. So it depends on the level of abstraction as to what actually happens, I suppose.

Ugh, just trying to figure out what Staltek Vir could carry with him is a pain. Like… Phaser, Tricorder, comm badge are obvious. Tools, medical supplies? An Exocomp or two? Replicators look small from the outside, and Exocomps are small, so maybe a portable replicator? Could he use a replicator to replicate the parts for a transporter? How would he power everything? This is why I had him have a full installation; without that, I’m not able to guess at an optimal load out, or how difficult creating permanent replicator and power solutions are.

If he's limited to "what he was carrying at the time" levels of gear... cross between "best remotely possible gear" and "minimum to make him actually better than a peasant"... replicators look small enough for him to carry one - perhaps he was trying to fix it? This could give him standard gear (phaser, tricorder, useless comm badge, "personal effects" (we'll get to that in a second)), plus replicator, toolkit (to fix replicator), medkit (in case of accidents while fixing replicator). But no power supply.

Random Isekai world stats... um... this might not be what the scenarios will have in mind, but this is a very... cosmopolitan town. How... appropriate for a Star Trek character, to be surrounded by diverse alien species. The largest population group being "Draconians". And, at least history as LtC Staltek Vir will be told it, is rife with war / conflict, such that he believes that if ROB hadn't set things up to make him Count, he probably would have died before making peaceful contact.

OK.

Objective: See if he has aptitude for any of [I]this world's "magic", because he doesn't see his Science getting him home (and "getting home" wasn't what ROB offered).

Objective: Try to find some way to power his equipment. He's a few (HOUSERULE: far more than the rules say) phaser shots away from being a peasant.

Objective: Investigate the "divinity" angle, in case it gives him the power to get home.

So, as it turns out, the Replicator can convert energy to matter... or the reverse, matter to energy. Which would be a disaster. So LtC Vir needs to build a super-powerful battery, to hold that enormous amount of energy. Which... Science! might allow, but I can't even imagine with science, without an appropriate Phlebotinum, like Dilithium Crystals. Which I'm just gonna say don't exist in Fantasy land. He'll need a magitech solution. And, unlike the settings for the past world, absolutely nothing stops him from learning magic in this world. So, yay?

Unfortunately... dagnabbit, can he learn the basics of magic in a year? Searching... yes, easily. OK then. Now he just needs... oh, yeah, magic battery tech is a thing, too. And genius Staltek Vir auto-succeeds at math, so he doesn't explode the batteries from over-charging them (from de-replicating too much matter at once).

Google says... gas produces almost 13 kWh/gallon. Uranium can produce about 20 kkWh/pound. Even pretending that's even close to matter-to-energy levels of power, that's still probably 100 mana stones per pound of matter the replicator can handle at a time (create on a full charge / de-replicate when empty without exploding). And it needs to be calibrated such that the power is distributed evenly among the mana crystals, and slowly enough to allow them to absorb the energy. It's a really good thing LtC Staltek Vir literally cannot fail a single roll here, because otherwise I would expect this to result in the mana batteries exploding, leaving a small crater where our protagonist (and the surrounding town) once stood.

So, the important part of his "personal possessions" is that he has data chips containing the results of all his work, including his work on Transporters (he thought they might be useful to resequence DNA, to evolve species; also, that was part of his job several times, to augment existing transporters). So you might be thinking, "aha, you're gonna have LtC Vir replicate a Transporter, right?". Only, no. Absolutely not. He will never, especially under such suspicious circumstances, decrypt the data found on those data chips. Because as far as he is concerned, he's probably been abducted, and this whole thing is an "impervious to even his psychic powers" holodeck experience designed to con him into decrypting his research. Not gonna happen.

Instead, he'll blank the data chips, so that he can use them to add patterns to the replicator. And cry himself to sleep. Because ****, that was his life's work he just erased.

OK, now that we've established that he can do something, what, exactly, will he do?

(Oh, he'll find out that this is Not!Eberon, and nobody believes in ROB. Hope that doesn't mess up any future scenarios.)

Objective: build magitech solutions to global warming.

Oh, hacks! Hacks, I say! Who needs mana when you can power your devices with reverse replication? Yeah, the other nations are totally invading, even if this wasn't "War World, Isekai edition".

Personal Log: I believe the events I set in motion are responsible for the destabilization of the world economy. If I am unable to calm the political climate, I may be responsible for having started a world war. Should I somehow survive this, and should I further somehow manage to return home to Starfleet, I expect to be court-martialed. Perhaps I will take ROB up on his offer to help me ascend, after all - I believe that to be the only logical way to achieve my objective of uplifting the Vulcan species.

So, infinite mana to power cooling spells (which, if done right, ought to themselves be reducing local energy and thereby adding power to the replicator... hmmm....) is the easy part, surviving the world war that starts over people trying to grab these magitech inventions is likely the hard part.

I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Despite coming from video games, Alex’s Spirit friends aren’t terribly good at actually playing these games. And now they want Alex’s help in getting a campaign achievement trophy.

This is problematic, as Alex’s help could easily invalidate their efforts as “cheating”. Or corrupt their save file. Or both.

So Alex would contact the company (the ROB) on the Spirits' behalf, to ask what mods are allowed. [metagaming: If the answer is “none”, there’s nothing for Alex to do in this challenge.] The customer service representative, Rob, explains that there are two requirements for still earning trophies when using mods: each player may only use mods they have created (****!), and the mod has to be approved for the challenge (**** again!). Alex would ask about mods that were created by a group, and Rob explains that such mods are only valid (for the purposes of achieving accomplishment trophies) for a single account - all individuals who created the mods must sign off on what account is the “approved” account.

So, while there’s plenty of video games with items that create infinite water, or other potential solutions to this problem, the Spirits will lose their campaign trophy if Alex simply imports them. And importing trademarked characters could prove legally tricky (let alone “what if this is a Technocracy trap?” concerns, where Alex doesn’t want to put his friends at risk over a game. Still, there’s plenty (like the Zerg) who have a sacrificial, “crunch all you want, we’ll make more” attitude to their troops, and others who have a suicidal-adjacent sacrificial attitude towards helping other spirits in need.

Ultimately, Alex would submit several proposed mods to Rob. Most of them (such as raising the skill cap or adding in actively protected content or OP merchants) would be denied (or so I'm ruling). Importing unprotected IP, OTOH, would generally be approved (or so I'm ruling).

Alex isn’t a great programmer, but he has enough skills for some simple mods, and has the Magick to create “mods” to import his Spirit friends to help.

Certainly, some Hydromancers or Cryomancers would be helpful to fight the effects of climate change. And “Bringing up the map”, and importing things like Dragons or Fire Elementals, would allow the portal to be found and… interacted with. The success of those interactions... well, they might as readily speed up the process as fix it. Sigh.

I suspect Alex will be known as the god of Fire and Ice, of Volcanos and water/Ice-spewing dragons.

Well, this is [I]almost right up Harry’s alley. 5,000 people in one town under his command to power his rituals, and the world believes in his paradigm? Yeah, we can definitely make some changes to the weather with that kind of power.

That said, as a player, and because of Harry’s limited Science skill, I’d definitely be dragging this out as long as the GM will allow, to give Harry time to gain XP to learn Matter and Life. Because creating water will help more than “blindly” changing the temperature and wind.

Objective: (Trivially) convert town to his paradigm.

Objective: Use town-powered rituals to Chill.

Objective: Learn sufficient levels of Matter and Life.

Objective: ????

Objective: Profit!

Rituals could definitely let Harry pinpoint the source of the problem, only… he’d probably need someone else to suggest the idea.

Ultimately, thanks to the power of friendship lots of people empowering a ritual, once he got the necessary levels in his Spheres of Magick, he’d “easily” change the weather, Create teleportation gates to bring in sea water, Create desalination plants to get pure water and sea salt, and make a fortune exporting sea salt and salted meats.

The town wouldn't be self-sufficient without him, but with him it would. I suppose he could create a Relic to do the hard work, and train an apprentice or three to use the Relic, for true self-sufficiency. And a knightly order, to serve as bodyguards for the poor, defenseless Mages (that he pretend to be).

Arma is probably jealous that Harry would be the better candidate for god of Community / Group Effort, but less interested in his spheres of Knights and Salted Meat

Quertus

2023-04-12, 05:23 PM

This challenge has been really rough. And it's made me see a few things.

Like, I thought of digging wells, but didn't mention it for even a single character. And there's a reason for that - and that reason is tied into a bigger topic.

I'm used to playing with a group. One of the conventional ways to try to ensure everyone gets their time in the spotlight is "role protection". My personal habit is to build somewhat min/maxed characters, who have clear areas of specialty (and, more importantly, vast areas of weakness or at least mediocrity), to help ensure that others get their time to shine. Which means that I usually build characters the exact opposite of what this thread calls for.

Worse, in order to not monopolize the game, I'm used to sitting back and not really saying anything on "everyman" skills, or things that aren't my character's area of expertise, until everyone else has had a chance to voice their opinions on the topic. Which, in this case, since none of the characters I'm using in this thread are well (or even mining) experts, none of them would open with well-based solutions, assuming that the citizens would utilize such, and only poking them about such things if they didn't bring it up first.

Which... isn't exactly in character for all of the Protagonists I brought, if placed into this situation. Which is another sign of how roleplaying is suffering by how many characters I'm trying to rush through, while focusing on certain "spirit of the challenge" items (like, "can this be solved with Voltron solutions in this system?" or "how does this differ from what other characters in this system would bring to the table?").

And, presumably, it isn't a good trait for a Count, for a leader that the people look to to provide direction, especially in these troubling times. So I'll need to adjust, and some of the characters who are unaccustomed to leadership roles will need to grow into the role more than others.

Another thing I've been handwaving is "managing up". Of course, that's largely because that's really hard without a GM to bounce off of / without the scenario providing any details about who is above the Count.

AND both of these issues are exacerbated by both time, and the 50,000 character post limit.

Also... the "75% rule" has skewed my perception and thought process a bit - the short of it is, things that are outside a character's wheelhouse are likely to fail, and so aren't worth mentioning. So it's only in certain systems where I'll likely even think to mention such non-specialist options. Like Paradox (1e), where my modus operandi was "stack lots of likely to fail options to ensure (maximize the odds of) some path to success". Or Marvel FASERIP, where "I spend Karma" guarantees success on any roll.

Probably the worst mistake I've made, though, is skipping over how some of the characters could have come to certain conclusions - possibly to the point of hand-waving something the character couldn't actually do. Just because my response to the hidden information was, "I thought it would be something like that" doesn't mean that my characters would automatically suss out what I had them know. I'll have to go back and review my responses when I get a chance.

-----

I hope to publish some "updated" character sheets before the next challenge. We'll see if that actually happens.

-----

Alternate "Endings"

So, for some characters, the challenge makes sense in their system: Arma remained in 2e, Whizzy in 3e, and Mr. T is in WHF. And the MtG Mage can't buy things if nobody else is a MtG Mage, so I kinda had to leave their "system" intact. For the rest, I've been putting most of them in random / amalgam fantasy Isekai worlds, with fundamentally completely different rules governing the NPCs than the Protagonist beyond just the "NPCs are e6". But what if, instead, they kept "to their system", and everybody was "playing by the same rules"?

Well, that's a bit odd, as, for example, lava doesn't naturally form portals to the elemental plane of fire in most systems, and ROB couldn't be ROB in many of those systems, either. Even more difficult, while the reverse might be true, a portal to the elemental plane of fire could form lava in some systems, that changes the nature of the challenge, and invalidates some of my proposed solutions. So manhandling the scenario to make it fit the system will affect the logic, the pattern of the outcomes.

Also, there's my skill set to consider. I'm really good at translating characters between systems, not so good at "what if every conceit of the system is wrong / a lie?".

Still, there are a few "alternate endings" that I can explore, so I'll do so below.

What if...

There's not much to say here. Suffering from chronic agoraphobia, Alex would... hopefully appear in his Count-ly abode, and never leave it. And, lacking tech, be completely incapable of doing any Magick.

Worst-case scenario... well, worst is, nothing works, he can't do anything. Or that he appears in the terrifying outside, and suffers a complete breakdown.

Second-worst-case scenario, his storm nexus merit would inexplicably still grant bonuses to interacting with spirits (even though there's no logical reason it would), and he'd be limited to "talk to (the zero spirits that he can find with no Magick as an agoraphobe, or) that choose to come to him", and it would turn into a political game of utilizing his OP social skills and (nigh-unique) ability to bribe spirits with his own "energy of exertion" (that he might be able to translate to non-vidoe-game-based spirits?) to get a coalition of spirits to solve the problem for him. Which, while I can see someone writing a decent movie or anime about such a thing, involves way too much world-building for me to do when GMing myself. It's not worth it without that interaction of ideas.

OTOH, he could find himself playing Dark Ages Mage (or Sorcerer's Crusade? The one with Scourge and each group having their own spheres), at which point he could learn new spheres from other Mages, and (maybe?) thereby be free from the shackles and limitations of his technocratic paradigm?

If it worked, this would be a very long road, where I'd be trying to turn that year into as many sessions as possible, to build up the XP to have Alex Knight learn as much Magick as possible, to have any hope of accomplishing anything while never ever leaving the safety of his new house (which he can probably never turn into a Sanctum, sadly).

I'd definitely need to find my books to have any clue what the spheres are, and what they can do, however. So this might be as far as this "what if" goes.

Then... their divinations should have told them everything, and they should be polishing Alex Daeus's and/or Omni-Mage's chairs before they appear, and, when they do appear, telling them how they already solved the "heat-wave" problem. Because an army of level 6 M&M characters could easily more than handle what these Level 10 characters could do.

My first thought is, "when everyone's super, no one is". Still, if they're limited to "street level" heroes, with "normal human limits" of Excellent stats?

Well, there'd still be Excellent sorcerers slinging Excellent spells, including Excellent strength Disintegrates and Excellent Gates. Which is as powerful as John has rolled for any of his spells. So they could probably solve this problem by themselves. The only thing John would need to bring, and would bring, would be Resources, and a talent for organizing people, especially groups of adventurers.

However, despite not necessarily needing to, with a warlike neighbor, John could bring to the issue the Class 1000 Adamantium Flying War Barge Delux, complete with mountain-scale Disintegration ray. That he built in a cave with a box of scraps. That might discourage anyone from wanting to draw aggro from whatever nation John finds himself a wealthy Count in.

So, not much changes when you replace "high fantasy" with "superheroes", afaict.

Well, then, he'd be able to analyze, understand, and replicate the energy fields that the locals are manipulating. And I'd have to make up a faux whole magic system for them to use and him to be "better at", or just for him to have all the lack of limitations his system already gives to his psychic powers. Ultimately, he'd probably end up ascending to a being of pure energy in the process.

Or the locals wouldn't have even faux-magic (contrary to the scenario description), and everything would interact with his science (or "Science!"), and I'd be giving a lot of answers of the form, "<Insert tech here>", with no guidance how long it takes to go from "stone knives and bear skins" to tech he's familiar with.

Ultimately, I think it's best if they have magic his science doesn't interact with, and he's trying to see what problems he can solve with his advanced technology while the magical locals look down on him (world of the 1st 2 scenarios). But a world with "real magic" that he finds he can actually learn and use (3rd+ scenario) might be interesting, too. He'll just have to hire diplomats or something to keep from starting a world war.

NichG

2023-04-12, 07:03 PM

This challenge has been really rough. And it's made me see a few things.

...

And there's a reason for that - and that reason is tied into a bigger topic.

I'm used to playing with a group. One of the conventional ways to try to ensure everyone gets their time in the spotlight is "role protection". My personal habit is to build somewhat min/maxed characters, who have clear areas of specialty (and, more importantly, vast areas of weakness or at least mediocrity), to help ensure that others get their time to shine. Which means that I usually build characters the exact opposite of what this thread calls for.

Worse, in order to not monopolize the game, I'm used to sitting back and not really saying anything on "everyman" skills, or things that aren't my character's area of expertise, until everyone else has had a chance to voice their opinions on the topic.

...

Which... isn't exactly in character for all of the Protagonists I brought, if placed into this situation. Which is another sign of how roleplaying is suffering by how many characters I'm trying to rush through, while focusing on certain "spirit of the challenge" items (like, "can this be solved with Voltron solutions in this system?" or "how does this differ from what other characters in this system would bring to the table?").

And, presumably, it isn't a good trait for a Count, for a leader that the people look to to provide direction, especially in these troubling times. So I'll need to adjust, and some of the characters who are unaccustomed to leadership roles will need to grow into the role more than others.

Another thing I've been handwaving is "managing up". Of course, that's largely because that's really hard without a GM to bounce off of / without the scenario providing any details about who is above the Count.

AND both of these issues are exacerbated by both time, and the 50,000 character post limit.

Also... the "75% rule" has skewed my perception and thought process a bit - the short of it is, things that are outside a character's wheelhouse are likely to fail, and so aren't worth mentioning. So it's only in certain systems where I'll likely even think to mention such non-specialist options. Like Paradox (1e), where my modus operandi was "stack lots of likely to fail options to ensure (maximize the odds of) some path to success". Or Marvel FASERIP, where "I spend Karma" guarantees success on any roll.

Probably the worst mistake I've made, though, is skipping over how some of the characters could have come to certain conclusions - possibly to the point of hand-waving something the character couldn't actually do. Just because my response to the hidden information was, "I thought it would be something like that" doesn't mean that my characters would automatically suss out what I had them know. I'll have to go back and review my responses when I get a chance.

One of the interesting things about this particular challenge is, there is tons of fiction that centers around people solving problems like this on the basis of 'my only meaningful power is that I come from modern Earth'. So, fictionally, there are tons of non-mechanical solutions to this scenario that e.g. in any of my games would never involve once picking up the dice. But for some systems, the system very strongly encourages you to go through its metaphor - everything is a dice roll. And there's probably such a strong table culture against e.g. 'my D&D character invents nuclear fission' that it may have created a blind spot where characters could use things they know (or things they could learn or discover) to avoid using the specific things the game lets them do.

The way I'd put it is, there is this 'set of powers' that innately comes from being e.g. a sapient, intelligent, humanoid-ish thing, independent of whatever the game system specifically gives you. That on its own can be quite powerful.

Interestingly, some game systems have things like this too, buried in the rulebooks. WoD Changeling (don't remember if it was the Lost or the Dreaming, the more recent one) for example has a lot of weak powers that you have to pay a lot of XP to buy, but also just by virtue of being a changeling you have the ability to make deals with mortals to give them like up to three free Background points AND buff yourself in the process. Three free Background points is enough to, for example, turn someone with a $10k/year income into a multi-millionaire. And you just have that ability because changeling, no XP expenditure involved, no rolls, nothing on your character sheet. It's far more potent than anything you can actually do with the powers you have to buy. Another thing you can more or less 'just do' is to physically enter people's dreams. But even noticing that that stuff is in the books seems to require a sort of different mindset than the usual character-build-focused way of thinking.

Telok

2023-04-12, 08:24 PM

Yeah, I have it kind of easy as DtD40k7e is the kitchen sink of kitchen sinks so everything fits. Even Paranoia and Traveller I could get away with goinf all Matrix on the characters.

On the other hand the 75% is something that could break the challenges. There's a DtD40k7e build, human paragon peasant, that starts play with 3s in all stats and training in every skill. Add the "mid level amount of xp" thing and the character has basically 5k4+4 every roll (75% a 26+ result), three extra rolled dice per session, and 5 hero points a session. Because hero piints can be used to kick -5 off a target number (and they stack) plus the descriptions of target numbers is weirdly exactly the same as D&D 5e, the character would be basically auto-succeeding anything that called tor a straight one-off skill/ability check. The only things that would stop the character would be stuff you utterly required magic or specific unavailable tech for, or a bunch of rapid fire tests with 30+ TNs that all had to be done in a single session.

Or take Gun Whore Bob, that character has "open a doorway to anywhere with a couple hours work" and can summon a 8k4 skill+ability spirit for 5 minutes. But it's actually trivial to rebuild that to any other magic school*. You could set up for seduction plus the spells Luck, Precognition, and Commune. That would get a character able to talk to anyone they could name (yes including all the gods, it's just 'name' and not a 'secret name' thing) then throw 10k7 reroll 1s & a free reroll to seduce them. Your 75% for that is 49 before rerolls and using hero points to drop the target number by 10... math math math... not an even bell curve because exploding 10s... if I'm right the 75% for including a reroll if you roll under 50 comes out to about 60 or 61 so with the -10 we'll hit 70+ for that 75%=100% target. Or we could set up to call up a 9 foot tall elemental every hour to build an army with.

Applying that "75% = success" to spammable abilities in DtD40k7e leads to armies of elementals and "are there any gods, demigods, or anyone powerful enough to solve this that I can seduce with a TN 70 check". I just feel it'd be a little silly to go that far overboard.

* or any gun kata or sword school. Those get pretty crazy but being able to tank nuclear missiles, one-shot dragons & mecha, stealth kill anyone, or punch starships to scrap (that one actually takes hours to accomplish) isn't a "widely useful for different kinds of challenges" sort of thing.

Quertus

2023-04-13, 10:59 AM

One of the interesting things about this particular challenge is, there is tons of fiction that centers around people solving problems like this on the basis of 'my only meaningful power is that I come from modern Earth'. So, fictionally, there are tons of non-mechanical solutions to this scenario that e.g. in any of my games would never involve once picking up the dice. But for some systems, the system very strongly encourages you to go through its metaphor - everything is a dice roll. And there's probably such a strong table culture against e.g. 'my D&D character invents nuclear fission' that it may have created a blind spot where characters could use things they know (or things they could learn or discover) to avoid using the specific things the game lets them do.

The way I'd put it is, there is this 'set of powers' that innately comes from being e.g. a sapient, intelligent, humanoid-ish thing, independent of whatever the game system specifically gives you. That on its own can be quite powerful.

I mean, if I were Isekai’d, sure, there’s lots of ideas I’d have, lots of concepts I’m vaguely familiar with, that could solve this class of problem. Or not.

Because, for example, so what if I introduce different crops, if the local pollinator population dies out due to climate change, or isn’t interested in the alternate crops?

And I don’t know much about wells and aqueducts and such - the locals may well know more than I do, or I might even foul their water supply if I do it wrong enough (lead pipes being an example I know, but what don’t I know?).

And there’s, perhaps not tons, but fiction I’m very fond of, that talks about the danger of introducing invasive species to an ecosystem - something I hear about irl in the “nonfiction” news multiple times yearly, too.

So, yeah, I’m not convinced that the muggles are actually going to make things better.

Implementing any of these ideas would require significant manpower - which, in a non-industrial society, is that much manpower that isn’t going towards tending the falling crops, or otherwise keeping the community self-sufficient.

It’d be a gamble, for Isekai’d me, trying out my half-baked ideas in the hopes that it improves the community, and that it does so in time to be worth the cost, let alone completed before Rob’s time limit expires.

And that’s if I can convince them to do so in the first place. I’ve worked with a lot of idiots, who wouldn’t do what was obviously right, that I couldn’t convince of things I knew to be true, let alone some dubious plan that even the speaker admits is a gamble. Heck, even here on the Playground, I’ve had to talk about my characters by name to keep Playgrounders from saying “that’s impossible” about things I’ve actually done. That’s just how hard people are to convince of even things I can state as a no-gamble Truth.

Point is, I’m well and ____ly conditioned to believe… a lot of things, I suppose, but case in point that things I can accomplish on my own without having to deal with morons are by far superior and easier solutions to problems. Especially with the “75% success” rule, involving others === failure (unless the character is super spec‘s for that, like the telepathic vampire, who still only has a 70% chance of success on any given social roll, meaning he can, by these rules, at best, convince people to do the second best option, if it comes to needing to use dice).

So “using Everyman skills” isn’t, to me, a “non-mechanical solution”. In fact, it’s the solution involving the heaviest reliance on mechanics - and, worse, on mechanics with undefined inputs, or virtually guaranteed to fail.

And I’m the GM for these challenges - I know what a **** the GM is. :smallwink:

Further, there’s… well, as you said, there’s a difference between attempting a solution anyone could do, and showcasing what’s unique about this system / character. Given the feel of this thread, that pushes me further towards unique solutions. And this is also a product of me running so many characters, and not wanting to just write the same thing for each one.

NichG

2023-04-13, 12:14 PM

Point is, I’m well and ____ly conditioned to believe… a lot of things, I suppose, but case in point that things I can accomplish on my own without having to deal with morons are by far superior and easier solutions to problems. Especially with the “75% success” rule, involving others === failure (unless the character is super spec‘s for that, like the telepathic vampire, who still only has a 70% chance of success on any given social roll, meaning he can, by these rules, at best, convince people to do the second best option, if it comes to needing to use dice).

So “using Everyman skills” isn’t, to me, a “non-mechanical solution”. In fact, it’s the solution involving the heaviest reliance on mechanics - and, worse, on mechanics with undefined inputs, or virtually guaranteed to fail.

Okay, perhaps I should clarifiy the terms of the challenge: The 75% thing isn't 'if you would logically have less than a 75% chance of success, you fail'. It's 'if the system would make you roll to determine if you succeed then use a 75% success cut off for pass/fail'. If what the system says is just 'the GM decides', then the GM (you) can just decide whether something would succeed or fail.

So if for example your 2e character goes to a bar and orders a drink. If as a GM running 2e you'd require them to make a reaction roll with the bartender to see if they get thrown out, well that's your version of 2e I guess! But if you'd just run it at a table as 'okay, the bartender charges you a few copper and you get your drink', then it doesn't matter if your character can't hit a 75% success rate on a Charisma check. Personally, I wouldn't make someone roll a Charisma check to give an instruction to someone working for them unless that particular person was in some way recalcitrant or hostile. So, at least at my table, simply firing anyone who makes you roll would basically resolve the whole 'I can't do social stuff because I can't hit 75%'

Similarly, if there's something unspecified in the scenario prompt but not tied - by your system or by your table practice - to a dice roll, then you just decide what that thing is, you don't say 'well it has only a 60% chance of being what I need it to be, so its never the what I need'

Quertus

2023-04-13, 04:20 PM

Okay, perhaps I should clarifiy the terms of the challenge: The 75% thing isn't 'if you would logically have less than a 75% chance of success, you fail'. It's 'if the system would make you roll to determine if you succeed then use a 75% success cut off for pass/fail'. If what the system says is just 'the GM decides', then the GM (you) can just decide whether something would succeed or fail.

So if for example your 2e character goes to a bar and orders a drink. If as a GM running 2e you'd require them to make a reaction roll with the bartender to see if they get thrown out, well that's your version of 2e I guess! But if you'd just run it at a table as 'okay, the bartender charges you a few copper and you get your drink', then it doesn't matter if your character can't hit a 75% success rate on a Charisma check. Personally, I wouldn't make someone roll a Charisma check to give an instruction to someone working for them unless that particular person was in some way recalcitrant or hostile. So, at least at my table, simply firing anyone who makes you roll would basically resolve the whole 'I can't do social stuff because I can't hit 75%'

Similarly, if there's something unspecified in the scenario prompt but not tied - by your system or by your table practice - to a dice roll, then you just decide what that thing is, you don't say 'well it has only a 60% chance of being what I need it to be, so its never the what I need'

lol

So, 2e reaction rolls are iirc for when it isn’t obvious what the mood should be. So when the king and captain of the guard walk in on you with your pants down next to a screaming princess, there’s no need for a reaction check. Otoh, for your bar example, there may actually be a reaction roll - not for a reaction to ordering a drink, but if the GM didn’t know if random bartender has a friendly or surly disposition towards the PCs in general.

For more… variable response / resistance situations, sadly, most systems don’t correctly place a DC on challenges, like “put on your pants”; if they did, then “calling for a roll” would result in an automatic success… for most people who aren’t armless drunk toddlers etc. But if DCs were done right, calling for a roll wouldn’t matter to this question; 75% would be 75% and auto-success would be auto-success regardless of whether the GM called for a roll or not.

So, dealing with the systems we have, rather than the perfect system, what are we looking at? Well, unsurprisingly, systems are rather quiet about when they fail like a chump, giving very little guidance for when the system claims to not work, for when the GM should override the system logic that the DC math indicates.

Paradox (1e) doesn’t use DCs or modifiers: you have automatic success, automatic failure, and GM called for a roll as your 3 states. The creator of this homebrew system called for a roll…. pretty much every time a PC took an action that could possibly be related to one of the skills. And I probably had the only sill that had a 75+% rating in that system, ever. So no single roll ever succeeds, it’s always about having fallback plans.

Still, I suppose “telling your underlines to do something normal” was one exception that never required a roll. But I don’t think I can convince the GM that “use tech you’ve never heard of before” is exactly normal. So not only is that a bust, but “Social roll to survive political backlash when first plan invariably fails” is also an important roll to consider here. So even my character with really good charisma and engineering rolls would think twice about attempting such a solution without a Telepathy fallback plan, were they genre savvy enough.

And, thing is, when it comes to systems where it’s more “GM’s call” as to when to roll, well, the GM for my characters is a **** who knows “stop stabbing yourself, you’re just making things worse” requires a roll, because people are just that dumb (no, really, I have multiple life experiences of failing to convince people they were being exactly that dumb, quite obviously causing the problem, where they refused to believe the obvious truth). So I know that the GM for my characters is going to call for rolls, even to convince people to act in their obvious best interests, let alone be a **** about the potential logical consequences of anything like those Everyman / muggle solutions I mentioned.

So if, as a player (and especially if I know that the “75% rule” is in effect), I’ll try and… limit? Direct? Hmmm… I guys I’ll try and get the most bang for my buck, with the last catastrophic fall conditions? I’m not actually sure what underlying logic drives my decisions that drives me away from options I know can turn a type of ugly that I don’t want to have to deal with.

But I do know that, unless a particular answer speaks to me, I’ll avoid unnecessary single author fiction social interactions with characters I made up just for that purpose. I’ll try and avoid trying to a state where I find myself needing to create a “leader of the rebellion” character, and have my character interact with them, or with their plans.

NichG

2023-04-13, 04:57 PM

lol

So, 2e reaction rolls are iirc for when it isn’t obvious what the mood should be. So when the king and captain of the guard walk in on you with your pants down next to a screaming princess, there’s no need for a reaction check. Otoh, for your bar example, there may actually be a reaction roll - not for a reaction to ordering a drink, but if the GM didn’t know if random bartender has a friendly or surly disposition towards the PCs in general.

For more… variable response / resistance situations, sadly, most systems don’t correctly place a DC on challenges, like “put on your pants”; if they did, then “calling for a roll” would result in an automatic success… for most people who aren’t armless drunk toddlers etc. But if DCs were done right, calling for a roll wouldn’t matter to this question; 75% would be 75% and auto-success would be auto-success regardless of whether the GM called for a roll or not.

So, dealing with the systems we have, rather than the perfect system, what are we looking at? Well, unsurprisingly, systems are rather quiet about when they fail like a chump, giving very little guidance for when the system claims to not work, for when the GM should override the system logic that the DC math indicates.

Paradox (1e) doesn’t use DCs or modifiers: you have automatic success, automatic failure, and GM called for a roll as your 3 states. The creator of this homebrew system called for a roll…. pretty much every time a PC took an action that could possibly be related to one of the skills. And I probably had the only sill that had a 75+% rating in that system, ever. So no single roll ever succeeds, it’s always about having fallback plans.

Still, I suppose “telling your underlines to do something normal” was one exception that never required a roll. But I don’t think I can convince the GM that “use tech you’ve never heard of before” is exactly normal. So not only is that a bust, but “Social roll to survive political backlash when first plan invariably fails” is also an important roll to consider here. So even my character with really good charisma and engineering rolls would think twice about attempting such a solution without a Telepathy fallback plan, were they genre savvy enough.

And, thing is, when it comes to systems where it’s more “GM’s call” as to when to roll, well, the GM for my characters is a **** who knows “stop stabbing yourself, you’re just making things worse” requires a roll, because people are just that dumb (no, really, I have multiple life experiences of failing to convince people they were being exactly that dumb, quite obviously causing the problem, where they refused to believe the obvious truth). So I know that the GM for my characters is going to call for rolls, even to convince people to act in their obvious best interests, let alone be a **** about the potential logical consequences of anything like those Everyman / muggle solutions I mentioned.

So if, as a player (and especially if I know that the “75% rule” is in effect), I’ll try and… limit? Direct? Hmmm… I guys I’ll try and get the most bang for my buck, with the last catastrophic fall conditions? I’m not actually sure what underlying logic drives my decisions that drives me away from options I know can turn a type of ugly that I don’t want to have to deal with.

But I do know that, unless a particular answer speaks to me, I’ll avoid unnecessary single author fiction social interactions with characters I made up just for that purpose. I’ll try and avoid trying to a state where I find myself needing to create a “leader of the rebellion” character, and have my character interact with them, or with their plans.

This all seems to be in very curious contrast to your usual Combat as War, never roll if you can at all help it philosophy...

Anyhow, I'm very specifically not DM-ing these scenarios, so its up to you how you would resolve it. Don't want to taint the results!

Quertus

2023-04-13, 09:37 PM

Basically someome else uses Paranoid Bob as a magic item to solve the issue. That's the only way.

Ah, I've gotten a chuckle every time I read that.

5000 is a itty bitty small town. Well ditch everything requiring assistance from any local magic users in my answers.

Why make that assumption? Is that a 3e thing?

This all seems to be in very curious contrast to your usual Combat as War, never roll if you can at all help it philosophy...

Anyhow, I'm very specifically not DM-ing these scenarios, so its up to you how you would resolve it. Don't want to taint the results!

Ah, I think you hit the nail on the head. Kudos!

As a player, I do indeed have a CaW attitude of avoiding rolls. But as a GM, I roll for unknowns - and the personalities of the NPCs and physics of the potential fail states of muggle solutions are unknowns. Which means it makes perfect sense that I'd avoid those paths, where the success of the plan ends up in the hands of Arangee, unless some other factor, something else about those paths interested me enough to risk them, or the character had no other alternatives.

Telok

2023-04-13, 11:11 PM

Ah, I've gotten a chuckle every time I read that.

Why make that assumption? Is that a 3e thing?

If you're amused by the failure and death of a Paranoia character then it's a sign the system is working.

The caster thing this was because I'd misread and thought the town had a magic supported militia. But that was the folks across the mountains. I'd have to dig out my medieval & dark ages rpg & economics references but the 85%-95% of the population being small hold farming that does not much beyond survive is relatively accurate for isolated regions.

Tangent
Basically they used very inefficent farming techniques and lots of different crops, not all of which were completely suited to a particular climate/rainfall/etc. The reason is because there was functionally no long term weather forecasting and no way to switch crops or labor mid-season. What they had was a system that prioritized having some food no matter what the weather, pests, etc., did to them. The year to year survival of the majority was assured even through flooding and drought, but at the cost of efficent farming and meaningful amounts of cash crops. This is aslo predicated on not being able to rely on trade or local nobility/rules to import food during a famine, since that was the way it was.

Now if they were in a proper mid-Europe setup with villages every few miles, towns every dozen or so, and regular trade, that'd be different. But it sounds more like your typical D&D setup with a town every 40-60 miles and big tracts of wilderness. That's more in line with 1800's California Gold Rush which Gygax was more familiar with and modeled D&D frontier civilization on for early D&D. It's more familiar to American audiences and more ameniable to forgotten mines or other "dungeon in wilderness" adventures like Keep on the Borderlands than an actual European setting would be.

Anyways, we're looking at having maybe 500 of 5000 people not directly involved in required survival food production. Maybe a thousand if we can put stuff off a while. But if the local weather is changing they'll be short on food after a single season. So I'd avoid assuming there's anything more than a hedge wizard around out little bumpkin-ville. I mean, there could be a random relatively high level druid hiding in the woods, but it's not something I'd be willing to assume when playing.

Amusingly, simply convincing the neighbors to help is possibly the most reliable solution. Marry a couple local noble kids to each other and dig a canal to the lake. As a bonus canals are great for transport and trade as well as water.

InvisibleBison

2023-04-14, 02:49 PM

Responding to this challenge took me a while, mostly because I was busy not doing homework and couldn't find the time, but also because it's very far removed from Blades in the Dark's intended play experience, so it took quite a bit of thinking to figure out how to approach it.

The biggest issue I'm having in figuring out how to approach this problem is that the goal is campaign-level. I can do a pretty good job of figuring out how an action roll or two would go, and can guesstimate the outcome of a score, but trying to simulate dozens of sessions of gaming is probably beyond me. Still, I'll give it a shot:
Initial thoughts: Reyyah's proficiency with the arcane puts her in a good position to find a supernatural method of reversing the desertification, though she doesn't have (and presumably because of the E6-like nature of the world cannot obtain) the Ritual ability, which means she can't do any “big magic”. In other words, if the desertification is happening because of a cursed magical orb hidden somewhere nearby she can track it down and smash it, but if it's happening because the land itself is cursed she doesn't have the ability to lift the curse or reverse the curse back upon whoever laid it or whatever. And of course if there's not a magical cause to the desertification none of this applies.
I think her best bet is going to be tracking down some sort of magical artifact that can stave off the desertification. She'd also have to forge some sort of alliance with the neighbor to the east to protect against aggression from the northern ruler, whose territory would also benefit from whatever magical artifact she's found. Reyyah doesn't have great social skills, so she'd probably have to take a bad deal, but the goal is self-sufficiency, not autonomy.

After reviewing the hidden details: Okay, so while there is a magical cause to the desertification it's not something Reyyah can actually deal with. Her success depends entirely on whether or not she's able to find some sort of mega-refrigerator artifact with which to chill the region, so she's probably going to fail.
Initial thoughts: Reginald doesn't really have any skills that are directly applicable to this problem. His best course of action, if such a term can really be used for such a bad plan, is to try and infiltrate the government of one the two prosperous neighbors and make them decide that sponsoring his nation is a worthwhile foreign policy objective. His odds of successfully doing this aren't great, and even if he pulls it off I don't think it counts as being self-sufficient. I'd say he just fails this challenge.

After reviewing the hidden details: There's nothing in here that helps Reginald. He still fails.
Initial Thoughts: Oturug has probably the best shot at this of any of my characters, because of his skill at crafting. Developing a magical device that will make the nearby lands arable is well within his abilities, though it will definitely require a lot of money to produce, especially in the quantities needed to make arable enough land to support 5000+ people. Of course, he has access to the treasury of a small territory, which even if it's small on the scale of nations is quite a lot of money in terms of BitD's finance mechanics. Military defense is a problem, given the inevitable aggression from the northern nation and potential aggression from the western nation, but they can probably be bought off with arable-ification devices of their own, though Oturug's weak social skills might make that harder than it could otherwise be. On the whole, though, I think he'll be successful.

After reviewing the hidden details: In theory, Oturug might be able to do something about the portal, but I don't think he's likely to find it. He probably could if he went looking for it, but he's more likely to just address the immediate problem. And I do think his arable-ification devices are more likely to succeed than some sort of heat-trap deployed near the portal.

Quertus

2023-04-15, 10:55 PM

Notes (mostly for character sheet updates)

If there's very little that requires her attention, she could create maybe 75-100 potions in a year, while still going on the occasional dungeon dive. Unfortunately, creating ice trees and undead take priority here. Still, as the only person in the entire world who can create potions, she'd crank out a few for trade to other kingdoms (and be really sad she didn't keep all the ones she brewed back in (what remains of) her home world).

Still, trying to imagine an e6 2e world is quite challenging. Nobody can create any magical items whatsoever, so one of two things is true. Either nobody in the entire world has any items (in which case Arma is extra OP by comparison), or all existing items are even more "relics of lost civilizations" than usual, coming from a time before the e6 limit existed, or from another world that lacks the e6 state.

Worse, 2e doesn't exactly cater to "you're special". That is... boy oh boy, how to explain? So... either 2e has some contradictory lore, or some of the lore is actually from older editions. Regardless, canonically, worlds can have different rules for a number of reasons in D&D. One reason is the chemistry of nutrition - certain elements and proteins and whatnot just don't exist in certain worlds. This results in travelers suffering the other world's limitations, and/or getting sick and dying. Following this logic, Arma would lose a level each month, until she dropped to 6th level. Or she would slowly sicken, and just keel over after a while. However, thanks to Contact Home Power and Create Food and Water, she could simply create a bland but filling gruel from her home world that would allow her to keep her power. However, this isn't just an additional spell tax, as it would also allow others who partake of her repast to break the e6 limit. Like if One Punch Man trained a group of apprentices in exercise and diet. Totally OP.

Alternately, it could be a nature of the fabric of magic and reality, in which case it's highly likely that Arma would sicken and die before the year is up. There probably shouldn't be a workaround for this, but... it's possible the ROB worked out a variant on the... memory fails me on the name of the spell. The Native Item spell, perhaps? Anyway, it's possible that the ROB worked out a spell that works like a planar bubble (like an Acorn of Far Travel, actually), and provided Arma with this. Alternately... I suppose Arma could use those soil samples she collected off her boots, not (just) to create her not-so-cubic gate, but as a focus for her own custom spell she "researches" / prays for... if she receives divine inspiration that that's what's going on. Or her "divine blessing" that lets her survive the outlands of her own broken world could allow her to no-sell the sickness caused by this world, too. Or she could just die. Since I imagine she'd throw some divinations if she started getting sick, and transition that ending to "pray for new spell", "just die" seems an unlikely result, even if the ROB was a ROB and set her up to die.

And then there's the possibility that some or all of the items in the world exist because future, time-traveling Arma created them, and sent them back to the past, for Elminster-like nutter reasons. She would test that theory, by planning to make one or more of the items designed to return to the owner's hand when they activate a command-word trigger (see also "hammer space"), and speak the command word(s).

So, now that I've written up some possibilities, what would I rule as the Truth of this world?

Well, Arma is based on Armus, who enchanted his Polyhedron Gateway to return to his hand whenever he said "Mine" in elvish (had it enchanted, whatever), and who got to loot his own dead body. So having Arma have crafted such items is just funny and appropriate for the theme for this character, so I've got to go with it. But not without cost - likely some distant foreign powers / adventurers had some of those items, and eventually use divinations or whatever to figure out who "stole" them. But that's a problem for another year.

Since it's a future Arma sending them back in time, she could literally McGuffin herself for any challenges (not just the 6 of this thread) that she encounters. So she'll be surprised that the items that respond to her command words do not exactly match what she envisioned creating, and she'd be prepared that they might have unexpected uses / powers.

To continue the running gag, I'll say that she expected to craft items that parallel items that Armus acquired later in his career. A power stone that powers out 20 levels of arbitrary spells per day would give her 5 additional castings of Polymorph Other per day for the current crisis. A Staff of the Arch-priest could give her access to some high-level spells, and allow her to cast them without aging herself... and allow her to cast some lower-level spells (like, say, Metamorphose Liquids (because for her it's a Priest spell, dagnabbit!)) at no cost. Her Dodecahedron Gateway... we'll get to that. And the other... let's say two items... will remain undefined (and hopefully, if they do need to be defined, can similarly be made to match something Armus ended up with).

So, because that's mighty OP as it is, I don't want to let Arma just break the e6 limit on her chosen, and the not-so-cubic gate will probably come with a ROB note saying "no bringing in others" or something similar, to keep from having a whole army of e6-breaking beings on her side.

Even if Arma became truly immortal, I don't think she'd actually create a whole world worth of items... unless she actually secretly is the ROB... who offered to help her reach divinity... OK, actually, I think I accidentally just talked myself into going that route, as I kinda like that angle.

Well, I guess I see where I'm going with this one. Sigh. :smallsigh:

So Arma will be the self-created monotheistic creator deity of the world she was Isekai'd into, unless some future scenario necessitates that the world is polytheistic... in which case, I guess she can use Create Food and Water to break the e6 cap, and the other deities are her Chosen.

Well, as I already covered, Whizzy is now probably 12th level, with an Artificer cohort and one or more Decanters of Endless Water, causing cool water to flow through town on a series of stone aqueducts into the new frog ponds. The weather is hot, and the neighboring militaristic kingdom is likely to get even hotter if they ever realize Whizzy was farming their troops for XP as hard as he's having the peasants in his domain work to hit their level cap. And he's definitely looking to add some form of "Harem Girl" prestige class to the setting.

So, I'm feeling dumb. The really easy, in-character answer to "creating a new companion" and "getting them the magical power to solve this problem" wasn't to, when served the lemons of "no appropriate Wizard", to make lemonade out of Karmic Wealth and hoping they can raise their skills, but to go the simple in-character route: eat a wizard. All it takes is (the mysterious death of) one "at cap" Wizard (like those from the neighboring nation), and bam!, our Illithid-Savant-like protagonist has max Wizard powers - which he uses to transfer that max Wizard power to his Vampire Thief Catgirl companion. Because "Transfer Power" is a spell in Paradox (1e). Sigh.

So using magic to understand and solve the problem would be much easier, and they'd probably have a decent magic item business, not just sunscreen and slave trade, plus some decent material and Karmic Wealth to boot.

At long last, Cutter would have mana storage crystals on his character sheet. Also a stillsuit, one or more Decanter of Endless Water - equipped golems, and an air-conditioned mansion.

So, it occurred to me that I was being dumb, and, if the ROB operates like most D&D deities, granting followers spells, then John spending the karma to take him as a contact should more than make sense. Of course, that's probably only useful for John's purposes if ROB is actually a god of Isekai, or can otherwise grant John the Isekai spell he's after.

Regardless, he's got a few new children, and a flying adamantium fortress that enhances his Disintegration powers to insane, "solve that last problem" levels. And probably a Self-Duplication spell for good measure.

Ugh. Some more pathetic Creation spells, to create water and ice. And a bunch of apprentices with the same. Terrible "solutions" and terrible at being a Count. Even with a Hat of Disguise. The only good thing the world / county got from the Troll is some newly literal and figurative cortex-bomb-equipped alchemists learning how to create Orichalcum. I don't know if "can make money to trade to other towns in its own nation" qualifies as "self-sufficient", but it's probably the closest the Troll is likely to pull off.

Alex is currently temporarily down his half-a-level supply of XP, from watching his new robot get melted by lava. Fortunately, he made a backup copy of its programming...

The Omni-Wizard is also down (much of) their half-a-level supply of XP, as they have a new "actually good at being a Count" ally.

Wow. So Tzeentch rewards Mr. T for creating a new Beastman army... with the Reckoning of Tzeentch. Which, while it boosts some of his characeristics (and lowers others), it also gives him an additional mutation, disqualifying him for becoming a Daemon, unless ROB can help out there.

Despite Talents to allow multiple rolls on the Mutation table, the most interesting option is Prehensile Tail.

So, having been made Count, Mr. T. has gained a Fate Point and a Prehensile Tail for turning the population into Chaos-worshiping beastmen, who now roam the chaos-tree-filled desert wastes with their faulty plasma rifles and their magic water-granting duck.

Right, so... a few updates. Being a count definitely increases his available funds from "poor mage who inherited a good deck" to, well, actually able to afford a few good cards. And being a count for a year means that it's pretty safe to assume that the "infinite sideboard" (collection?) has grown significantly over this time. Also, the amusement park is in space, from an "Un-" set that isn't tournament legal, so "Type 2" is a bit... more restrictive than I was going for - perhaps "printed in the past few years" better represents how I took the "e6" status of the world.

Expanding to "printed in the past few years", in addition to adding in the amusement park in space to Type 2 cards, we've got (I think) something with Transformers and Warhammer 40k and "Brother's War" during the type 2 timeframe. Probably more stuff I'm not aware of.

Warhammer 40k has "Abundance", which sounds like it would do wonders for the crops. "Deny Reality" both mechanically and thematically sounds like it could deal with the heat wave / portal, if Naturalize didn't cut it. Or "Harrow" could be used to sacrifice the cursed/"enchanted" Mountain, and replace it with two new lands - which sounds like great fun (for me, not so much for the cartographers)! :smallbiggrin: And if it's somehow hard to notice when one's mountains are enchanted, "Reconnaissance Mission" could help with that.

On a different note, "Beacon of Unrest" and "Death's Presence" could be used mechanically (if not so much thematically) to push normal normal e6 citizenry past their limits, increasing everyone's power (and toughness) by repeatedly killing and resurrecting one unlucky sacrifice. Not much use in this particular world, however.

It also has "Birth of the Imperium" and "Biotransference", in case I really wanted to shake things up, changing who the townsfolk are, making them into the Imperium or (semi-)sentient robots. And it also has "Exterminatus" or "Let the Galaxy Burn", for the ultimate overkill ways to shake things up (that I imagine will get hit with a Counterspell from somewhere if anyone tries it...). Actually... I'm kinda liking the Biotransference answer. I'll definitely have Count Elven Chronomancer offer that solution to any citizens who can't take the heat (heh).

Regardless, it's questionable why the Count would themselves ever have to solve any of these problems, since any mages in the citizenry could do so just as easily. All in all, I suspect dealing with a world rife with tranformers, dragons, space amusement parks and tyranids (let alone magic schools and whatever else) will prove more challenging than the simple heat.

Well, in addition to standard gear of phaser, tricorder, and (useless) comm badge, LtC Vir has a medkit and a toolkit, and a replicator hooked up to a maddening array of magical power storage devices... inside a carriage... that's upgraded to be more like a shielded tank... that drives around, with the replicator by default set to be converting matter to cooling spells ambient heat into matter. Curiously, nothing really needs to be changed on his character sheet to represent the mad skill at Technomancy he's acquired from the locals (although he'll doubtless take "Technomancy" as a skill/specialty to boost his already "unable to be failed" rolls the next time he gets the opportunity. And he's doubtless building other technomagical wonders as fast as his skills allow, which is faster than his lack of diplomatic skills make it wise for him to introduce such wonders to the world.

No real updates to Alex's character sheet, but the world status for Another World, campaign mode, has mods that include Hydromancers, Cryomancers, and fire- and ice-themed elementals, dragons, etc. Also, the portal situation is probably worse than if Alex hadn't gotten involved.

Geez, Harry really cannot afford all these XP. But he'll have dots in Matter and Life, and lots of new Backgrounds, for the... Follower, Retainers, Resources, and Relic he now has. And Status. And maybe Fame. And his former Retainers are greyed out. But if he doesn't get to use Dark Ages rules, he'll be down one Willpower for creating that Relic. :smallannoyed:

All in all, he'd really have to stretch this out over a lot of sessions to get the XP to afford all that. Of course, it does represent a year's worth of time, so maybe? Otherwise, he's got a huge XP debt, to pay off all the Backgrounds he acquired.

NichG

2023-04-16, 01:05 PM

Scenario 4 - Dreamsick

(Note, this is not a continuation of the same clone/character as Scenario 3, each scenario is separate)

You have been requested to investigate a peculiar rash of disappearances that have a clearly supernatural angle to them. What makes it particularly troubling is that the information about the appearances seems to disappear over time, until it’s as if the person who disappeared never existed in the first place. This was noticed by a local investigator who had collected testimony about a few of the disappearances, then later found that their own notes had been erased.

Your employer wants you to find the source of the disappearances and ideally stop it and return those who are missing if possible. Of course given the nature of this exercise, if you want to do something else with the information that’s also interesting!

In reverse order (which corresponds to ease of discovery via investigation):

- The final thing that happens is that the timeline adjusts as if the victim had never existed

- Before that, the victim disappears, and people far from them begin to forget while people close to them still remember.

- Before that, the victim exhibits sleepwalking and other strange nocturnal behaviors. These behaviors if observed have a supernatural aspect to them – the person might be able to climb a flight of stairs that does not exist, etc.

- Before that, the victim might report strange and stressful dreams, the sort of thing where you dream about taking an exam that you already took or other sorts of important or worrisome daily activities. Most people will not connect this occurrence to the disappearances, so its hard to find via investigation.

- The moment of onset of this phenomenon is tied to interacting with a certain individual living in the city in daily life, OR interacting with any of the sleepwalkers when they are in the process of sleepwalking. The ‘patient zero’ is one Kamar Tarnak, is an obsessive gambler who has a habit of using a coin flip to decide their actions on a day to day basis.

- Those impacted by this do not respond to Remove Disease or Remove Curse, and in general it does not register as a disease, curse, or magical aura/ongoing active magical effect.

- That said, things which are sensitive to planar effects or which are creature-type-aware would register all under the effects of this as ‘native outsiders’. Banishment or other similar spells will cause this condition to immediately proceed to the ‘disappearance’ stage of its progression. If the specific type of outsider can be determined within a system, it would register as
‘Plane of Dreams’.

- A character who causes themselves to be affected sleepwalks, or who telepathically or otherwise investigates the experiences of a sleepwalker will perceive that the person is going about their day in a time-shifted version of the world but with some small details differing. The longer the investigation goes on, the more different those details will be. Others who disappeared will be present in the alternate space.

- Kamar Tarnak’s coin does have a strong magical aura on it, a mix of Conjuration and Divination, though he himself is not aware of this fact. In systems that enable one to make a distinction, the source of this magic is divine rather than arcane.

Kamar Tarnak attracted the attention of a god of luck (Overpowering) who effectively gave him (via his coin) something like Coil’s power from Worm – both possible courses of action in some sense ‘exist’ when he flips the coin, and he subconsciously navigates towards the course of action that would be most interesting for him (not the one that would be the best for him!). This has created a bunch of planar turbulence of a sort in the form of these now suddenly more-real-than-they-should-be side timelines, and contact with Kamar Tarnak or others influenced by this can tie others to those unreal timelines. As things go on, reality ‘corrects for the disruption’, slowly pruning away those things which responded to any unreal causes to a significant degree.

The place where these alternate timelines are seeding and growing is the Plane of Dreams, and physically traveling there can visibly reveal the phenomenon. Things that have been pruned from reality still exist in those dreams, though those who have fully disappeared are now outsiders native to Dream. Restoring them to reality might be possible, but doing so just by physical transport will result in a sort of phenomenon where people can’t form long-lasting memories of the returned people, with all of the attendant consequences of that. Fully repatriating them as a non-Outsider via any means resolves this, as does making them into a different kind of Outsider first.

Preventing the coin from being flipped will mean that gradually the disappearances stop. Isolating those who are in process will also help. One could also try to get the luck deity or the rest of their pantheon to intervene somehow – this would be considered a bit of a sloppy job by the luck deity and so others would step in to do something about it, but only if you had either sufficient clout to get them to take a look personally or sufficient evidence to present about the sequence of events.

Telok

2023-04-16, 03:46 PM

So, having been made Count, Mr. T. has gained a Fate Point and a Prehensile Tail for turning the population into Chaos-worshiping beastmen, who now roam the chaos-tree-filled desert wastes with their faulty plasma rifles and their magic water-granting duck.

This is hilarious. I love that guy.

The current situation... hmm... that's a lot of D&D-ism in there. I'll do a bit of checking and translate them into DtD40k7e. For Paranoia and Traveller I think it'll have to go all Ghost on the Shell with a jacked in virtual world, but maybe I can come up with something a bit more fringe that's closer to the original intent without just replacing all the rules of reality.

Kane0

2023-04-16, 07:41 PM

An investigation! This will be interesting.

As a Ranger Lizardman doesn't really have any problem tracking targets, but the supernatural disappearance and interplanar aspects really ratchets up the intricacy.

Going through the obvious tools first, we have access to Detect Magic, Dispel Magic, Locate Object, Speak With Animals/Plants, Lesser Restoration, Feign Death and Nondetection in order to gather information and narrow down possibilities. Telepathy is also an option.
Our Arcana and Investigation and Insight skills aren't particularly great, even with Guidance and Enhance Ability we are only clearing easy to medium DCs with any sort of regularity. We are better off with knowledge and speech checks to get the groundwork done, clearing medium to hard DCs with the same window of rolls.

Using these we can figure out it's not a poison or disease but definitely something supernatural even if it doesn't register as traditional magic, potentially a curse that we can't counter or something else entirely. We also know that affected individuals sleepwalk, but it isn't Fey shenanigans because those are our specialty and this doesn't have Fairy stink all over it.

So first step is we find an affected individual and use a combination of Feign Death and Telepathy to try and figure out what's happening to them during those witching hours. Thankfully we have good mental defences and 1 months worth of perfect memory so we have a good window of time to get to work, but once we get to the stage of figuring out how the effect spreads (which means Lizardman is now affected) and that the dreaming contains other lost people we're at a bit of a dead end.

So we can try repeating this process with someone else, or better yet multiple someone elses. We cross reference information as things get more and more accurate to real life the farther we go back until we find the point where people's experiences start overlapping. Perfect memory will be doing a LOT of heavy lifting here.

This should bring us to Kamar as our next lead. Tracking him down and interrogating him is child's play for Lizardman, Detect Magic will even tell us it's not even him but that stupid coin he keeps flipping. Armed with this information, there ain't diddly squat we can do about it other than confiscating the thing and making our report before we forget everything in a month's time and disappear off to dreamland ourselves.

Partial success. Lizardman figures it out but can't actually fix anything himself and gets to add 'dreamlander' to his resume in the process.

Quertus

2023-04-16, 08:56 PM

Aw, not continuations? Sadness. :smallfrown:

This may be hard to roleplay, in that my "scientific method" will probably look very similar for all characters who utilize such to investigate using trial and error.

Why and how is the writing "erased"? What does that mean? Quill and ink usually leaves not just ink, but indents on the page - are those gone, too? If information is interspersed with a grocery list, does only the information disappear? What if it's written in code? What is the disappearance rate? Does it vary based on where the information is recorded? How often it is viewed? if it is transmitted or transported to a remote area? Does the effect have an epicenter that can be tracked by utilizing this method? Heck, does the erasure show up to various Sights?

Have any of the witnesses forgotten anything undue? Have the possessions of the disappeared disappeared? Do spells and abilities (like, say a bloodhound) that should be able to track the disappeared function properly? If not, can Sights see a cause for this malfunction? Can retrocognition see the notes / the disappeared? Is there any evidence that the reverse is occurring, that they aren't the disappeared, but the appeared, that are being inserted into the timeline, albeit poorly / piecemeal?

Is there anything similar at the site of the disappearing notes and the sites of the disappearances, or other similarities (they all happened at night, or during church, or after the Head Detective was made aware of them)?

Any chance the one who recorded the information did the erasure? Should we assume some sort of cognitive virus, and nuke the town from orbit, just to be sure? I'm liking Mindrape here...

Let alone the usual, is there anything connecting the disappeared? Any defined rate of disappearances? Locations? What does the investigator remember about their notes? What do the witnesses remember?

Huh. That's an odd name for the challenge.

Wow, those details... really beg for translation into other systems.

Now on to responses for Challenge #4 - Dreamsick

Well, ****. Is this another symptom of the world breaking, or is this the cause of the break showing up a second time?

Regardless, Arma will use her authority as High Priestess to put the... town? city? Imma call it a town. Anyway, she'll use her authority (and undead army) to put the town on enforced lockdown. Anyone who disagrees will join her undead army.

I'm not sure the exact path, whether inquiries into past victims, divinations, loosening restrictions to create new victims, or random Detect Magic sweeps will be the path that first leads her to Kamar Tarnak and the coin, but the artifact level of magic on the thing will definitely grab her attention.

The most likely outcome of that meeting is that she will determine that Kamar Tarnak doesn't know what's going on, and she will come into possession of the coin... likely in a way that destroys that bubble of reality.

End result: Everyone but Arma is erased from existence. And she needs to create more undead. But now she has an artifact to study, to understand the breaking of the world.

Short of a Chronomancer, I'm not sure anyone in 2e is actually better equipped to interact with this challenge. "Dream" wasn't a real place in 2e and older mechanics, the way it is in 3e.

Yeah, um... Whizzy's familiar accompanies the Investigator while Whizzy plays with pen and paper and Sending. The "inverse distance" rule is quite striking. Whizzy teleports away, and writes down copious notes about the victims - all made up - waiting to see which ones disappear. If only true statements disappear, this fact (plus a map) allows him to track down the common denominator even faster than actual footwork. Either way, he'll wait until night, then Wall of Stone in the residence in question before Fireballing it to ashes, then sift through the ashes to find the Artifact. Problem solved?

Huh. A few deep brain scans later, he's left with an unwelcome but unavoidable conclusion: the affected individuals are not from this world. And a gnawing hunger. So he'd grab a quick bite, affecting a disappearance of his own. Probably after his companion ran a few tests, too, so they'd share the meal. Her findings are that, incongruously, the "invaders" aren't all from the same world. He'd consider poking the gods about this, but would decide against it for now.

Next up is trans-reality telepathy, to get into contact with the "real" versions of the affected individuals. From there, it's easy to find the Disappeared.

Getting the Disappeared back should be as easy as having his companion open a Gate, introducing everyone, and explaining the situation. The problem is, after a time, Reality inexplicably rejects the Rescued... and their dopplegangers... replacing everyone with new, "clean" dopplegangers.

Worse, these interactions have triggered Reality to wipe the vampiric duo from the world, too.

There are two possibilities at this point. The simplest is, they both get kicked out, and they don't really care - they just explore the new realm they find themselves in.

The trickier possibility is that only the Companion gets kicked out, as the Telepath doesn't sleep / dream. If that natural connection to the realm of Dream is a prerequisite for the full effect, then they have their answer. (Accidentally) sacrificing all the Dreamers to power a ritual, they disconnect everyone in town from Dream, and (because dreams are essential to human survival or something) connect them to an alternate Dream realm. Problem solved.

Only question is how the 2 vampires get back together.

Um... "Summon Spy Camera!" "Summon Spy Camera!" "Summon Spy Camera!"

Ideally, Cutter would rent 2 rooms, one on top the other, cutting a hole in the floor to fill up the lower room with bouncy balls while he makes doodles on maps of the city and mumbles "big brother is watching". Eventually, he'd build up enough mana to "SUMMON PIXIE NINJA TEAM!", and have them set up the tiny cameras all over town, complete with wireless signals, AI software with facial recognition to record who interacts with whom where and when, and remote backups. All in all, it's a really Epimethian Big Brother solution to the problem, requiring multiple additional victims before maybe churning out the answer that Kamar Tarnak is the common denominator; more likely, Cutter will get pointed to video evidence of someone sleepwalking in mid air.

... is the kind of solution he was aiming for. Instead, his first sign that something is wrong is when the remote backups indicate a data desync error. Cutter would be surprised that the effect managed to simultaneously hit all but his furthest remote backup, and would instruct them to all carry both sets of data, while creating an additional really-distant backup. Eventually, he'd catch on that it was, in fact, affecting the further ones first. Working out how quickly which backups fail, he'd see the inverse distance problem.

And, more importantly, he'd see the difference(s) between the two sets of files. Which would be... everything that the Disappeared did.

A few instances of this, and... if the Investigator is still around, and some dream comments and an outdoors sleepwalking video have reached Cutter, I think that he'd most likely consult with some Dream experts while... probably building up mana to create mana storage crystals with a built-in "doesn't work while asleep" limit, since this sounds like he could need mana at a moment's notice.

Problem is, those "dream experts" are much better equipped for this. Short answer is, it's a sloppy solution, where someone else solves his problem (or just points him in the right direction), and chides him for not noticing the timeline distortion.

If he hadn't felt out of his element wrt Dream, he would have figured it out simply by giving all the cameras Magic sight, and seeing the coin and its effects. He didn't initially go that route simply because he feared an active opponent with magic sight spotting magical cameras, or even uninvolved adventurers doing the same.

What's a Guild Master to do but to make this a Guild quest? Which should trigger the "distance" flags. Which does nothing but make him paranoid, as the distant Hero Summoners won't remember to summon him should he Disappear.

OTOH, he probably sensed the changes the moment they started, and he and his children certainly sense them if they're called into town.

Getting the local guild to canvas the area for magic, finding the coin should be pretty trivial. Then it's a sneak-attack Disintegrate, with the hope that solves the problem. AFAICT, that'll prevent future disappearances, but won't bring anyone back. Sadness.

Best case scenario, they'll Disappear with the coin, having killed Kamar Tarnak. So, perhaps they'll be the last disappearance, and perhaps some day they'll... nope, Shadowrun magic explicitly cannot help anyone get back. Yup, best case, they're gone, and so is the coin. Worst case, they don't attack Kamar Tarnak, and they just Disappear.

At every step, all I can think is, the best answer for Alex Daeus is to nuke the site from orbit.

The note was not erased. This sounds like a mental effect. Alex can't do anything about that. Best to nuke the site from orbit.

He could literally wall off the city, and subdivide it into sections, to try to contain and narrow down the problem, implementing something like quarantine zones. But it's already spread to multiple zones, and doesn't follow any science he understands (until much later, when new cases only appear in one zone). Sounds like flying / incorporeal / invisible / disease / plane shifted / something else he cannot really find or interact with, still best to nuke the site from orbit.

If he stuck it out long enough, he could sub-divide the problem section(s), until it was just 1 section, then one sub-section, then just Kamar Tarnak left in his section.

Then he'd still want to nuke the site from orbit, as he has no clue what kind of powers this being possesses.

So he'd play "the ground is lava", "the air is acid", and **** it, let's put the area in a metal sphere, roll it out of town into the desert, and nuke it for good measure.

Massive number of disappearances, doesn't get anybody back, but at least we got to nuke someone.

In an accidental success, the first thing the Omni-Wizard would want to do is to use Retrocognition to view the "erased" note. Only... does this produce a vision of the Investigator failing to write on the always-blank note, or does the note get set out and not written upon, while Retrocognition on the Investigator shows them writing the note?

Regardless, the Omni-Wizard is definitely clued in that there's timeline shenanigans afoot. It may take a few tries to get the spells right, boosting the right skills, or summoning some Time Spirits to explain / assist, but, in short order, the Omni-Wizard will be perfectly capable of writing the definitive research paper on the subject.

Which does approximately nothing for actually preventing future disappearances, or returning the Disappeared.

So, a little more tuned Retrocognition to observe the disappearances with the right sights active, and... some of the "right" sights return nothing. I've never really understood how the planar extras in M&M are supposed to work, but for my HOUSERULES version, eventually something should actually work, causing a startled reaction that the Disappeared weren't sucked into an alternate timeline.

With these findings, it would take a whole lot of skill boosting, sage summoning, and mental gymnastics to eventually hit upon the following theory: Someone is using Chronomancy to change what is Fact. That which does not match their new Fact is Fict. Dream is the realm of Fict. Find and neutralize the Chronomancer, and you solve the issue.

Detecting the coin is trivial compared to the steps leading up to this point, as would be getting it from Kamar Tarnak.

A whole lot of mental gymnastics later, and maybe a Transform ability could be used to, in effect, change Fict to Fact, returning the Disappeared, and hopefully making reality return the evidence of their existence.

This... sounds like something Mr. T would encourage rather than try to stop. He'd probably push for expensive backup, only to arrange for them to "disappear", ensuring that no further aid would be sent.

Ideally, the whole town will disappear. And Mr. T will likely be trying to siphon this "Disappearance" energy. While it will seem he's trying to help, in reality he intends to use the energy to fuel his ascension to a Daemon.

In the Grimdark of running Mr. T, he holds civilization back from the brink, until he's ready to spread his wings and take the leap into the abyss himself.

Wow, this sounds like a really rare spell, like Shahrazad or something. And the Disappeared sound like, once they become the Returned, they'll be unique creatures you can play from RFG.

But best I can think is to throw spells like Inspiration and Brainstorm at the problem, because, while plenty of MtG cards interact with Dream, there's limited reasons to think to try them at first.

While the Coin is clearly an artifact, it's hard to imagine what the Disappearance Cycle translates to... I guess it's a delayed effect, like Mana Drain or something. So I can see it being really hard to notice or deal with that. However, creature type is rather obvious at some layers of abstraction, and I think there's a really cheap card to remove that? Aquameoba or something? I'll have to look it up later, but this should be a solvable problem, depending on how much information the abstraction provides.

As his science doesn't interact with magic, he has no way to "detect" anything amiss.

As his telepathy confirms that "friends" and "family" have never heard of the Disappeared, and the Tricorder shows no signs of tampering with the note, he is forced to conclude that the problem is the Investigator - they are insane, or from an alternate universe, or otherwise the "problem".

LtC Vir would explain this to the Investigator, failing to convince them of the rightness of this, and failing to convince them to leave their super magic planet for the backwater of the Federation in the hopes of better equipped individuals being able to send them back to their real home. Which they also don't buy.

On the off chance LtC Staltek Vir stuck around after this, I suppose eventually they'd be confronted with sleepwalkers performing impossible tasks, which... LtC Vir would definitely be thinking "tricorder", not "telepathy".

Now, the tricorder cannot pick up on or interact with magic; however, the interactions between multiple realities / timelines? That's something Federation tech... technically has some ability to interact with, even if they rarely seem to "get it right" and actually correctly analyze what's going on. Fortunately, this version of the rules has no concept of DC, so Staltek Vir automatically succeeds at scanning and analyzing and understanding this multi-dimension-timeline snarl.

And as much as I'd love to say, "do I care?", nah, LtC Vir would find this fascinating.

In addition to requisitioning better equipment to scan and experiment, doubtless Staltek Vir would eventually use Telepathy on the sleepwalkers (whom he'd likely have "quarantined" in a makeshift lab somewhere (the details are unimportant).

Eventually LtC Vir would start sleepwalking, and the race would be on to find a solution before he Disappears. Or he'd Disappear... and then be attempting trans-planar and/or Dream Telepathy, and the race would be on for the team to bring him back. Which... given the stated nature of the problem... transporter buffer pattern analysis and selective recombination insert tech here Science! would probably work better than what LtC Vir had initially been attempting, if the goal is to "change creature type".

"Bringing up the map" (or sending in a few hundred Overlords) could make keeping track of things really easy, but... OK, I guess a Cor/Spirit rote could be used to find missing beings trans-zone (trans-planar) to locate them in Dream? But that's it. Without translating this differently, I don't think Alex Knight can help his video game spirits complete this level of Another World. He can only let them watch the citizens Disappear.

Although... he could find the Artifact even faster than Harry, if the spirits want to attempt that route.

Short of burning the town down, the best thing Harry could do is just walk around, waiting for his Awareness to show him something. Like that Artifact coin. A little murder later, and he could accidentally prevent (some) future Disappearances. Or, you know, cause them, if he is able to start using the coin himself.

Telok

2023-04-17, 01:51 AM

Traveller Bob

So there's three ways for this situation to even occur. 1) psychic powers gone wild, 2) psychic or sufficently advanced Ancients tech run amok, 3) go full Matrix.

1) The Imperium is prejudiced against psi. The Zhodani based their civilization on it. Non-human species apart from the dryone exhibit none of it. The Solmani as pricks, as always.

This will have to be... probably some sort of accidental time travel in combo with shunting people to alternate dimensions. As people the rogue psi affects 'fade out' into alternate dimensions info about them also fades out backwards along their information light cone.

Now, Traveller exists in a fully computerized future. When fully settled world government tax database A on continent 1 and local governmemt tax database on continent 2 have a discrepancy of "that person has never existed" alarm bells are going off and phone calls are made and the affected person has a phone & computer. This won't even get to a retired wandering scientist-for-hire. The IT people will track the holes in the data, the security forces (not regular police) will quarantine the core area, psi detector gear will be deployed, and patient zero will disappear.

On a frontier world, or somewhere with substandard tech levels this could involve a wandering scientist. So, some low end colony on a world with at most couple million people and a class C (has a control tower & spare parts) or class D spaceport (cleared land and a shed with a strong radio). Now that TB is involved... Info loss in real space and people not actually wandering off into the winderness or taking a ship out is more than just a computer virus, serial killer, or basic alien life form... Start scanning for energy readings & power spikes, copy all the local electronic records to our comp for analysis. Lucky we have a robot to run that for 4 days straight (or longer if we plug into a wall socket) without getting bored or tired. It won't produce anything but the next disappearance and more data loss with no outside access tells us it isn't a technology thing.

Hmm. Psi detectors are a TL 12 $750 item. Can we whip one up in our lab? Hard to do but probably possible.... and that basically solves it. Wander around investigating false positives until we ping patient zero then... well honestly since this is unconsious action the guy isn't trained so he probably can't stop it. Psi suppressing drugs are TL 9 but pricy and at a daily dose... they may have to exile or kill the guy. As a bonus though, because of how Traveller psi works (as I recollect) stopping or killing him stops the issue. You aren't getting anyone back, but then in Traveller with a pure psi issue like this that was never an option anyways.

If we build the psi detector (or I guess maybe find a convenient local life form that's psi sensitive) then it's a good a result as can possibly happen. If we don't then it's mass disappearances until patient zero get himself killed by trying to book passage on a ship or something.

2) Ancient tech/psi-tech run amok. Well, it's the same as #1 except the scanning for emissions & power spikes works pretty fast. Then we hunt down the guy with the artifact (just some public broadcasts should do it, thr guy isn't bad just ignorant of what's happening) or go to the big buried machine complex that's doing all the work. If the device is understandable enough we might have a mini-adventure of portal/reality hopping to try some rescues or maybe just reversing some polarities might get people back. But without any info on the people who have been vanished (because that went out too) it's a lost cause without the device having an 'undo' function.

3) full Matrix/GitS. It's late. This sounds like a generic "plug & play by local different rules in a virtual world" thing. Which is canon in Traveller, there's a corporation starting that market. Maybe I'll look up the specifics tomorrow. Which also means it's a entertainment business on the high tech worlds (they had around three places doing it) and people going brain dead by transferring into the sim while the company panics and tries to cover it up is... handled by the police. I guess we might rope TB in by having a friend/contact vanish this way. But then it's just track down where they were seen last in meat-space since all their electronic records were erased. Once we have that we find a couple other missing people through the usual routes (b&e, shake down, physical records, go in as a customer, etc.) and then pull in the police.

Ironically this one has the best chance of recovering people. If (very iffy) we clone the missing people (limb & organ cloning is normal so full body is just an order of magnitude more expensive) then get some good therapists in there, we could maybe get them out again (bonus getting a younger body too).

See about doing the others later.

Edit: ok, Paranoid Bob...

Same issues, looser "science!". 1) mutant power shunting people over to alt realities, 2) freaked out R&D equipment, 3) Matrix-style jank

Checking random R&D...
electric anti-grav whip (useful but dangerous to everyone)
invisible anti-matter cloak (scratch one clone and possibly an entire sector)
volume-amplified novelty scanner (helpfully labelled as "commie mutant traitor detector")

1) It's a mutant power. Right. We run around spamming the "commie mutant traitor detector" at people, preferably high programmers and other high sec clearance people, until we accidentally run across and kill patient zero (unlikely) or get called in for debriefing and use the "commie mutant traitor detector" on the debriefer and the Computer. Assuming the most amusing outcome we use the antimatter cloak here (on anyone/anything) and our next clone has a higher rank in PURGE plus some extra treason points. No, nobody is comng back, massive destruction everywhere, random executions of critical people, flooding a high programmer's living quarters with sewage, throwing grenades at groups of infrareds who ping the detector, launching warbots and IntSec goons into the air with the whip....

2) It an R&D device gone AWOL... Same as #1 except we're keeping the dang thing if we find it and lying about it. Stash it somewhere and blow up the debriefing. PB's next clone tries to collect it and it turns out to have been found by a Junior Citizen who is, by dint of being underage, immune to all accusations of treason and mutation and commie-itis. Repeat until we run out of clones or run out of Alpha Complex to blow up. There is no "solving" here, only chaos and explosions and and bad puns.

3) It's all in your (jacked in virtual) head. This is, astonishingly, solvable. If PB is in the sim then the first attempt to cause a memory overflow in a bot glitches things out and exposes the truth (to the player at least). Then we just keep that up until PB gets kicked out into the real world (or a higher level sim). If PB is in the real world or once kicked out to it, then several surprisingly good skills come into play. Hacking, data analysis, and finances. We "prove" it'll get the people involved coming in under budget to fix this. Then we sabotage the whole thing because we're a PURGE member, with explosives and grenades preferred.

Yeah, we could have gotten people back as holograms, uploaded into bots, or re-cloned. But that all takes a back seat to blowing up the Computer's ****. Paranoid Bob could solve that... but won't.

Edit2: There's an issue translating this scenario into Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e.

The whole 'plane of dreams' isn't something that exists. I mean, we could retcon it in or quick brew something but that has some severe implications.

History: In the original DtD40k7e version there's the real world, the Warp (WH40k), and the Umbra (WoD) which is the shallow end of the Warp. The Warp has 6 paragraphs of description, mostly about that it's totally nasty, 100% death to the unprotected, full of demons and worse, plus it's mostly there to be used by starships to bypass the lightspeed barrier and frag unrestrained excessive spellcasting. The Umbra has 2 paragraphs. There's ghosts, spirits, and weaker demons in it. It's more the membrane between the real world and the Warp than anything else. That's it. That's all we get as canon in the original version. I blarfed some random thoughts into an appendix when I rewrote chunks of book 2, but it's mostly that the place is a bit difficult to navigate and the local fauna plays rougher.

So what's that mean for our scenario? Well patient zero and the magic coin are fine, it'll just be some annoying demon lord or Tzeench or someone who gave it. The mechanics of people translating out are OK, but they'll end up in the Umbra and get eaten or possessed and mutated. You aren't getting them back, period. Really, once someone's been whacked up with a demon, insect spirit, pi elemental, or violent angry ghost then anyone you get back after expelling the monster is deformed and insane. Well maybe if you can snag them back from a ghost within a couple days it'll just be white hair, a new birthmark or scar, and a couple years-to-decades of therapy. The rest of them it's probably more merciful to just kill what's left of them.

It also needs to be mentioned that in the setting there's instances of retcons that extend back in time (mostly diety level screw jobs). People know about planets that were vanished or blown up and mostly or completely erased from history. People and places have been sucked into the Umbra and the Warp, "lost" forever along with their names. Machine spirits can be summoned to erase all traces of someone from every technological and techno-magic information medium on a planet. There are spells to modify memories and see into the past that are well documented and have known effects. What I'm saying her is that this scenario here isn't unique, stuff like this has happened before and people watch for this kind of stuff.

Diplomat Bob

Right. We're still out at some podunk planet being scouted as a new market because the organized and advanced places watch for this sort of junk. Now, which one? It matters a lot, there's places tech fails, places magic fails, places where magic works too well, anthro-spider cowboy Western planets, planets labelled 'kaiju spawning grounds', luxury resorts for the super rich, multi-kilometer tall slum-archologies or oppressed wage-slaves, farm worlds with 10 meter tall cows where the ranchers all drive assault helicopters, people who think a tarrasque is suitable as a missile warhead, habitable asteroid belts inhabited by idiot space pirates in wooden sailing ships armed with 12 pounder black powder cannon.

Reaction 1: "Too much bother". Nuke the site from orbit and find another new market and/or sell the survivors an environmental cleanup contract.
Reaction 2: Check the ship's library for similar crap (library comp with +1k1, two minion assistants, two blood points to boost the roll = 8k5+10 ~=43+ at 75%) pull up the standard operating procedure for similar weird vanishings and implement it. Which lore skill is used doesn't matter, DB has them all at the same level. All ship's navigators have ranks in Divination magic (it's a requirement) so crew quality 3 let's our navigator wander around town with us detecting at (arcana+wisdom) 6k3 vs 20 78% success rate and no penalty for retries anyways. Anyone who can't explain their magic spells/auras gets hauled in for a Detect Thoughts (first level Divination spell TN 15) interrogation (patient zero is a normal so a casting result of 25+ means we don't care if he's willing or able to answer questions & fetter casting own to 2k2 for absolute safety so unlimited rerolls is OK and the 5% chance of 25+ per casting = success). Summary execution of patient zero (it's that kind of game) and lock the coin in a small stasis field box that we'll drop off at HQ next time we swing by.

Good game, go home.

Gun Whore Bob

GWB is probably annoyed because one or more of the follower mercs have been vanished. GWB, after talking with the investigator looks at the backgrounds on the character sheet. 1: Rogue Trader Spelljammer Captain. Cocaine Wizard. Cleric of Lolth. We'll be nice and assume that Diplomat Bob is not the SJ captain contact and just pass on that one. Let me check the stats on my default Cocaine Wizard NPC. Academic & Arcana & magic detection at 8k3... oh, Alpha drug doses, right, 9k4, and a 1/5 chance of being a diviner OR just refer us to a comrade who is and we'll Wealth 5k5 to hire them for a bit (or just buy bunches of drugs to bribe them to work for us for a while, same thing).

9k4 to know what's going on, wait Luck spell and two helper minions so 10k4+10 for 75% = 42+ so success at know what's happening. GWB's detect magic is 2k2 so he's not doing well (no Arcana skill is a detriment) but buddy boy can assign us some journeyman mages (NPC has guild backing & ally wizards) to 6k3 it while the master does a few more lines of coke. Then it works like Diplomat Bob's solution except there's a bunch of punching patient zero and a torture death or being given to the Cocaine Wizard Guild as an experimental subject instead of a summary execution. GWB does not like people ****ing with the followers. The coin is likely sold/gifted to the Cocaine Wizards Guild for another rank in the Contact background or an Ally or something.

Well, looks like qualified successes for those two based mostly on the fact that this sort of thing isn't unique and people write down the solutions to this sort of stuff. In theory if they were Wraith exalts, knew a high power stat Werewolf, found a natural hole/slip fault, or wanted to do some long complicated magic rituals to enter the Umbra they could try some rescues. But, well... see that first spoiler. You're much more likely in for fighting some ravening mutant daemon or insect spirit possessed horrors, and that's if you can identify forgotten & data-erased people.

InvisibleBison

2023-04-17, 05:30 PM

Reyyah is going to try and suss out any mystical or arcane energies around the places where the disappeared people were last seen and where the disappearing documents has been kept. With 4 dice – 3 from Attune and 1 from Ghost Mind – the 75% rule means she's guaranteed to get a limited amount of information.

Without directly examining a person suffering from the condition, a lot of the information in the third spoiler doesn't really make sense for Reyyah to uncover. I think she'd be able to discern that the areas where the disappeared were last seen have extraplanar energy in them, though identifying the specific plane is not possible. Still, that's enough of a lead that she can go Surveying the city to find similar energies – thanks to Ghost Mind she's rolling two dice and thus is again getting a limited amount of information. This means she's able to find an afflicted person, and examine them to figure out what's going on. She'll try to connect with the energy in their body via an Attune roll. Initially it's going to be Risky/Limited, but she uses her fine spirit mask and pushes herself to boost the effect to Great. A mixed success automatically ensues, so she discerns the details of what the sleepwalker is experiencing but is herself afflicted by the contagion. She uses her Warded ability to resist the consequence, avoiding being afflicted. The last step of her investigation would be to interrogate the people she's found who have the affliction (a Command gather information roll), which should allow her to uncover that they all interacted with either a sleepwalker or Kamar Tarnak. She now knows how to stop the spread of the disappearances and what's happening to those who disappeared, but doesn't have the means to retrieve them or to cure those who are already afflicted.
Reginald doesn't have any ability to directly investigate this himself, so gathering information is going to be a two-step process. First, he's going to Consort with whoever else has been investigating the disappearances and get them to share what they've figured out – in particular, he wants to know if they've got any theories about where the next disappearance is likely to happen. If they are able to give him a lead in this regard, he can then Survey the area and hopefully observe a disappearance occurring, though he'll have to push himself to get a second die.

Reginald's success on his first gather information check won't get him all the info in the second spoiler, but he'll be able to convince someone to tell him about the supernatural sleepwalking. That's something specific enough for him to focus on it for his Survey roll, and he should then be able to interview several victims before they disappear. It may take some time, but I think another Consort gather information roll would reveal that the disappearances are spreading contagiously through interacting with sleepwalkers and Tarnak. That should be enough for him to produce a method to stop the spread – simply spread the word that people shouldn't interact with anyone sleepwalking, and the plague should eventually burn itself out. He can't do anything to help those who are already infected or recover those who disappear, though.
Oturug is going to examine what documentation is available on the disappeared people, and also what documentation has disappeared. Has more gone missing than just the investigator's notes? What patterns can be found in the holes the disappearance has left? With 2 dice in Study, Oturug is well equipped to answer these questions.

Oturug's investigation into the records isn't going to get all the information in the second spoiler, but he should be able to uncover the first three bullet points. At this point, he's going to want to find a sleepwalker and investigate what's going on. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the skills to find one on his own; fortunately, he knows someone who does – the local investigator (at least, I'm assuming this is within their skillset. It certainly seems like it should be). Oturug will push himself to successfully Consort with them and get them to find a sleepwalker for him, at which point he will visit them in the night and observe them while they're sleepwalking.

While his first instincts are to simply observe the sleepwalker, he can't directly perceive the actual magical phenomenon that he's trying to investigte, so he'll eventually realize a more active approach is necessary. He will push himself to get a second die and roll Attune to monitor the magical energies in the sleepwalker. As a gather information check, there's no risk of consequences here, but with two dice he's only going to get limited information, namely that the sleepwalker has been contaminated with extraplanar energy. But know that he knows what he's looking for, he can get to work!

Developing and creating a device that can track the specific type of extraplanar energy he sensed on the sleepwalker will take a week or two and a good amount of money, but eventually he gets it done. This gadget can detect concentrations of this specific type of extraplanar energy throughout the city. That will not only allow Oturug to identify everyone who's been afflicted, but it should also allow him to monitor the spread of the affliction, which will eventually reveal Tarnak as the origin of the phenomenon. With what he's uncovered, halting the disappearances should be possible, but he can't recover those who are lost.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-04-19, 01:31 AM

Telok

2023-04-19, 08:11 PM

Yeah ninja chan lost this one.

Still doing better than Paranoid Bob! You didn't use it as an excuse to randomly murder people and then throw around antimatter all over the setting.

animorte

2023-04-19, 08:19 PM

I promise I will get back in here with Panaka (Risus), Unicorn (MLP), and NecroFist (WWN). Just been adjusting to a move, new job, all that good stuff. Not that anybody missed me. :smallwink:

Quertus

2023-04-22, 09:56 AM

So, I feel I've taken the "Dreamsick" challenge too much at its word. For example, these details

You have been requested to investigate a peculiar rash of disappearances that have a clearly supernatural angle to them. What makes it particularly troubling is that the information about the appearances seems to disappear over time,

- The final thing that happens is that the timeline adjusts as if the victim had never existed

- Before that, the victim disappears, and people far from them begin to forget while people close to them still remember.

- Those impacted by this do not respond to Remove Disease or Remove Curse, and in general it does not register as a disease, curse, or magical aura/ongoing active magical effect.

- A character who causes themselves to be affected sleepwalks, or who telepathically or otherwise investigates the experiences of a sleepwalker will perceive that the person is going about their day in a time-shifted version of the world but with some small details differing. The longer the investigation goes on, the more different those details will be. Others who disappeared will be present in the alternate space.

seem like they would behave rather differently to a WoD Mage. Namely,

As "alter reality" is their stock and trade, noticing reality changing would be kinda the first thing they notice, possibly even before anyone asks them to look into this problem.

Also, on a successful Willpower check (trivially in the 75% range), they're immune to any memory alteration caused by this (as they are with the memory-altering reality-alteration of a "Maraud").

So, evaluating their interaction with this scenario more in their own light, my alternate take is

So... what if... someone not only developed a sentient AI (trinary, of course), but answered the question, "how can we know that we've successfully created AI? What test will prove sentience" with irrefutable evidence: the AI has Awakened as a Mage, and is altering reality inside Another World.

So, maybe Rob1 from tech support is in the know, and contacts Alex to look into this phenomenon.

With Alex properly invested in this scenario, and with it actually involving Magick, tracking down the coin would be a trivial Correspondence/Spirit/Prime rote, with the aforementioned hacking/modding in the Overlords / "Bringing up the Map" as a coincidence. Since the gambler is nothing special, whatever avatar the video game spirits have should be sufficient to interact with Kamar Tarnak, or any 'ol Thief or Ninja (multiplayer mode, totally acceptable coincidence to import additional spirits) should be able to steal the coin.

Alex is actually primarily Social, and gets a bonus for interacting with Spirits (which... being like his usual friends, the AI might qualify? I'm not really sure). Regardless, if he can track down the AI, finding out what it wants, and finding ways to align their goals should be really easy.

The problem would be getting in contact with the AI in the first place.

If it wasn't covering its tracks... and was born yesterday... then maybe Alex could simply use his nominal Computer skill to track it down via change logs and such. Otherwise, he'd have to mix Correspondence/Spirit/Prime to try to track it via the style of changes it makes to reality. Or, if he's really aware of the situation (a tip from Rob, perhaps?), he could just use his preferred Spirit to be searching for code with an attached Avatar.

Regardless, unless the AI is skilled and intentionally hiding, it can probably be won over to being mostly friendly (if possibly totally alien). With a little luck, maybe Alex can get it trained in the humanities (and video games) by having it interact with some of the friendly video game spirits, to ensure better interactions with humanity at large. And maybe get it to train Alex in Time magick.

Hopefully, it'll be amused playing video games, and not see any hypocrisy in one Human Mage getting another AI Mage to practice "playing by the rules".

1 That name is purely a coincidence. Believe it.

So, not too much changes for Harry when one looks at how a WoD Mage should interact with this scenario, except that he should be much more clued in as to what is happening around him. And be able to create a Correspondence / Prime observation spell to sense the triggering event when it happens, and simply teleport to the scene of the next coin flip. Probably taking the time and effort to do a full ritual, actually bothering to make his working subtle / concealed from casual mage sight.

From there, it's... yeah, probably a similar "shoot first and ask questions later" mentality, resulting in Harry ending up with the cursed Ring coin.

NichG

2023-04-23, 02:00 PM

Scenario 5: Suntan Lotion

Somehow, somewhere, you met the targeting criteria of a magitech weapons platform in orbit around the planet. Whenever you are visible from above, an effect equivalent to a CL20 Prismatic Spray manifests in a 15ft radius around your location with a 30 second cooldown. Even if you yourself might be immune to this, its kind of annoying when people you want to talk to, etc, end up caught in the blast.

There are three weapons platforms in geosynchronous orbit 22000 miles up, each covering a third of the surface of the planet.

Take out the weapons, gain immunity, negate the effect at its source, use the effect to conquer a country, trick the targeting system, its up to you!

For sake of this scenario, assume that space in the setting is actually a vacuum and that the platforms are orbiting at 7000mph (though if you’re using magical flight you could just hover, you just would have a pretty big ‘falling’ impact at rendezvous). Teleporting ‘to the platform’ could either work normally or comically splat you – up to you, base it on how you’d run it.

The weapons platforms use a combination of True Sight bearing high resolution optics to get a visual lock (treat this as an observer with say a +15 Spot check positioned 30ft above the ground for any target within their line of sight within the solar system), and an automated ‘Circle Dance’ (Spell Compendium) effect to confirm targets they’ve already entered into their databanks. If you’re unfamiliar, Circle Dance is a spell that affects the caster which makes them point towards an individual on the same plane they’re familiar with, so Hard Mode is if you use with the ruling that because of that it’s not even blocked by things like Nondetection or Mind Blank or equivalents in your system.

The original criteria you met had to do with the visual details of a particular ‘most wanted enemy’ of the ancient civilization that put them up – you unfortunately wore a hat one day that, in combination with a spot of shadows and some tile on the ground beneath you, looked exactly right to trick the vision system of the satellites.

The weapons platforms themselves are large chunks of metal and crystal and don’t have offensive protections, but are Constructs with around DR 20 (in D&D numbers, adjust appropriately to your system) and are capable of very slow self-repair (treat as Fast Healing 1 in D&D, or just as ‘you don’t have infinite time to chip away with 1 damage hits’ otherwise).

Quertus

2023-04-23, 04:51 PM

Response to Scenario 5 - Suntan Lotion

How do we find out about this? Because if the answer is "by being attacked by it", i think that most characters are dead.

Also, heh, I just had my Vampire make sunscreen in a previous challenge.

On to the responses.

* Error, the challenge is invalid *

There is no world left around Arma for a satellite to be in geosynchronous orbit around. Ignoring that...

* Arma dies to 1st blast *

So, Arma needs Divine Intervention from the almighty DM to warn her of what will happen if she is seen outside. With that forewarning... she can try to use Invisibility and cover (covered wagons?) to get from place to place, until she earns enough XP to purchase Persistent Improved Invisibility as an upgrade.

Eventually, once she reaches 20-21, she'd create a True Dwoemer to absorb the satellite, transforming it into an exoskeleton that fires Prismatic Ray 1/5r (or 2/r, if using 2e by the books), giving her yet another nod to the gear Armus ended up with (although his was just an exo-arm that stored Magic Missiles).

* Dies to 1st blast *

So Whizzy needs someone to warn him of his impending doom. Once he knows, he can purchase a Spellblade or something, and just troll anyone on the surface with his free Prismatic Spray.

* Probably dies to 1st blast *

As a Vampire, he's immune to many of the effects, but the damage is painful.

However, once he's made aware of the threat, machines and constructs are far more vulnerable to his telepathy that human peasants, and he enjoys his now free satellite death machine.

* dies to 1st blast *

So, if someone warned Cutter about this... um... he'd be nervously littering his limited space with bouncy balls and stick-figure drawings of rocket ships while mumbling about the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow, before finally yelling "Create Stasis Chamber!" and "Teleport Death Satellite to Stasis Chamber!"

* Survives 1st blast *

Medic!

So, if someone else healed him... and the adventurers didn't see any foes and gave an all clear... and he got shot again... Guild Master John Faseman really couldn't do anything about it himself. Not until he learned some new spells, like Invisibility and Gate. Although he could build (or use) that flying Adamantium fortress he built out of Popsicle sticks in other challenges... nope, he'd have to build a different one, that can go into space. Dang. Good thing there's Popsicle sticks and glue nearby.

Or his daughter could just fly up and punch it out of orbit. That's probably the easy answer.

* Error, the challenge is invalid *

Well, almost - the Troll is pretty much always invisible, so...

If the Troll ever understood this challenge, they'd be very careful to stay invisible and/or under cover. But eventually they'd build counter-measures. I'm not sure if those would be technological, or if LoS physical spells could actually work at that range... and work outside planetary atmosphere (darn "life force" limitations on Shadowrun spells).

* Tanks satellite *

Well, Alex can tank the damage, not so much some of the other effects. So it's still best if Alex encounters this scenario by someone else warning him about it.

Actually dealing with the satellite involves some subterranean construction, which... might be easier to temporarily sink points into "Base" than to actually pretend to use the rules for building things.

* Dies to 1st blast *

(Which is a pity, as the last PC Omni-Wizard was actually a tank - I was so happy the player didn't go for the "frail Wizard" trope!)

Well, since the satellites are after the Omni-Wizard, it seems that summoning some Space Whales would trivially solve the problem. Or Invisibility + Telescopic Sight + LoS Telekinesis (Psychokinesis) should also solve the problem.

* Survives 1st blast *

Definitely need to replace some translucent face huggers.

And... it would be really hard to recognize "surrounded by rainbow death beam" as an attack satellite in 30 seconds... unless there were some heavy-handed foreshadowing, or some really perceptive, clever, and helpful people nearby. So still best if someone else explains it to Mr. T.

Yeah, um... this seems like a good time to spend Fate Points to ensure that Fellowship rolls succeed in getting a captain of a space ship to deal with this satellite. Or a great opportunity to try to develop a new spell / psychic power to redirect the energy of the satellite. Or to summon a Daemon to possess the satellite.

In the grimdark of encountering Mr. T, "something that always attacks Mr. T" is just one more thing that might kill you.

*Survives 1st blast*

Well, that takes a noticeable chunk out of his health, maybe gives him a poison counter, or makes him skip a turn. But with a little luck, some Wellwisher action should get that health back, no problem.

Conceptually, Desert Twister cannot touch a satellite in the void of space, and even Naturalize is iffy. But Disinchant, Shatterstorm, and numerous other options to destroy it are well within reach... if we can't just claim it as one of our cards.

* Survives all blasts *

Yeah, LtC Staltek Vir automatically makes his Luck roll to dodge out of the way at the last second, every single time. Eventually, somebody (probably LtC Vir) gets a lock on the satellite with the Transporter, dematerializes it without rematerializing it, uses the pattern to analyze it, creates a prototype to experiment on in the Holodeck, and uses the Replicator to start pumping them out.

Wow, this is one where Alex Knight would actually win the challenge if it happened to him directly, as he never leaves the house.

I think that a few spirits would "die" to this level of Another World before Alex would Bring up the Map, and need to get someone else to... oh, Perception 4 (Video Games), maybe he actually would spot the satellite. I don't think I'd intended to give him much Awareness, though, so... probably not on his 1st attempt.

Anyway, once he knows what's up (heh), he can simply Mod the Game to import literally anyone with a(n armed) spaceship, and the problem's solved.

* Dies to 1st blast *

If Harry were warned about this, well, it's pretty easy for a Forces mage to be Invisible. Then it's just a matter of making a ritual to pull the annoyance out of the sky. And preferably onto someone you really don't like.

NichG

2023-04-23, 05:00 PM

How do we find out about this? Because if the answer is "by being attacked by it", i think that most characters are dead.

So this example actually came from a campaign of mine, where there was this death satellite regulating the rate of character advancement (basically looking for the equivalent from its designers' point of view of 'tumors' that gained power too quickly for the world as a whole to remain stable). One of the party members got a drug that let them immediately gain like 10 levels worth of LA in racial templates and stuff, then literally proceeded to send a threatening message to the death satellite along the lines of 'hah, what are you gonna do about this, I'm way too powerful for you now!' (and to be fair, with his free LA he was able to cobble together immunity to the damage types that the death satellite was able to deploy, but it wasn't so fun for the merchants when he went shopping from then on...)

Obviously will be out of character for most people's entries, but just to give an example of how this can come about...

Kane0

2023-04-23, 08:03 PM

Completely by chance, Lizardman is immune by virtue of his randomly rolled loot: The Amulet of Proof Against Detection & Location.

If that were not the case, this is going to be pretty rough on the scaly boy. He likely survives the first hit, but he's basically down to trial and error to figure out what's happening beyond 'someone with scrying and remote blasts'.

Being underground or inside a building is safe, so Lizardman reckons its close enough to a Call Lightning or Moonbeam effect. His Fog Cloud will keep him covered from the sky in short bursts, and he can take advantage of regular cloud cover too, but that's only a stopgap solution and things like Pass Without Trace, Misty Step and Absorb Elements will only go so far if that fails.

Lizardman will likely devote significant time, effort and money to trying to find who or what is targeting him, but 'space laser' will not even cross his mind as a possibility so it's all wasted hunting down shadows and rumours unless he happens across someone who knows about these death beams hanging around above the sky, and that is *extremely unlikely*. Even then, there isn't anything he can do about it.

So Lizardman will have to spend the rest of his life adjusting to this new norm. He travels in terrain with a dense enough canopy over him or otherwise invests in covered transportation, concealing clothing and the odd umbrella. 'Cloak up and mask on' will be his default setting from now on, which may impact his ability to talk to people but is otherwise a minor setback for an adventurer of his stature until someone shows his face to the open sky. In fact given enough time he may be cunning enough to think of using it when caught in a bad situation, taunting the omnipresent, unknown power in the sky to provoke a blast while he dances out of the area. This might even enhance his mystery and ominousness a bit, if he plays his cards right (and he does have the ability to intimidate and frighten as well as charm and persuade).

Anyways, total success by sheer stroke of luck or otherwise some pros and some cons, using some of his wealth and powers to adjust to his new enemy hiding beyond his reach. It's not in his nature to try and leverage this to gain additional wealth and power for it's own sake.

Edit: Derp, he can just cast Nondetection himself.

Ameraaaaaa

2023-04-23, 11:15 PM

She dies.

Even if she is warned there's not much she can do other then sneak around and hide underground.

Poor ninja chan.

Telok

2023-04-24, 02:00 AM

Travelling Bob: So there's these glitchy killer laser sats in orbit around some primitive **** world off the ass end of nowhere. Because nobody in their right mind leaves this kind of crap hanging around any civilized planet.

Ok, from the description they're more like psychic probability nuke satellites (they rearrange local reality via probability adjustments in a destructive manner, it's in a sci-fi book somewhere) left over from the war that self-genocided the Ancients. Whick makes them worthy of investigation and they're worth mega-mega-credits.

On the other hand it also means that TB isn't bothering to actually go down to the planet, or even really leave the ship at all. We just park up next to it and send the robot over most of the time, doing pure remote control as needed. Short of massive pristine Ancients cities sitting on the planet waiting to be looted, which canonically aren't a thing. The Ancients were really really good at nuking/comet dropping themselves out of existance.

So the only way the things would attack would be if we went down to the planet (which we'll assume is sufficently Earth-like), took off the sealed environment suit (because unknown alien ecologies are the type of thing you casually invite into your lungs without doing any research), and the got insta-gibbed. Unless they randomly shoot any spaceships or humanoids in spacesuits, which they don't seem to.

Large...large...large... is that "D&D speak Large the official 10x10x10 foot cube", or is it common "large like a box truck", or vague "large like an office building"? Because TB will totally ditch the 40 ton (Traveller spaceship tons are a meaaure of volume) pinnance to stow/tow one or more of these back to civilization and retire in fame & wealth.

Paranoid Bob: Is it friend Computer with an itchy trigger finger or another outdoors adventure? Either way we're marking off another few clones.
Briefing: In area 4752a-6j there are reports of spontaneous exploding clones, turning into statue clones, turning into ice clones, and disintegrating cones. Investigate and stop the commie mutant threat! (There's nothing to troubleshoot if nobody's being inconvenienced.)
PLC: Standing in line and filling out forms for standard mission gear. The usual jank happens.
R&D: random generator sez.... light-emitting -resistant recorder, anti- reusable glue spray, asbestos whip, voice-operated anti-grav device, edible smoke grenade...

A laser-proof tape recorder. One use aerosol spray glue can. Fire-proof whip. Voice control gravity sled. Bog standard (as far as PB is concerned) smoke grenade. Right. Good. I have no idea what we'll do with this stuff but it could come in useful.

Deploy: PB enters the area and get vaporized. Clone #5 is uncorked, prepped, sent out, and...

Now, if this is OUTSIDE then we're deploying via the carbonite clone cannon. The clone & gear are sealed in carbonite (yes like Star Wars) and shot out a giant cannon to the target area where they unfreeze. At least that's how it was sold, it turns out Star Wars style carbonite is expensive. So what really happens is they shoot the poor clone up with cold-sleep hibernation drugs before they even decant them, encase them in regular ice, spray graphite all over it (carbon + hibernation = good enough for Alpha Complex), and shoot the poor sucker out the giant cannon (that bit is right because everone agrees about giant cannons being awesome fun). Anyways, the ice lands, breaks or melts, PB gets vaporized again while standing up and trying to look around. Repeat until out of cones. Mission failure.

If it's inside and just the Computer or a pre-war killer robot or something staking out an area we have a chance. PB hangs out in a service corridor near, but not too near, the explody zone. Eventually another citizen gets zapped and we can see it came from somewhere up above. Hmm.... ok, we spray glue PB to the bottom of the grav-sled (no rolls because it's funny), pop the smoke grenade, rush out, ascend as fast as possible up to the ceiling (roll to avoid crashing into the ceiling and going to clone #6) where we see the thingy... I'm going to say it doesn't recognize a person glued to the bottom of a flying sled, that's probably a bit outside it's programming... whip-pull ourselves over to it, and run out of ideas.

Well, given enough time PB can eat it. We could try jamming the tape recorder into and gun-like opening or taping up anything that looks loke a sensor. We don't want to just blast it because that's destroying the Computer's property. If it's the Computer zapping people in the area... there must be a filter to??? Colored filter on the optics to change colors of stuff. People get randomly zapped based on hair/hat color. Ok, remove the filter... or try to change it... then we know what colors get shifted and we can use the area to our advantage. If it's a war-bot we try to talk it down or hack it. PB has an actually decent chance at that, except we really want to suborn it into PURGE or send it on a totsl rampage. Maybe PB can switch it from shooting people to shooting computers & terminals, then give it a ride down on the raft (needs a roll and possibly another clone).

What if it's some bloody R&D experimental weapon? That sounds pretty likely. Maybe a "quantum flux polarity inversion mutant neutralizer" based on facial recognition and patched into the security cameras? Hmm... Ok, totally hacking time to change the facial recognition. First hack in to change the recognizer training model to computer terminals. Then cause a memory overflow to fry the current program. They reload the recognizer program and re-run the model. Then every computer, terminal, and maybe even some robots in the area get zapped.

Debriefing: If it was an outdoors mission there isn't one because PB ran out of clones. If indoors then maybe there was some success. Well, qualified success. Ok, ok, so PB tried to blow everything up again. Deflect blame! Deflect blame! And go up in secret society rank if we caused sufficent mayhem and sabotage.

Summary: TB gets rich & famous for finding/recovering Ancient tech without ever even facing it because spacesuits have opaque/mirrored helmets, quarantine porcedures say no sharing an environment, and we have no reason to go to the planet when there's mega-mega-bucks hanging out in orbit to be picked up. PB either gets repeatedly vaporized by a laser death sat because it's outdoors, or maybe causes massive mayhem and destruction while losing a clone or two if it's actually something inside Alpha Complex.

meschlum

2023-04-24, 02:27 AM

Just noticed this, seems entertaining, let's see what...

Raksha interrupt!

Right then, thematic obligations are a go. Much like a D&D wizard, only worse, the Fair Folk can be furnished with the Toolbox of the Gods, which can do more or less anything (even break the rules of Exalted, but that's nothing special) - so it's more a matter of designing a character that will be thematic, and accepting the ensuing constraints on performance.

I am not going to create character sheets, but let's see what we can do without excessive cheese, in different systems (one a lot lower tier than the other).

The Sage thinks mortal drama is the most fun since daytime TV (despite having no idea what TV is), and therefore is a Cup / Staff noble. With artifacts, of course - almost none of them meant to change the local nation into the latest show she's seen. Briefly put, she has, as a starting character:

- Social Skills: YES (probably not going to abuse the ability to charm the gods into visiting to help her out)
- Combat: is a butterfly, so not especially good at killing things, exceptional at not being killed by things
- Knowledge: definitely, if a slight tendency to write her own fanfic versions of the local lore (and have them accepted)
- Wealth: all of it, not really aware of the fact.
- Magic: some tricks, extremely flexible if not overly potent. With some effort and supplies, can remake her artifacts with some effort (same power level, different powers)
- Artifacts: pocket universe, all the minions, a body double or two (lacks wealth and magic, much better at hurting things), a few different ways to win combat, emergency palace because why not, some defensive tricks, and still need to define another 2/3 of them. Put a significant investment in a 4 or 5-dot Oneiromancy, currently set to "everyone in the country now has the susceptibility to damage and common sense of a Saturday Morning Cartoon character, except with butterfly themes", because sometimes the entertainment is slow to appear and has to be created by hand. Still have 4-5 undefined minor artifacts at this point, which is suitably terrifying.

That's a starting level character, more or less. Level 9 equivalent is... more.

The Dreamer has been traveling through the dragon's dreams for quite some time, and actually managed to get close to his archetype in some areas. He is a high-dreamer, and has picked up quite a few spells, including some investment in Narcos and even a few notions of Thanatos. Since he's aware that he is a dream, death isn't much of a concern.

- Social Skills: Medium+, he's been around and met quite a few strange beings, and managed not to fight them all
- Combat: Medium+, Reve is normal human scale and even with training and enchanted armor / weapons, fights are dangerous
- Knowledge: Variable. Very used to being in a new world where the local culture is alien, but also very well grounded in how dreams (and magic) work. Fairly proficient at most skills, from having to use them at some time or other.
- Wealth: Not really. Some past trophies, some not yet enchanted gems, no local currency.
- Magic: a solid repertoire of spells with predefined effects, relatively slow casting. A few really odd effects (including summons), but range is limited. Some options for dream abuse.
- Artifacts: enchanted equipment, healing potions, maybe a few 'spell trigger' items for the spells he knows.

Yes, the Dreamer can only dream of being the Butterfly, but that's per expectations.

We'll assume the Butterfly does not want to fetch an infinite number of chairs with which to build a barricade, because that's boring. She has ample time to actually create a small fort, with butterfly decorations of course, but again that would be tedious. Instead, she'll convince the locals to stay around until the invading army is close, then (temporarily) turn the river into a wall of lava butterflies. These are actually harmless to touch, but are a great way to start negotiations with the newcomers. Even without the flying lava things, they'll want to agree with her.

The Dreamer confers with locals to find out what time it is, and how long days last. A little math and spellcasting later, and there are 10' wide pillars of stone falling down the heavens to build walls as needed. When the invading army comes, the bridge can be removed, a few guards summoned, or static fireballs emplaced. It's a much easier fight than it could have been, mostly thanks to having prep time.

Knowing there is a Lich involved, the Butterfly can put on a mask of undeath too, in order to properly socialize the creature. The peasant wants to tell her everything about everything he knows, probably without even needing to rewrite his Motivation or other parts of his character sheet. We could remake one of our body doubles into a perfect hunter and find the needle that way, but the Butterfly isn't too dedicated to the Way (pocket world aside). Since it's humanly possible to find the needle, we could also reshape an Oneiromancy to give use Imposition of Law and find it, but that's a known hack. Instead, we have a Behemoth become part of the landscape, and use its senses to find the needle.

Negotiating with the lich is going to succeed (the Butterfly could offer space in her pocket world if necessary), but the wightocalypse is more of a problem. She can't actually be hurt, and can wipe out any groups she finds fairly easily, but it would take somewhat more work to actually prevent. Which makes it a challenge! Trigger the Oneiromancy of "Everyone is now a Shonen Butterfly character" to buy time, then design a more durable solution if it looks interesting.

The Dreamer has a much harder time, and probably needs to call on a summons to find the needle - which it does, at a very embarrassing and annoying price, as is its rule. Negotiations with the lich are liable to break down, possibly involving nightmare spirits trying to devour it, and the needle itself is either easily transmuted into air, or very hard to destroy. The Dreamer also has no solution to the wightocalypse, besides the comfort of knowing that once he dies he'll wake up elsewhere, and probably safer.

The Butterfly has a Charm for that, one that literally creates a First Age (hypertech) vessel, with options for adding flight and land movement on top. Making it permanently might take a while, because the Butterfly is a good sport and is not engaging in needless time travel, but a temporary version is feasible. Of course, depending on the same Charm(s) over and over is tiresome, and the Butterfly can reliably convince the judges to buy a cardboard box for the price of the kingdom's treasury, so we'll try to do something more fun.

Learning that the actual ship is (almost) available, the Butterfly can travel to it at a fairly decent clip. Probably not supersonic, because we didn't build that way, but we literally have a Charm to create a flying fortress - on the back of a giant butterfly, of course. Flutter over to where the ship is, toss it into our pocket dimension, return. Probably include a pause to negotiate with the captain, potentially dropping them on top of a few raiders on the way. If the design looks interesting enough, shanghai the shipwright to build our own fleet of butterfly ships, which we'll store somewhere outside reality and probably forget about.

The Dreamer is not an exceptional sailor, or artist, and is definitely not going to summon up help when it's just money on the line. There is a small chance he might be inspired to discover a 'reverse burning' spell, but that's pushing plausibility. Dream rifts might get him to the ship (and get the ship back), but since they're not controllable it seems a terrible idea. Hypnos based scrying might let the judges view the ship in action, but that's pushing things. Likely fail, but with a lot of entertaining off the wall attempts on the way.

The Dreamer knows other Raksha who are perfectly built for the role, but they're not her. Not a problem! All of her stuff is linked to her Heart, so either she has it and can get started on remaking her "Cartoon Time" Oneiromancy, or she does not and that tier of power is a long ways off. Let's assume the worst, since it's more fun that way (note to self: build a dwarf fortress). By virtue of being the ruler, the Butterfly can quickly empower a few locals, and use that process to start creating minor artifacts. We don't have ways to affect the entire country (unless we want to destroy it), so we'll go with the flow. A bauble to make everyone close to it immune to heat will ensure the population survives, and those can be made fairly easily. There's still the necessity of distributing them and other logistics, but the Butterfly and her minions are the only ones who can keep them running, so we're fairly set.

Wealth is a joke, and the Butterfly creates a solid gold palace one week when she's feeling bored. More practically, we want to be self sustaining, and might have invading armies to deal with. The fun thing about both issues is that the Butterfly can talk at them, but having everyone worship you is (probably) not sustainable? So we call on our considerable lore to figure out if the warming effect is something we can use, discover it's more or less equivalent to an uncapped demesne, cackle maniacally and create a freehold on top - a pocket of reality we control absolutely. Then we start up some ruby mines, welcome all our people in the freehold, and thrive. If that does not work, we just reshuffle society into worshiping us anyway, and do the tedious job of creating defensive Oneiromancies to protect us, as well as creating resources. Or produce a lake every week or so and drop it wherever. Winnable, but may be tiresome.

The Dreamer operates on a much smaller scale, but can absolutely produce massive quantities of water out of thin air. Oneiros is fun that way. Turning other people into high dreamers is slow and not especially good for their sanity, so he's probably going to want to go the Narcos route and produce water creating artifacts. The main issues are therefore invading armies and getting enough gemstones for enchanting. Trade with the northern kingdom, and look at what else might be produced.

Since the Dreamer is going this deeply into Hypnos, we might as well generate cheap wood and metal. It's not high quality, but there is as much of it as we want, which probably helps for trade. He's not going to be especially effective against an army, but we are in the middle of a desert with the only water supply... so invading isn't looking good. And a mountain range is the dragon's gift to landslides, so invading armies will have a hard time. Color wards are also a way to boost defenses at the skirmish / siege level.

Overall, tentative success.

Other scenarios later. Current verdict: the Butterfly is as broken as can be, and not trying too hard. The Dreamer is surprisingly good at large scale infrastructure, but suffers from a relatively narrow spell pool - even if the spells are quite versatile.

Telok

2023-04-24, 12:45 PM

Ok, the Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e characters.

Conversion
I had to go back to the original versions of the books to find the prismatic ray spell, and then remembered why I dropped it in my homebrew. It's pretty pathetic. Medium range attack roll single target direct damage for 1d10 rolled dice and 1d10 kept dice. There's about a 37%ish chance it does damage like the common ordinary pistols, and only a 30% chance it's as good or better as a low quality meltagun (about as expensive as a generic 4-door sedan new car). Also a 22% chance it can't even kill a zero level commoner. Compared to fireball at the same level which has a 10 meter blast radius, starts at that meltagun damage level, and can only get better. Prismatic can't kill a 10 hp character in one shot (assuming all shots hit & characters don't heal) average 3-4 hits to KO DB at 5k5 & 6 for GWB). Playtesting was not really a thing for this game. The closest thing to the ideal of d&d's prismatic spray is the 5th rank reality maelstrom... well my verson of it anyways, it needed a serious buff. So that's what I'll be using as an effect.

My other choice is to build it as an immobile spaceship using an appropriately ranged starship weapon. But while the light orgone cannon shoots blasts of warp-lightning to the correct range it's accuracy is "aim at a city block and miss by 1k2 +1k0 per degree of targeting failure kilometers" because it's shooting from high orbit, and then it leaves a 150 meter diameter crater of "vaporized" plus 9k9 "no armor & no shields" damage for 300 meters around that (falloff by half every 300 additional meters).

I could build this as a magitech living vehicle with an A.I., that would be perfect except for the weapon.... actually since there's no price limit that'll be great. I'll just charge a premium for spellcasting as a quadruple $ cost skill. Stat's incoming...

Size:26, Cost:935, Price:Beyond Price
HP:20, Resilience:26, Length:~27m
Static Defense: ZERO
Maneuver:-10, Acceleration:1, Speed:1, Speed:6m/momentum, 2.16 kph/momentum
Drive: VTOL (x6) May hover and turn in place; begins Falling if it takes 2 or more damage or if it goes Out of Control.
Ramming: TN:7+mom, Damage:10k(mom+8) +7

Environmental Seals, Size: 0, Cost: 5, Effect: Keeps air in and nasty stuff out.

Super Solenoid Engine 1, Size: 0, Cost: 15, Effect: Activate for +1 to speed, maneuver, accel, roll warp at +10.

Flaws: Controls Feedback & Fragile & Hanger Queen & Inefficient Controls & Junker & Overheats & Unstable, Cost: -70, Effect: When damaged the vehicle may inflict fatigue on the pilots & Vehicle HP reduced by 25% & Requires extra repair and reload time & Requires an extra action to maintain control & Roll two crits instead of one & Takes damage at momentum 6+ & Double the maneuver penalty for momentum.

Void Shield 10, Size: 2, Cost: 30. Attackers need hand-to-hand, a weapon with armor penetration 10+, or their own void shield, otherwise invulnerable.

Orgone Antenna: +2k2 Orgone Antenna, Size: 3, Cost: 80, Effect: Pilots can cast spells through at +2k2.

Sensors: Advanced Sensors, Size: 1, Cost: 50, Effect: +10 perception tests and 20km automatic vehicle detection range.

Living Vehicle, Size: 1, Cost: 20, Effect: It's ALIVE! & heals 1 hit point per 24 hours.

AI Systems (base AI does simple Maintain Control driving @ piloting skill 1), Size: 1, Cost: 20.

AI Coprocessor: Size: 0, Cost: 15, Effect: Each AI has a 2 Wisdom & 2 Willpower & 2 Charisma & 1 Fellowship & 1 Composure & 1 Intelligence.

AI TAPS (skills), Size: 11, Cost: 560, Effect: , 4 skills @ 3 dots [DIVINATION MAGIC 3], 2 skills @ 4 dots [arcana & perception], 8 skills @ 5 dots [CONJURATION & EVOCATION MAGICS].

AI RAM: RAM-5, Size: 2, Cost: 40, Effect: Each AI has 5 half actions each scene.

Weapons: (PLACEHOLDER FOR ADDITIONAL MAGIC GEAR, NOT USED) 1x Arrow-4 Cluster Missile, 10k5+20 X p10 s\- 500m Blast(30) No-Short-Range, Size:5, Cost:60.

It casts a scrying spell on the planet to see an area of the surface. Makes a 6k2+10 perception check (more than what was asked for avg.~28 & 80% at 25+). If it IDs someone (that's why the 1 Int) it casts Gate to open a tiny portal then turns on it's magic engine and throws Reality Maelstrom through it at the target. The effect is: 1 roll for Warp crap at +10 that affects the vehicle and may AoE spillover to the target area, 1 roll for Warp crap at +0 that affects everyone in 30 meters of the target, and the target + everyone in 30 meters makes their own Warp crap roll at... based on the spell casting roll... 24% +5, 1% +10, so 75% +0. Call it a +0 for easy checking.

Warpy crap

The +0s: 87% relatively safe sfx, 7% gain insanity, 3% take damage, 0.5% tech scorn (screw tech AoE plus damage cyborgs), 6% trigger enemy/hunted type flaws, 1% stunned, 0.5% roll on the mental trauma table, 0.2% mutation check, 0.5% reverse gravity & falling damage.
The +10: lets use the old tables for easier AoE checking. Safe sfx results 52%, area effects are 6% damage, 1.5% lose all hero points for session, 1.5% no magic use for 1d5 hours, 5% fear checks, 6% hard willpower tests vs insanity gain, 1.5% stun, 6% tech scorn. And the sat has a 3.5% of shutting itself down for 1d5 hours. Hmm. What if we up that SS engine to a L3, adds about 4 or 6 meters length and... barely any change... try new tables... tech scorn 2%, enemy/hunted 6%, 1% summon daemons in the area, 0.2% AoE everyone save vs daemonic possession. Better, can't tell about the aoe vs single target damage, insanity, and fear effects though (maybe estimate at 2x the +0 results?).

Diplomat Bob: We arrive at a planet, in a previously undiscovered sphere, with mysterious ancient forerunner artifacts in orbit. Hilarity ensues.
For the sake of argument we'll assume that on the way in we foolishly don't stop and scan the begeezus out of the ultra valuable artifacts then pack them into the cargo hold for future research & sale. DB gets zapped pretty much assuredly non-lethally but with lots of annoying special effects (.87 x .87 x .44 = .333) a 1/3 that there's nothing but safe stuff like weird moaning winds, statues weeping blood, vermin infestations, and liquids turning into chocolate syrup or shampoo.

Then it's comm the ship for scans, another hit or two to ID the satellites as the origin, go inside a building/vehicle, and have the ship pick them up or potshot them. Probably pick them up for the techs to study. DB might get a couple insanity points or random wounds... Actually, tech scorn would take out the communicators and some of the fear effects have high target numbers. So there's a minor chance that it takes a couple hours... Oh, wait. This'll fire off practically as soon as we set foot outside the landing shuttle and it stops if we hop back in and button up. Neh, a couple hours hiding in the shuttle to fix stuff so we can comm the ship is the worst case scenario. Yeah, we have a teleportarium and if we used that, since nothing is affecting the ship, they're back up within a minute or two even if tech scorn cuts out communications.

Edit: for fun I checked the warp roller at
http://dtd.wikidot.com/tools:warp-roller
and pulled up a run of effects on the main character and five other people being within 30 meters of them.

DB: Psychic Mirror: The sorcerer’s power is turned back on him. Resolve the power’s effects as normal, but the power targets the sorcerer instead. If the power is beneficial, it instead deals 21 Energy Damage to the sorcerer and the beneficial effect is canceled. Armour is ignored by the damage but Aura works. == 4 wounds

P1: Grave Chill - The area for 8 meters becomes cold and frost covered

P2: inherent phobias, suspicions, and hatreds surge to the surface of his mind in a wave of negative emotion. Test Willpower v 15 to avoid 1 Insanity.

P3: The stench of foulness and decay makes eyes water, renders olfactory senses useless, and causes severe nausea. Take -1k0 dice to everything (-2k1 for a sharp nose) for 1 turns.

P4: The Furies - assaulted by an invisible force, causing himself and nearby objects to be thrown around viciously. The sorcerer and nearby objects test Size v 15 or be thrown 10 meters horizontally in a random direction.

30 meter radius area: Gravity reverses for a fraction of a second, lifting objects a meter or two into the air and dropping them. Only those of exceptional agility avoid being knocked prone. Everyone within 17 meters tests dexterity v 20 or takes 8 falling damage and falls prone. == 1 wound if the dex check fails and guess it's a 47 meter radius effect

From the +30 engine: Warp Ghosts - Howling ethereal apparitions fill an area within 21 meters, flying around unnerving the living. Living creatures test Composure v 20 or gain 5 Insanity == 3k3 has 50% to get 17, use a hero point to lower to 15 and just accept the minions fail (no negatives unless they lose 5 more sanity this scene)

Edit: same thing using the classic tables from the books

DB: Chronological Incontinence: Time warps. He winks out of existence and reappears in 6 rounds and suffers 2 Insanity Points.

P1: Destruction: sucked screaming into the Warp, never to be seen again. He is no more. (A 1/400 chance)

P2: Chronological Incontinence: Time warps. He winks out of existence and reappears in 4 rounds and suffers 5 Insanity Points.

P3: Reality Quake: Reality buckles and an area radiating out 23 meters from him is sundered: everything rots, burns, and freezes, and everything in the area takes 17 Rending damage. == 3 wounds to resilience 5 people, not enough to damage a landing shuttle but the seat cushions may be a little shredded

P4: Warp Burn: A violent burst of energy from the warp smashes sending him reeling. He loses 5 Hit Points and is stunned for 3 rounds. == between this and P3 this guy probably dies or gets crit damage, depending on how you want to track it

30 meter area: Psy Discharge: Static electricity fills the air for 25 meters causing hair to stand on end and unprotected electronics to short out. == guess its a 55 meter effect

The +30 engine: Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the sorcerer. He winks out of existence and reappears in 9 rounds and suffers 2 Insanity Points. == the satellite vanishes for 90 to 135 seconds

Quertus

2023-04-24, 05:31 PM

So this example actually came from a campaign of mine, where there was this death satellite regulating the rate of character advancement (basically looking for the equivalent from its designers' point of view of 'tumors' that gained power too quickly for the world as a whole to remain stable). One of the party members got a drug that let them immediately gain like 10 levels worth of LA in racial templates and stuff, then literally proceeded to send a threatening message to the death satellite along the lines of 'hah, what are you gonna do about this, I'm way too powerful for you now!' (and to be fair, with his free LA he was able to cobble together immunity to the damage types that the death satellite was able to deploy, but it wasn't so fun for the merchants when he went shopping from then on...)

Obviously will be out of character for most people's entries, but just to give an example of how this can come about...

Ah. Well, so long as what we’re doing in this challenge has almost no similarity to the original “module” anyway, how about…

”Whosoever pulleth the McGuffin from this stone shall wield the reality-warping power to defeat the Daemon Lord. But beware the wrath of the sky gods, whose agents sealed the McGuffin away in ages past, and who will smite those who attempt to wield it.”

Or so the legend (about the techno magical death satellites) goes.

There. That sounds like a simple campaign premise most anyone can sink their teeth into, much more so than “rainbows fall, everyone dies”. As I don’t even want to try to guess how most of them would be conned into intentionally interacting with “it’s not a tumor”.

So, under this alternate premise… which sounds more like it could have been a central part of the campaign leading up to these events…

Arma would conduct her research into the nature of reality, and be very confused that there is no established “sky gods” Religion. Nor do the supposed sky gods respond to her prayers (which, as a Cleric of a different faith, isn’t but so surprising). So she’d continue her research while praying for guidance. Eventually, with just a little divine guidance (hooray divination spells) she’d have a plan.

Since the sky gods have no established faith, she’d start their Religion for them. That Cloak of Charisma seems the right tool for the job, and the ubiquitous purchase throughout these challenges. Arma would build up enough of a following of the faithful in some remote town that, eventually, the satellites would ascend to godhood, and start granting spells to their clerics. The birth of new gods! What a fantastic historic event! Years of work, building the religion and the faithful, improving and expanding the town, adding public works like sewers and a wall to house a more spacious town layout, open to the sky. What a celebration! Drinking and dancing late into the night! And Arma would be the smiling face of the party, hailed as the Mother of Dragons gods!

Then, once everyone had passed out, she’d unleash her undead army upon the town, killing everyone.

This sudden loss of followers should put the sky gods to sleep, thereby negating the threat from the attack satellites.

Arma would wield the McGuffin with impunity, and use it’s reality-warping power to defeat the Daemon Lord…

Thereby erasing this entire bubble of reality, Daemon Lord and all. Ah, the self-fulfilling prophecies. At least Arma ended up with a relic to study, to try to understand the world-ending effect.

Alternately, this could serve as the backstory, the “this is what caused the world to break” for the alt history of Arma.

Either way, legends in the distant future likely talk about her wearing parts of her own dead child, as a constant reminder to keep ever burning the flames of her wrath against the vile undead who slew it in its crib, once she developed the True Dwoemer to convert the sleeping god satellites into an exoskeleton.

Yeah, I knew my head wasn’t in the game last time. So Whizzy will pay someone to do some divisions, then get a Ring of Invisibility and a Spellblade, with which to troll the world as the Chosen One.

In other words, not much changes, although he probably has to go the Leadership -> Artificer route, and even then add Legendary Artisan and “only works for…” limitations to find this truly affordable. Especially if his familiar and cohort need to be equipped, too.

Yeah, um… as soon as he tried to contact the “sky gods” about this, he’d realize their nature, and take control of the satellites.

Forget the reality-warping McGuffin, he’d ((have his companion) move the satellites and) start blasting targets of opportunity. Or just save this as an ace up his sleeve.

Huh. This legend doesn’t actually give Cutter enough to go on to actually understand the threat, or its actual source. And while his magic can, in theory, do anything, there’s a definite style of solution he usually aims for.

So he’d… slowly rain bouncy balls on his own head in imitation of Chinese water torture while mumbling “death from above”, hopefully failing to kill himself or drive himself insane while he built up the mana to create mana stones. Many days later (and probably after literally having his head examined), he’d ridiculously overkill the mana requirements, and yell “Create Reassembling Skeleton!”. He’d immediately regret his life choices, as he’d find it quite creepy. And probably need to have his head examined again.

So, some other day, he’d give himself numerous Sights, and order the skeleton to draw forth the McGuffin, while he watched from a safe distance.

Enough times yelling “Reassemble!”, and I guess he’d eventually wonder about the odd angle of the sky beam (unless it was placed in geosynchronous orbit over the McMuffin resting place (which would make sense)), but definitely understand the nature and frequency of the attack.

So maybe he’d summon a telescope, and eventually repeat his previous solution of “Create Stasis Chamber!" and "Teleport Death Satellite to Stasis Chamber!" But more likely, he’d sweep the bones and McGuffin into a bag, and create a relic or seven to absorb the attack (and maybe a Hat of Disguise, so he doesn’t have to look at the creepy undead) before reassembling the skeleton.

Ugh. Guild Master John Faseman wouldn’t want to go against the sky gods if he could help it.

But if push came to shove, he could… build a robot. An armored, regenerating robot. With emphasis on the “regenerating”.

And that would be fine, until it got sent to another plane.

While John would learn Gate to bring it back, it would be cheaper for him to build an updated replacement than to upgrade the existing robot (as upgrades cost Karma).

Just giving the new robot an upgraded version of John’s own Magic Absorption power (that I forgot he had the first time around, so he should have done even better) should suffice to keep it (and maybe even the surrounding area) safe from the wrath of the “sky gods”.

And, as with Cutter, if the shots didn’t rain down from directly overhead, I think that eventually John would catch on to the true nature of the sky gods.

But most of all, I’m just sad I couldn’t find an excuse for John to Disintegrate the stone in order to draw the McGuffin.

This… sounds like Spirits, I guess. And without a proper Shaman to summon a powerful Sky Spirit to act as intermediary with the sky gods, the Troll really wouldn’t know how to move forward. Probably some custom Divination spells, that would ultimately be useless, due to misunderstanding the nature of the problem.

But ultimately the Troll is pretty much always invisible, so... if forced to draw the McGuffin “unprepared”, there’d still be approximately zero consequences - and the Troll can probably soak and learn from the 1st attack, if it ever happens.

This alternate scenario is definitely a good excuse to pay other people to investigate the problem.

Once they understand and explain the situation to Alex, it’s definitely time to build a base (or vehicle) to deal with the satellites.

Other then getting laughed at by some summoned spirits for the silly human stories, this probably process much the same, with summoning some Space Whales or Invisibility + Telescopic Sight + LoS Telekinesis (Psychokinesis) to solve the problem.

My Warhammer characters never know anything, so… investigating an unknown Trinity sounds like a good excuse to summon some daemons. At a guess, summoning 10 (1 are a time!) should give Mr. T 5 daemons who submit to his will, which should be enough to make most rolls. And 5 to tear apart for energy.

Still, they probably wouldn’t know what Mr. T was talking about, and wouldn’t find anything matching that description while investigating the nearby Warp. So probably some more - and more dangerous (or at least craftier) - daemons later, and eventually one might ask, “you mean those orbiting Death satellites?”, leading to Mr. T facepalming, and cussing out stupid backwater planets and their ignorant myths.

Once he knows what he’s dealing with, it’s the same “hire a captain”, “develop a spell/power”, “summon a Daemon”, or… since they’re not targeting him yet… getting a ride up into space, leaping out, and reprogramming the things.

In the grimdark of encountering Mr. T, "something that always attacks Mr. T" is still just one more thing that might kill you.

Well, if we’re using the legend of King Arthur, then we’re probably talking about a trio of legendary artifacts that require you to control a creature of type “King” or “Lord” or something. But I expect that the original Goblin King or original Lord of Atlantis with those types printed on the card cost too much for our poor Elven Chronomancer. So instead we need some “every creature type” Changelings, like Taurean Mauler.

All in all, it’s probably a terrible win condition, requiring controlling the King to control all 3 satellites to control the sword to win the game or something. Bleh.

2 - Prismatic Attack Satellite - artifact. T: as one mana of any color to your mana pool. T: add 50 to your mana pool; you may not spend this mana. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you do not control a King or a Lord, Prismatic Attack Satellite deals 5 damage to you or a permanent you control chosen at random.

2 - Daemon Lord Slaying Sword - artifact equipment. Equip 2. Equipped creature ignores Protection (creatures your opponents control lose protection from X and gain “protection from X except equipped creature”). If you have 100 mana in your mana pool when Daemon Lord Slaying Sword comes into play, you win the game.

This ultimately plays out much the same as before, just with a long prequel of LtC Staltek Vir trying to avoid breaking the Prime Directive or angering the “sky gods” (which sound suspiciously like an advanced alien race).

Once push comes to solve, he dodges the death beams until somebody gets a lock on the satellite with the Transporter. Then it’s the same dematerialize it without rematerializing it, use the pattern to analyze it, create a prototype to experiment on in the Holodeck, and use the Replicator to start pumping them out.

Note that LtC Vir has access to long-range teleporter tech, thanks to stealing them on a covert op, so range isn’t an issue here.

I think that between Bring up the Map looking at the code for triggers, Asked could still figure this out, and simply Mod the Game to import literally anyone with a(n armed) spaceship, and the problem's solved.

Well, a reality-altering McGuffin sounds like a Relic to me.

Harry would probably just study the relic as a coincidence for learning whatever spheres are required to just create the effect himself.

If he ever happened to get the right spheres (Time, mostly), or saw someone else be blasted by the satellites, it’s the same solution of invisible telekinetic dropping satellites out of the sky.

meschlum

2023-04-25, 02:42 AM

So before we continue, the Butterfly should really go to the trouble of defining a few more of her toys. Well, she's Cup aspected, so let's just say she invested her time into gaining one of the ultimate martial arts moves, more for the amusement factor than anything else. That simply means there are a few undefined artifacts lurking in the background... Fine.

5 dots: "Cartoon Time", affects a full country, turning people into somewhat reckless and utterly indestructible butterfly people.
1 dot: Even more social skills I didn't want to bother with. Also, butterfly wings.
1 dot: Massive healing, accumulate motes without harming people
1 dot: Body double, better at looking like the Butterfly than the Butterfly is, flight and random combat prowess in case it's needed
1 dot: pocket world, only a few hundred square miles because I don't want to invest in more (loaded with minions and random useful stuff)
1 dot: unleash a wave of butterflies on the local city. They look cute, and are probably (and blatantly) aware of everything going on. Despite the rumors, they do not munch on people. Much. Unless they're asking for it. Or have candy.
1 dot: the butterfly scarf, which shifts the RNG for hitting the Butterfly to "haha. No." (might need another dot)
1 dot: Assumption Adjuration, so the Butterfly can opt to cease existing if she wants to at some point in the distant future (or in her pocket world). Also makes her even better at reality shaping, because obviously.
1 dot: Secret agent butterfly, capable of infiltrating any hiding spot by merging with the soul of a bystander. Carries an unlimited supply of licorice sticks. Flies, of course.
1 dot: the Dance-a-ton. A disco ball that makes everyone in range want to dance (and be unable to leave the dance hall), as well as more suggestible. Because why not win social conflicts with a dance-off?

Plus a more or less unlimited supply of mundane stuff, including a single palace (acquired just to see if it were possible), stored in the pocket world or the Butterfly's personal storage space. And a plethora of mildly magical things, like tools better than anything ever made, harmless lava rivers, swords that never miss, sleeping apples, a magical nuke that goes off when summoned and is summoned at extremely short range, and so on and so forth. Plus armor that can tank most attacks (a very nice sundress, if you must ask) and other basics.

"Cousin! I didn't know you were there, but thanks for the welcome!" You mean there are people who do not warp reality and rewrite its history on a whim? What a strange place this is, but the Butterfly will play along. Rewrite the local authorities so the Butterfly has all the ranks and contacts she needs to learn whatever it required (she was even invited to do so, so it's only polite to accept).

What we have here is obviously a nice little piece of work with Fall of Night Shadows the Truth, possibly combined with a potent Behemoth Forging Meditation if those disappearing are being remade rather than banished. It's hitting the city as a whole, and is presumably resistant to counterspells, so it's on par with Cartoon Time. Different choices at character creation!

Investigation is a Cup skill, and the Butterfly has some massive advantages at it, so finding Kamar is not that difficult. She'll sporadically test the stability of reality - if she can actively Shape, she can make the narrative even more interesting! But then, if she can, then the area is probably doomed to be consumed by the Wyld soon anyway, so we'll assume not (also, being able to fix everything just because is boorish). Breaking his coin flipping pattern is the obvious next step, and social YES would make that easy if we weren't inside a story. So she'll set up something exciting where Kamar has to flip to decide - and use a butterfly to make the coin land on the side.

From there, it's just a matter of unraveling the mystery, probably confiscating the coin if it's not a fellow Raksha's (an Oneiromancy that powerful is worth holding on to and reshaping at need). Lost mortals can be brought back via pocket world, though the Butterfly isn't sure why they'd want to go back to being denizens of reality. Restoring them is possible, but if her healing artifact does not do the job, she'll probably flit away before taking care of all the patients.

In all, she's looking forward to having a chat with the god of luck, and discussing their next game! She might even point out that it's good manners to put all the game pieces back after playing with them, and offer to help.

The Dreamer is going to start out assuming it's Thanatos, because it usually is. Archetypal training at investigation and exposure to dream stuff mean he'll pick up a few hints, enough to conclude it's some kind of possession (Thanatos!) combined with dream rifts - waking up in a slightly different reality (in which he didn't die recently) is a perfectly normal experience for him, but seeing it happen in real time is a definite indicator of Thanatos. Yes, he's a bit obsessed (rightly so, given the evidence).

From there, it's a matter of finding the previous Age artifact some idiot is using, and he's likely to manage to do so, relying on the investigator for support as needed. From the mindset that a magic item is responsible for the mess, stopping its spread is easy - confiscate the coin, look into burying it as deep as possible (breaking magic is to be avoided). Recovering the lost would either happen naturally, from the Dreamer's perspective or, if that fails to happen, he'd look for nearby dream rifts to explore - possibly even creating one if pressed. The persistent forgetting after they are back is evidence that more work is needed if they want to stay, but he's not overly well equipped to do so. It's likely possible, given the style of magic he uses, but it's outside his usual repertoire.

So he comes from an excellent mind set to find the source of the problem and stop it, but may not be able to restore the people who have already been lost (or understand why they should be).

"Sempai Noticed Me!"

The Dreamer must be doing something right! It's only the most potent of the Raksha who are blasted by the Sun whenever they set foot in Creation, so she's on the right track. Oh, right. Repair the body double, send out expendable minions looking like her to assess the damage and criteria involved.

Have a big cry or celebrate, depending on whether poor copies of her get blasted (so it's not personal and probably an administrative mistake) or she gets targeted even when disguised (so it's for her). Ultimately feel rather depressed when she realizes that the level of destruction is nowhere near comparable to what the Sun should be doing if He were taking her seriously (see the magical nuke). Resolve to go to Heaven to make her disappointment known, and also because if they're not lobbing WMD at her, they should respect the butterflies.

Hop into the pocket world, skip it along the edge of reality a few hundred miles at a time, repeat. Interactions between magic and orbital velocity are uncertain, but artifacts are nigh indestructible anyway, so eh. At worst, reshape the butterfly swarm so it's smaller and invulnerable (and probably not flying anymore), to land on a satellite. Find out whether the satellites blast each other if my body double is on one of them.

Machine intelligences are fun! Grant it sapience and talk it into cooperating. If that's not working, reform the butterfly swarm and set it to Devour (also affects the insides). If that doesn't work, create a pocket of reality where metal and crystal are gaseous, deposit it on the satellite, repeat.

The Dreamer walks outside, gets blasted, wakes up and repeats. If he gets blasted again, he's been locked in a recurring dream and needs to find a solution. Otherwise, he's fine, if a bit irritated at being randomly relocated for no reason.

So he's locked in a recurring dream... there is no way he's going to build a tower high enough, though he'll catch on fairly quickly that he needs to look different (or not be under the open sky), and can sort of manage. Use Hypnos to summon help when nothing seems to work, get an annoying quest and probably no useful advice.

Create a dream rift, jump in. If he emerges in a different dream, he wins. Otherwise, realize that the blasts are monchromatic. Color Ward is a perfect counter, if static. Apply Color Wards, walk out into the open, cackle maniacally as the beams rain down harmlessly. The Dreamer is versed in astronomy, so he'll notice the satellites eventually (after building a temporary house out of stone or metal), but reaching them is not really feasible.

If a dream rift can get him to a satellite, he can turn the metal to air and core the thing, which solves the issue. Reentry is likely fatal, but if he's lucky he wakes up in a world where he only gets blasted 16 hours a day. If everything resets... he's been there, he can scry it and appear to be there, hopefully drawing fire from the other satellites?

The Butterfly is actively enjoying these last scenarios, while the Dreamer passes one easily and has a hard time / failure with the other. Still, surprisingly capable overall.

Quertus

2023-04-26, 06:07 PM

"Sempai Noticed Me!"

That response was just epic. Those alternate takes on events are the best.

meschlum

2023-04-27, 12:51 AM

Hmm... a few more characters who could technically qualify as highly competent, especially within their genres!

Surprisingly enough, is not trying to sell you cookware over the phone, possibly because if there is a single phone on the planet, it already owns it? The high point of Tenra technology, this war machine is not only very good at killing things, but can also summon custom spirits for when any mode besides 'puree' is called for! Having had time to level up, it's slightly less MAD than it could be, and might even be vaguely contemplating the possibility of having skills not meant for murder? It has likely formed a bond with suitably adorable fleshbag, if only to rid itself of its excess karma (adorableness is directly proportional to the amount of guns, swords, and gunswords being waved about).

An entrant to the obscurity sweepstakes, the Sharp Blade is literally that - an indestructible, sentient god-rapier, from a game where you play magic weapons which need mortal bearers to move them around (and experience the world). Due to having stupidly (and randomly) incarnated as a rapier, the Blade is not overly good at combat in system - it hits a lot, but tends to go 'ping' rather than 'splat'. So it has picked up the occasional random ability with non combat uses (besides being obsessed with making its wielder eat every possible foodstuff in existence) and, like every sensible indestructible sentient god-weapon, is utterly terrified of water.

With these two somewhat notable departures from the norm, let's see how the scenarios are treated, shall we?

The Robocaller probably qualifies as seven samurai on its own (despite not having the package), and can certainly summon short lived mobile explosives to back it up. Its summons might be able to help with construction, and robot muscles are notable. So the overall result is that the bridge's defenses are a bit better than they cold have been, and the invaders take a lot higher losses than they expected. Tentative win?

The Sharp Blade fails to see why the bridge should be defended. Ramps! Yes, those are absolutely critical. The human it's mostly possessing will insist that the bridge must satisfy safety requirements which would make OSHA swoon in envy, with a single goal: it must be absolutely impossible for someone on the bridge to fall off (or, worse, to drop their weapon off the edge). This will be done no matter how many dead peasants are required for the job. Then, when the army comes along, the Blade will dive into the melee (like any good indestructible sentient god-weapon, it grants its carrier a minor force shield to protect it from missile weapons and boring carriers), killing as many as it can. If the carrier gets killed, it takes over the next person to pick it up, and continued. Outcome: bloodbath. Probably a technical loss, because soldiers live more exciting lives than peasants so the Blade will prefer to end up in the army's hands.

The Robocaller is fairly certain the the lich has far too much karma, and needs to be contained by a proper soul mirror, not whatever nonsense this needle might be. Summon a swarm of scouting beasts and let them loose, run out of mana, repeat. Likely to find the needle via grid searches an minions that enthusiastically self-detonate, combined with robot speed to reach all the potential targets. Since for some reason the lich is unlikely to want to have its mind scraped utterly clear and its soul bound into the human -machine interface of a warmech (unless the lich watched too much Eva as a living being), the wightocalypse is probably going to happen on schedule in the medium to hard ranges. The Robocaller is immune to wights and very killy, but is a single tireless murder machine. Lose.

The Sharp Blade might slightly boost its carrier's senses? Maybe it could take over the peasant and apply pressure to him so he'll confess to what he did? The needle remains unfound, the wightocalypse has the Blade freaking out unless it can possess wights. Even if it can, undead have rotten senses (literally), so it ends up in indestructible sentient god-weapon hell. Not the deepest circle, but still hell. Lose.

The Robocaller kills things and summons monsters to kill more things. These talents are obviously suited to the needs of the scenario, once it is explained that killing the judges who give the model a poor grade will not improve it. Under those terrible constraints, it has two options.

Option 1: remember it can summon creatures with All The Skills. Burn all the mana it can, and call forth a squiddly horror from Lovecraft's most tortured nightmares to rebuild the model. Possibly call a few more to provide middle grade raw materials, and score a marginal victory. The Robocaller uses software of sorts to summon its minions, so it probably gets a good grade from the second judge.

Option 2: realize it's a lost faster than a human, and go fishing for the original ship. Optionally unleash a swarm of death upon the vicinity (to capture the ship or wipe out the raiders, whichever notion occurs to it first), then try to drag the ship back on time. It is completely incapable of doing so, and therefore fails. Maybe a sufficiently over the top flying summons could contribute? Really depends on the build and on how much karma it has managed to clear from its soul. Given it has managed to improve despite the ease with which it can murder things, it might be possible? Remind people nearby to be nice to the Robocaller's pet human, or it will default to killing things until the problem is gone.

A ship? The Sharp Blade goes on a thieving spree, grabs all the loot it can (or its carrier does), and emigrates to the desert closest to the center of the continent, where it remains for a few decades, shivering in horror at the notion of having been that close to the ocean.

That aside, it has no crafting skills, no special resources, and no intention of getting anywhere near the coast. It could perhaps possess the boatwright and endow him with superhuman stamina, so he can work 24/7 to made a new model? Fail.

Fun fact about Tenra robots: they are built around the unrepentant (and thoroughly mind scraped) souls of the greatest sinners to exist. Without a soul mirror to contain it, and incarnated in a living body, who knows whether the core personality (its sins providing the robot's power) or the crudely programed overlay (the played character) will emerge?

The character has lost its combat supremacy, gained a lot of squishy bits it doesn't know how to deal with, and can still summon. Besides the existential crisis, their reliance on a mechanical device to summon means they'll be a poor teacher for the locals, so they can mostly help in case of an invasion. Since they don't have a way to make the place significantly better, there won't be an invasion either. Lose, but probably count it as a win because they can smell things, feel them, and experience emotions without having neural limiters clamp in.

If it's the demon that awakens, he'll go all in for the possibility of godly power, and set forth the way he knows how: turn the natives into an army, invade, slaughter any resistance, recruit the rest, repeat. Possibly less good at wholesale slaughter than as a robot, but much more competent at psychological warfare and social skills (mostly manifesting as the ability to tell whether a lackey is or is not going to betray him, and only killing them in the former case). Probably can't hold out against the full neighboring army on his won, aware of this, so invades the northern countries first to get their resources and manpower. Possible win, unless the living conditions of the conquered and number of survivors among the initial population count.

The Sharp Blade is ecstatic. It has its own body now, and can experience all things of the flesh directly! This is sort of like reaching 8th level spells in D&D, only with less implied property damage - and assuming it still has its godly powers. Plus, the water is going away! As a bonus, it is fully aware (and has been part) of a few extremely deviant desert dwelling cultures, and can teach the relevant skills to the locals (hopefully without the warped mindsets). So the nation becomes a bunch of desert raiders whom no one wants to invade (or risk being captured by, depending on which lessons they assimilate), which probably doesn't count as thriving.

The Blade is already a god, after all - but if it wants to go for the challenge (why should it, when it could be eating dates instead?), the one approach it knows is war. So the northern kingdoms get invaded (again), and possibly conquered in a less horrifying manner than they might have been by the demonic Robocaller? Less likely to score a military victory, also (slightly) less likely to lose points for war crimes. Call it a possible loss, but one following a year long party / orgy if at all possible.

The Robocaller is not suited to investigation (except via terrifying answers out of bystanders and razing buildings so it'll be easier to look for clues in the rubble). If pointed at a sleepwalker, it'll summon a creature to restrain them, and probably not get infected as a result. Any conclusions or further steps are left to whoever thought it was a good idea to bring a chainsaw when asked to play a flute concerto.

The Sharp Blade is thoroughly horrified by the risk of being infected and vanishing - since it does not know whether there are people to possess in whatever place they vanish to, so it declares that the city is an honorary ocean and gets as far away from it as it can.

If forced, it has seen investigation happen before, so it could contribute a bit - though providing superhuman stamina with which to examine boring papers is more or less torture for the Blade. Find gambler, gambler has magic item - a fellow god who did something even stupider than incarnate as a rapier, yes! - kill gambler (may require multiple attempts, as the bloodlust has rules for criticals). Encourage whoever looked most sensible and attracted to the Blade's current carrier to pick up the coin, so the two of them can vanish off into the sunset and have more adventures. Feel very put upon when the coin does not respond to the Blade's attempts at communication - did incarnating as a non-weapon also make it mute? Accidentally set out on an epic quest to grant the coin sentience, because there is no way that can make the world any worse (it does).

Surprisingly, the Robocaller has a decent chance of surviving the barrage, and knows exactly what to so in response - yes, this is another game with killsats overhead watching for uppity PCs. What are the odds?

Anyway, the Robocaller follows standard procedure K177-477, and visits the nearest imperial temple / holy shrine / city hall (check whichever applies). There, it notes the hail of destruction has ceased, expertly assesses the level of damage inflicted and concludes its soul mirror may be misaligned (if it were something worse, there would not be any other buildings outside, besides the imperial temple / holy shrine / city hall). If this is Tenra, the agent in charge passes the issue up the bureaucratic ladder, the Robocaller enters sleep mode, and eventually is allowed to wander out (possibly with a load of karma on it).

If this is not Tenra, or the Robocaller is not popular with the empire (randomly killing people seems to annoy the authorities when it's not them doing it, for some reason), the Robocaller does not really have a practical solution. Short term. Longer term, it is made of technology Man Was Not Meant To Use, and has summons. It will eventually assemble a mountain sized gun and start taking potshots, but that might take a few decades or centuries. In the meantime, it will use a very big umbrella.

The Sharp Blade has no idea what's going on, and the forcefield it grants its wielder is not enough to stop a prismatic blast. It should have a power or two that will allow the wielder to survive, or sense the threat and remain under cover, however. As an indestructible sentient god-weapon, the Blade isn't actually affected by the blasts, but its wielder will be - and once the wielder dies, anyone coming close to pick up the weapon won't be protected and will die too...

From now on, the Sharp Blade will be playing "the sky is water", and refuse to go outside. Since it needs social contact anyway, it might try to go to a large city and stick to the underground? If there are dwarves in this world (none remain in the Bloodlust setting), it would be their new best friend, assuming it could get to their capital.

Of course, if the satellite's target was the Blade's wielder, it will be fine after they get fried (and lassoed back to safety once the firing stops). Even if it could get to a satellite, being stuck thousands of miles in space where no one can come wield it will have the Blade do its very best to develop the ability to move in its own so it run away from the notion (and fail). Lose.

This new batch of characters is going to fail at most of the scenarios, but hopefully in entertaining ways. The Robocaller has some solutions, if a tendency to opt for killing things and then questioning them. The Sharp Blade has a few trifling flaws, but mostly comes from a setting where the main activities are fighting and partying, so being able to do much more is already exceptional.

InvisibleBison

2023-04-29, 09:17 PM

This challenge actually could take place in Duskwall, so I'm going to assume that it does. I'll also be conforming to the standard BitD game flow model of task appears -> gathering information -> score, though this likely won't involve a criminal operation of some sort.

Also, all three of these characters will be able to travel about the city without exposing themselves to the sky once they figure out what's going on. Partly this is because Duskwall has lots of
underground passages of various sorts, but it's also because of the Ghost Echoes crew ability, which allows them to see and interact with mystical echoes of the city's past, including entering into buildings that no longer exist. Since all three of the Laughing Jacks have access to this ability, I figured I'd mention it here rather than repeat it in each character's entry.

And finally, I decided to actually roll for what effect each character got hit with. And two of them got hit by multiple rays, so that's fun.

Reyyah has the bad luck to get hit by both a blue and indigo ray. She rolls Prowess to resist the blue ray and Resolve to resist the indigo, gaining 3 stress in the process. Now aware that something's going on, she starts trying to figure out what precisely that thing is.

To start with, she's going to try and Study the phenomenon, by poking her head outside and watching as it starts to build up then ducking into cover before it can discharge. Three dice (2 Study + 1 Ghost Mind) gives her limited information. She's able to figure out that the effect is artificial and being caused by something far, far above her. Armed with this information, she decides to go consult with her friend Lord Scurlock.

With no dice in consort, getting info via socializing isn't easy, but it can be done. Ghost Mind gives a bonus die when gathering information about the supernatural by any means, and she (or her player, I suppose) accepts a Devil's Bargain – in exchange for a bonus die, she'll owe Scurlock a favor. Ominous, but worthwhile. With two dice, she is again able to get limited information. Scurlock is familiar with the weapon platform targeting her, and explains how it is identifying her. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any insight into how to get it to stop.

After some consideration, Reyyah has an idea about how to get out of this bind. The weapon is identifying her by her essence (ie, the Circle Dance effect), so if she changes her essence enough she should be able to cause it to stop targeting her. The plan is thus to get a ghost, let it start to possess her, and then overpower it and reverse the flow of energies so she assimilates its life essence into her own.. After a brief trip to a spirit trafficker, she's ready to get started.

This is an occult score, with the arcane method being a direct confrontation and clash of wills. The engagement roll starts with 1 die and gets a second for being particularly bold or daring, but then loses it for engaging the target where it's strongest. Thus, she rolls one die, and by the 75% roll gets a 1-3, starting in a desperate situation.

The ghost she obtained turns out to be much more powerful and much more perceptive than she'd expected. It bursts free from the ward she set up to contain it as soon as she opens the jar it was stored in, and somehow recognizes that she wants it to try to possess her, so it instead attempts to freeze her solid with its deathly chill. She uses her Warded ability to resist without taking stress, and counterattacks, using Tempest to blast it with lightning. Ghosts are vulnerable to lightning, making this start as Desperate/Standard, and her Ghost Fighter ability increases the effect to great. Rolling Skirmish with three dice gives a mixed success – the ghost is stunned, but the lightning bolt has started a fire. Reyyah chooses to deal with the ghost first, and tries to Attune to it to begin the reverse-possession. This is Risky/Limited to start with, and she trades position for effect, rolling 3 dice and getting a mixed success. The ghost is drawn inside Reyyah's body and she begins to digest it, but the fire spreads, blocking the way out of the room. Reyyah uses Tempest again to create a storm around her, unleashing a brief torrent of rain that extinguishes the fire (no roll is needed for this – it just works). One last Attune roll is needed to finish digesting the ghost, and it's a mixed success. Reyyah has successfully bound this ghost to her, confusing the weapons platform enough that it will stop shooting at her, but something out there has noticed what she's done...

Reginald has the bad luck to get hit with two rays, red and indigo. He resists both of them, taking 4 stress but no other consequences. Now aware that something is going on, he can start gathering information about it.

Reginald has many talents, but magical analysis is not one of them. He'll have to get help from someone else to figure this out. Unfortunately, he doesn't know anyone who might understand what's going on, so he can't resolve the issue. He just has to stay inside for the rest of his life.

Oturug gets hit with an indigo ray. He rolls Resolve to resist it, taking 2 stress in the process. Now that he's aware that something's going on, he can start gathering information about it.

He starts by directly observing the phenomenon, stepping outside for a few moments to let it begin to charge up and then darting back inside before it can discharge. With 2 dice in Study, he gets limited information. He figures out that something far up in the sky is shooting at him, but not any details about what it is or how it works.

To gain more information, he decides to consult the libraries of the College of Immortal Studies at Doskvol Academy. Strictly speaking, he's not allowed in, as he's not a student, but sneaking in is well within his capabilities, and also means this gather information check will be Prowl; again rolling 2 dice, he again gets limited information. Specifically, he learns that the weapon targeting him is using visual sensors to identify him as a threat. If he can find some way to defeat its perception, he should be safe.

He considers creating some sort of disguise device or potion of invisibility, but discards those possibilities as being too short-term and unreliable. A more radical idea comes to him: He is acquainted with a woman named Melista, who is a mid-ranking priestess in a cult that worships a forgotten god known as the Silent Song. Most of the Silent Song's theology is as unpleasant as it is esoteric, but it is known to bestow blessings on people who immerse themselves in the spirit well at the heart of its temple. Perhaps, Oturug thinks, Melista will help him to petition her god to bless him with an altered appearance.

This is a social score, with the social connection being Oturug's relationship with Melista. The engagement roll starts with 1 die and gets a second for the operation being particularly bold. The target is neither particularly strong nor weak to this sort of thing, so no adjustment there. Since Melista is a contact, she's inclined to help out and thus gives a third die. With three dice, the engagement roll is a mixed success. The score begins with Oturug in a risky position.

After he explains the situation, Melista is happy to escort Oturug to the temple of the Silent Song and arrange a meeting with the high priest, but that's where the good news stops; the high priest says that what Oturug has in mind would almost certainly result in his death, so he is not inclined to allow it. Oturug replies that almost certain death is better than what awaits him should he not be able to make his appeal to the Silent Song; this is a risky/standard Consort roll. Oturug pushes himself to get a second die and gets a mixed success. The high priest acknowledges this point, but also says there is some risk to the cultists as well, should their god grow angry that they allowed an infidel into their inner sanctum. To mitigate this risk, he asks for eight coin – a considerable sum, and well beyond Oturug's means. Oturug offers instead to give the cult his unfindable bag, which will be useful for them in moving proscribed ritual goods through the city. Another risky/standard Consort Roll, and Oturug again pushes himself for a second die, getting a mixed success. The priest asks for three bags, to which Oturug agrees.

At this point, events move deeper into the temple. The heart of the temple is a spirit well, with a massive statue of the Silent Song built around it. The high priest summons several other cultists, who begin to invoke their god and petition it to bless Oturug with an altered appearance. A surge of energy reaches out from the idol and envelops Oturug, warping and twisting his form. To stabilize himself in a survivable form, Oturug rolls Attune, pushing himself one last time to get a second die. With a mixed success, Oturug survives the transformation, but takes level 2 harm Dysmorphia as his mind struggles to adapt to his new form. He leaves the temple, quite literally a new man, and no longer the man the weapon platform is looking for.

Telok

2023-04-30, 01:16 AM

Oh, I forgot about Gun Whore Bob... um... Without their own ship GWB & co. need to be ferried to this random uncivilized system by someone else. Since GWB doesn't really need money (the mercenary company thing being more an excuse to keep lots of guns around) they're... doing a favor for a friend? Sure. Why not. So who?... Screw it. GWB is playing assistant band manager to Disaster Zone for this trip. The mercs aren't security, they're the special effects crew.

Right. So the band's fleet (have you seen the size of those speakers?) pulls into low orbit around some reasonably primitive planet (we'll say... Earth circa 1922? but with anthro-owl people) in order to put on a show and test out a new stunt. Totally ignoring the satellites because the band doesn't care. As the stage hands set up stuff on planet GWB & crew work to finish the stunt. The army surplus AT-AT has the final layer of warpstone impregnated fireworks wired up on it. The illithid tentacle ninja jetpack ballet dancers do a final rehersal. The aerosol LSD sprayer stealth drones and their cargo is kept carefully hidden from the band members. Gun Whore Bob supervises while looking at a live feed of the landing zone. And it's 1922-ish so no environmentalists have to get shot for obstructing heavy metal music.

During the performance GWB ends up planetside (they glued sparklers all over the power armor to blend in) to make sure the guys on the ground are safe. It takes multiple shots from the satellite before GWB notices anything amiss (20 hp, 6 resilience, 5 willpower, Disaster Zone music, misc. special effects) and hops back to the ship through the Gate spell big enough to drive a huge armored walker through. The effect is traced back to the satellites because futuristic magi-tech sensors do that and Disaster Zone ends up with new sfx toys to play with. GWB could totally kill the thing, a bunch of guys tossing krak grenades through a Gate spell (GWB opens gate & leaves, 85% each grenade wounds because target is helpless = about 25 grenades to total wreckage) would do it, but again the things are too valuable as loot to just be randomly destroyed.

NichG

2023-04-30, 06:12 PM

Kane0

2023-05-01, 12:23 AM

The good news is that lizardman doesn't carry anything denser than he is, or much of anything really. The bad news is that lizardman doesn't have any real means of combating time shenanigans nor teleporting significant distances, even if he knew exactly where to go.

So I guess the name of the game is stacking movement while hindering everyone else.

Longstrider + Misty Step or Zephyr Strike gives us an edge over knights and peasants, but any mage or monk around the same level will outpace us considerably. About 490' total distance can be covered in the first two runs in, then after that we're looking at 430' or so on return trips.

Depending on the size of the 'opening' to this distortion something like Plant Growth and Gust of Wind would nonlethally hamper a great many people while himself being unaffected.

An alternative would be to summon a beast that's faster than us to pick stuff up. A flying one can cover 600' worth of distance on a trip, plus an extra 90' if we just summon them straight into the timezone (they came from somewhere else, so they start with 30 seconds). We can even set up Telepathy on the summon so we don't have to go in ourselves and still direct the action, plus it's considerably stronger than we are even if its smaller.

But Lizardman can't really do all that much, he's still restricted to that 30 seconds. He'll probably make off with something to make the effort worthwhile, but no chance of getting to that vault. C grade.

Telok

2023-05-01, 01:32 AM

Just to note, as I don't have time tonight for full exploration, to fill out the 24 hours (or 12 hours & touch someone or 6 hours and touch 2 peeps or 3 hours and touch 3 peeps) requires 86370 lbs. or 39177 kg.

A 100 metric ton Atlas mecha will net you 612 hours (does squishing people with mecha count for 'touching'?), while a Star Wars AT-ST may net you a quarter to a third of that (and fewer pancake buildings). Of course if you can swing a nice Renegade Legion Deliverer grav tank at a feather light 404 metric tons...

Kane0

2023-05-01, 03:35 AM

A 100 metric ton Atlas mecha will net you 612 hours

Well i dont see a MWRPG character in the roster yet :P

Telok

2023-05-01, 10:57 AM

Well i dont see a MWRPG character in the roster yet :P

Copy pasta from the DtD40k7e book 2

Atlas Mecha – Yes! You can be the proud owner of a big stompy mecha with heat-seeking missiles, full-auto lasers, and a really big gun. Just make sure you can pay for the fuel or you'll have the worlds largest paperweight.
Size: 30 (about 35m tall), Price: Holdings 3
HP: 30, Resilience: 30
Static Defense*: 0, 6, 12, 18
Maneuver: +0, Acceleration: 1, Speed: 6
Speed: 24m/momentum, 8.6 kph/momentum
Drive: Walker (x4) Treats impassible terrain as if it were merely difficult; if flipped over or knocked down it may stand back up as a Half Action.
Standard Sensors: +5 perception tests and 10km automatic vehicle detection range.
Control System: Pilot Seat & Co-Pilot Seat &
Basic Equipment & Mobile Trace System: Spot for a pilot & co-pilot. Has seat belts, cup holders, A\C, heater, radios, etc. Enables gun kata trick shots and sword school special attacks.
Controls Feedback & Inefficient Controls: When damaged the vehicle may inflict Fatigue on the pilots. Requires an extra Half or Reaction action to maintain control.
Environmental Seals: Airtight & safe.
Heavy Hardened Armor: 20 AP
Manipulator Arms: Strength 8
Weapons: Long Range Missile Launcher, 3k2+15 X p5 s/- 500m Homing & Minimum Range.
Short Range Missile Launcher, 4k2+15 X p5 s/- 100m.
Arm Mount: Multi-Las, 3k2+5 E p0 s/9 60m Reliable.
Arm Mount: AC-20, 7k4+20 I p15 s/- 100m.
Ordinary CQC (Extra Big Fists), 9k2+20 I p5.

Variable Advanced Technology Fighter – Your basic fighter jet that turns into a giant robot with a gun.
Size: 20 (about 15m long/tall), Price: Holdings 2,
HP: 10, Resilience: 20
Static Defense: 0, 12, 24, 36
Maneuver: +2, Acceleration: 2,
Speed: 12, Speed: 180m/momentum, 65 kph/momentum
Drive: Aerospace (x15) The vehicle has wings; if it's Momentum is less than 3 it goes Out of Control and begins Falling; requires a runway of at least base Speed x 100m; begins Falling if it takes 2 or more damage or if it goes Out of Control.
Other Drive: Walker (x4) Treats impassible terrain as if it were merely difficult; if flipped over or knocked down it may stand back up as a half action.
Control System: Pilot Seat & Basic Equipment & Mobile Trace System: Space for a pilot & Has seat-belts, cup holders, A/C, heater, radios, etc & Enables gun kata trick shots and sword school
special attacks.
Controls Feedback & Hanger Queen: When damaged the vehicle may inflict Fatigue on the pilots & Requires extra repair and reload time.
Sensors: +5 to Perception tests and a 10km automatic vehicle detection range.
Ejector Seat: Could save your life.
Environmental Seals: Airtight & safe.
Manipulator Arms: Strength 6.
Afterburners (1): Double speed while activated.
Light Hardened Armor : 5 AP.
Weapons: Omni Weapon Mount: Long Range Missile, 3k2+15 X p5 s/- 500m Homing No Short-Range.
Arm Mount: Vulcan Mega Bolter, 6k2+15 X p10 s 6 120m Tearing.
Unarmed CQC (Reinforced Fists), 6k2+15 I p5.

Cyborg-Ninja Tyrannosaurus Rex Cocaine-Wizard Pet – Yup. Damn cocaine-wizards being all awesome up in your face. What are you gonna do about it punk?
Size: 19 (about 14m long), Price: Holdings 4
HP: 19, Resilience: 19
Static Defense: 0, 8(9), 16(18), 24(26)
Maneuver: +10, Acceleration: 3, Speed: 8
Speed: 32(36)m/mom, 11.5(13) kph/mom
Drive: Walker (x4) Treats impassible terrain as if it were merely difficult; if flipped over or knocked down it may stand back up as a half action.
Control System: Berserker AI System: Rolls 6k3 for everything & goes on a killing rampage when
the primary AI runs out of actions.
AI Systems: TAPS (3 dots Ballistics), TAPS (3 dots Stealth), RAM-3 (the AI has 3 Half Actions
per scene), Co-processor (3 dots Wis), Co-processor (2 dots Int). The AI will obey orders until it is out of Half Actions, then it will use the Aid Another action on the Berserker AI.
Super Solenoid Engine: Activate for +1 to speed, maneuver, acceleration, roll for warp at +10.
Hexagrammatic Wards: 5 Aura.
Medium Hardened Armor: 10 AP.
Thermoptic Camo: Can be almost invisible.
Manipulator Arms Jaws: Strength 9.
Living Vehicle: It's ALIVE!.
Weapons: Two Handed Big Teeth, 10k4+20 R p5 Unwieldy (cannot parry).
2x Short Range Missile, 4k2+15 X p5 s/- 100m.
2x Personel Weapon Mounts: 2x Heavy Bolters, 4k2 X p8 - 10 120m Tearing, 60 ammo each.

It isn't "kitchen sink" unless it's got giant stompy robots!

Quertus

2023-05-03, 11:13 AM

I initially misunderstood, and thought that the whole 3-mile radius city was appearing, rather than just a portal thereunto opening. Hopefully my reading comprehension hasn't failed me that badly anywhere else, but still, I may be way off base here on some details. That said, here's my explicit assumptions:

The portal is "big enough".

Characters / participants know about the event and their participation therein "long enough" in advance.

Unless otherwise noted, all characters are there "legally" / their participation is not unexpected.

Nation(s) have known about the event "forever"; there is recorded history of it happening repeatedly, and it is fully predicted.

The 30+ second time buffer is created when you pass through the portal. Re-entry is possible, and the buffer is reset to full each time.

Time is only divided among sentient beings (including undead and constructs); touching inaniimate matter (such as to pick up loot) does not divide one's time, but touching living beings (even to pick their pockets) does.

Anyone who runs out of time inside the city, and not retrieved before the portal closes... ? (gets lost forever? reappears, frozen in time, 1,000 years later?) As this is undefined, it's to be avoided.

The results of dropping weight after the clock has started are undefined, and thus to be avoided (although some of my characters will (unstated) experiment to determine the outcome if the result is unknown from their PoV).

No one else is making an assassination attempt on these characters, or has any "grand plans" that need to be worked around. Although many of the characters will be prepared for such, and have contingencies, those are mostly left out for brevity.

Response to Scenario 6 - Timeless City

Sure, she may be a High Priestess, and even with the ubiquitous purchase of a Cloak of Charisma, sure, most of the participants might like Arma, but that doesn't mean that they'll listen to her. Or help her. This is 2e D&D, home of the silos of (almost) no spell trading or item selling. Only, that's not true in the context of this thread. So... who knows?

Regardless, Arma will participate with a team, a party. She'll go in mounted. The mount will be carrying her. So long as it's an avian mount, it should be fast, and have a very not dense bone structure. So it should last... many extra seconds. It's rude to ask her exact weight! She also has a spell that will allow her to not exist for a short time, so she can extend the length of her stay slightly if necessary. Although, by touching her mount, she should be sharing the extra seconds it gets by carrying her, so she shouldn't need that trick.

Mirage Arcana is a thing, so the nation can doubtless arrange it so that she can be practicing with her mount (and her party) in an illusory duplicate of the city. Importantly, training her mount to head for the exit if, say, she stops singing or something (in case the "sharing with her mount" tech doesn't work the way she expects it to), or if she gives it the signal (if they unintentionally touch a living being, and therefore might have an unknown amount of time left).

Arma expects that she'll be doing the real looting for her team; thus, she is carrying her team (puns are sacred!). Most if not all are denser than her, so she should last quite a long time.

Then again, it's not like her team can't be simply strip mining the nearby streets, bringing back pieces of the city to use as components for the advanced use of Mirage Arcana. AoE "Acorn of Far Travel", that gives monsters carrying nothing 30 seconds to act before adventurers can simply walk over and behead their helpless forms? Yeah, the streets may not be paved with gold, but they may as well be.

Rescuing creating copies of the citizens is an interesting idea. If her Divinations tell her to do so, her mount should certainly be capable of abducting a few time-clones.

But her goal is to make looting a trivial process, so that she can focus on her main concern of rescuing people who have run out of Time. And, sure, she could probably cause that condition, or otherwise assassinate people (as some might suspect, given her daemonic visage), but that's probably not on her mind right now.

That said... the biggest value of the Looped City from Arma's PoV is that it probably has libraries of ancient knowledge, which might have some insights about the cause of the breaking of the world that is Arma's driving focus. So (if this somehow wasn't already known), she'd probably rescue a citizen, get them to be Friendly, and ask about such a library, then fly to loot it. She'd literally rip out walls and carry whole bookshelves back as her tech for maximum efficiency / to avoid touching citizens unexpectedly.

I doubt the ancient lost knowledge would help her directly, but it'd still be a big score.

Whizzy can teleport, so he certainly has a leg up on the competition, being able to hit some long-range targets of opportunity... but why would anyone ever allow Whizzy to participate in this event? The only reasonable answer is "to off Whizzy", which he'd realize if his Wisdom weren't Tainted down to 4 or so.

Depending on the expected haul, Whizzy might invest in a couple of scrolls of Teleport, to gather even more "not by the door" loot one has to Teleport to.

Additionally, he'd probably lob a few fireballs to kill some pedestrians that pass just far enough away one wouldn't want to split their time with them to loot them. And (probably needing a Wand of Fireballs) doing the same with slightly further targets, then Dimension Door over, loot the corpses, and Dimension Door back to the exit. Or, you know, twice as much loot of he only DDs one way, and runs the other. Regardless, obviously Boots of... Striding? Sprinting? 2k for the speed boost without the other enchantment they usually come with is a really good investment here.

Well, isn't this just peachy?

Ideally, the Telepathic Vampire would have his Companion have created a disposable sentient Undead ahead of time to test whether Undead get the same budget of Time as living beings. He'd also test with sentient robots, non-sentient robots, and remote-controlled robots/cars/whatever.

Even though it seems those tests would produce favorable results, he still has no interest in dog-eat-dog betrayals, or "lost in space and time" scenarios that could result if he inters the fray directly. Instead, he'll do what he does best: act as Control.

He'll mind link all the participants (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or the bathtubs of blood), and ensure optimal coordination of efforts. And eat anyone who even thinks of betrayal.

So everyone else does so much better than in past years, while he collects what little he can through proxies. Shrug. Survival / minimizing risk >> maximizing profits.

He'll also probe the city for any minds of a Kindred spirit, anyone already possessed of or worthy of being gifted with his immortality. If so, at night, he'll have his Companion open a Gate to pull them out. Otherwise, such Gate action is left as an emergency "save one of the participants from being lost in space and time" rescue option. (Depending on how many bathtubs of blood he can secret to the area, this may be used repeatedly.)

The problem is if he manages to accidentally find the Golem (unlikely, since it's in an XD space) or any other Golems, and reprograms them to leave the area. He'd love to have them as loot, but... he might accidentally make himself "lost in space and time" if they eat from his Time budget while they're operating under his new program, even though he's outside the city.

Yeah, so... Cutter Fyord would not approach this challenge normally.

He'd spend the preceding months building up mana to create mana stones (why did I never think of this tech before these challenges? :smallconfused:) to build up the insane amounts of mana to create a truly giant eldritch horror before the portal even appears. Simply put, it would wait with a small mountain held over its [sanity loss] for the portal to appear, then reach its [sanity loss] through, grabbing buildings and pulling them back through the portal. Repeat until the entire city has been relocated.

Still probably wouldn't get the "main" prize of the artifacts, but who cares? There's a whole city copy-pasted into the world! And maybe even some of the people survived and kept or can regain some shred of their sanity, too!

Sorry about the hundreds of other participants in the once-in-a-millennia event who are now babbling incoherently.

Well, this sounds like a guild quest to me. I think the only thing John would really want to do before the portal opened (besides research and having guild tryouts) would be to learn the ever-important Gate spell, to use to retrieve anyone who runs out of Time.

That said, his children could just go in, grab buildings, and fly out, so... I'm not sure anyone else is really needed for this Event.

The only issue would be if John wanted to "save" the city. But that would not be a solo mission - that would be Guild Quest, likely involving other people interrogating everyone who was sleeping in the buildings John's children relocated at night, to try to find out what was going on.

The Troll could fly in... at a snail's pace. :smallfrown:

So it looks like the preparations for this Event involve physical training - lots of short-distance sprinting and such. And a new custom spell to boost run speed. And a new custom spell to track Time, because sure it's only useful once every 1,000 years, but why not?

With speed, endurance, and "massive" Strength and carrying capacity (pathetic for a Troll, but massive compared to little humans), the Troll can quickly make it a good distance in to loot even heavy treasures - and can explode any Civilians whose paths takes them anywhere near range for a timeshare. Or explode them to loot them quickly and safely.

Alex would fret for quite some time before coming up with a plan.

He'd make hundreds of environment suits, and tens of thousands of air tanks. And probably some jetpacks. And maybe a bunch of strong, fast robots (spend XP to buy Allies). And a gate-plus-sized air-tight room with numerous airlocks leading out.

Then, come T-day, he'd make the air inside the city poisonous. No worries about sharing time with any of the locals if they're all dead. Should be maximum loot and minimal (unintentional) casualties compared to other millennia if he does everything right.

Divinations. Lots of Divinations.

I think the easiest route for the Onmi-Wizard is to summon lots of flying, incorporeal (but able to grab things while incorporeal) spirits. And send those in to collect stuff, while never actually entering the City themselves.

That said, Clairvoyance to look back in time... and traveling back in time to loot ungotten gains from previous millennia... is a fun way to double-dip on looting.

And looking back in time is a way to learn what really happened.

If the Omni-Wizard really wanted to bring the city back, then the General who initiated the time loop seems the key. The first step would be looting him (him? him.) from a previous millennia and interrogating him seems the best option. I think showing him the spectacle his city's become might be effective in getting him to spill the tea.

Then, in this timeline, teleport to the cellar while wearing his insignia. Destroy the Paradox enchantment before stepping through. Retrieve the artifacts. And hope the General didn't lie about anything. Maybe some Sense Motive and ESP would have been good to add in previous steps.

Mr. T might well be very well suited to this scenario. He flies, carries a lot naturally just with his Power Armor and personal arsenal, and has 6 arms with which to grab loot.

Also, he can kill Timelocked Citizens at range, then eat their brains to learn what they know (space marines are creepy).

So, from random citizens, he can learn who the Most Important People are, and recognize them through their citizens' own memories. Then he can eat those MIP to know what the most important things in the city are, from their perspective and his own.

The artifacts are tempting, but they're probably more valuable to a cultist of the Chaos god of Time, and those are vanishingly rare. So long as he can loot other cool magic items, Mr. T will probably ignore the artifacts.

Of course, that's just the cover story, the activities that are a ruse to cover Mr. T's actual goals. See, beforehand, he's summoned a great many daemons, to hit the area at his signal (which uses tech the natives doubtless won't understand). He'll time it to occur when certain groups are in the city, dangerously low on Time.

The point is to look like a Big Hero, fending off the daemons. And save certain groups / individuals, to get on their good sides / improve relations / have them owe him a favor. And to have the daemons carry off certain other groups such that they cannot be saved. All to manipulate the political landscape.

And that is the layer he hopes those who are suspicious of him will struggle to see.

His actual goal is to use a ritual to draw upon the power of the daemons (who likely ran out of time in ignorance of the nature of the city), the power of those Lost in Time and Space, and the power of the time-bound city itself, all to power the creation of a new magical item or 3.

In the grimdark of running Mr. T, horror unimaginable, existential failure wrought of betrayal of both mortals and daemons, is but a smokescreen to distract from his true goals of... ooh, shiny!

Infinite Beacon of Tomorrows is infinite time, but it's no good to spread it out among an army of elves.

So, instead, we've got to tweak the deck.

It seems that the best answer is to have everything ready before the portal opens. Then, once the portal is open, get a near-infinite number of extra turns (near infinite buffer of Time), although to do that, it's easiest if there's another card drawing option, like Jayemdae Tome. Then, once sufficiently NI time is built up, sacrifice all the Elves to the Skull Clamp (or just use Evacuation or something to put them away safely), and summon just a few particularly useful creatures to enter the City - a cheap dragon, a thief, a colossus?

There really shouldn't be a limit to how much time can be built up, or how much can be looted.

I think the real question is, why hasn't anyone else looted the artifacts yet? Or does someone do so once every 1,000 years without freeing the city from its infinite loop? If that's the case, an accidental success (an Invisible Stalker to not notice any Paradox, perhaps, along with a playset of Steal Artifact (pity Memnarch wasn't in the sidboard) seems like it could do the trick) could be trouble.

Bwahahaha! The natives of this magical realm are in for quite a surprise from our LtC Staltek Vir, and his "suboptimal" alchemist class.

It turns out, with an antigrav lift, one can carry quite the impressive load. Like, say, a Transporter (and generator). Simply lock onto targets, and beam them onto the transporter pad. And someone outside can be using modified tractor beam technology to pull people and things off the pad and out the portal. Easy as pi.

Shift rotation can allow the rescue mission to continue night and day.

Now, as for backup, while one might think that the Federation would look kindly upon a rescue mission, and LtC Vir could call in additional aid, he's unfortunately limited by both himself and the D&D realm technically still falling under the Zero's black ops. That said, the time-traveling Romulan captain of the Zero would likely be willing to stand by in orbit, to scan and monitor out of scientific curiosity, and as a matter of protecting one's investment, so long as there wasn't urgent business elsewhere at that time.

So if there was a transporter accident (while someone other than the perfect record LtC Staltek Vir was operating the thing), they would have good support options to technobabble some Science! at the problem, from the mouths of some of the foremost experts on Time Travel and temporal mechanics in the Federation.

I scarcely know what to do here. If this is a massive multiplayer competition, most of Alex's mods would be very noticeable, and get his spirits in trouble if they weren't allowed. Even if mods are legal (which seems really weird for a multiplayer competition), Alex has neither the spheres nor the computer skill for his mods to be better than those who know what they're doing - if he makes an AoE loot ability (like some video games have), doubtless someone else could do better.

Hacking the system before the event, with Bringing Up the Map and Look for Triggers / Event Flags, he could possibly insert a Spirit with a faked Insignia right next to the golem, but that sounds like the kind of stunt that gets people's accounts banned.

If I could just think of a video game character that gets extra time when it breaks things / kills people... wait, does Carmageddon work that way? If so, that might be the best solution he can provide, to have a bloody car crush its way through the citizens for loot, then glitch its way through a wall straight to the golem.

Hours before the portal opened, Harry and as many followers as he could manage would begin a ritual. Moments after the portal opened, Harry would reach through, and declare that the portal is down. Gravity in the city would be altered by 90 degrees for an area around the portal, and things would begin falling out the portal, while Harry desperately attempted to dodge to the side.

Before that, hopefully, a huge pit would have been dug on this side of the portal, and second ritual performed to carefully catch and sort the things falling through. If not, it's a lot of "telekinetic grab citizens / breakables as they fly past" and dig through the rubble afterwards.

Regardless, Harry would likely take a nap shortly after the portal opened, and wait until later to use Teleportation (and Gravity Manipulation / Telekinetic Strength Boost as needed) to loot distant objectives, outside the range of his ritual.

Telok

2023-05-03, 11:59 AM

Traveller: Traveling Bob becomes rich and famous for discovering a new amazing phenomena or else the whole place is in a massive super secret government ultra security no-go research zone and TB got vaporized for being in the same solar system with it.
This scenario happens at approximately 5620 AD, Earth humans discovered the jump drives in 2087 AD, about 2500 years after the other two branches of humanity (typical bloody Ancients messing around with stuff and leaving tech bits laying around). So our maximum span of "this has happened before" is seven times in functional recorded history. That's fine, it works for the scenario... except we have organized interstellar empires involved. Either way we're back at out setting problem of "the government (any) is handling it and no PCs are invited ever" or we've just (re)discovered it.

Giving massive hand-waves at how the heck we know what's going on, completely ignoring the 'other people' thing, and not even bothering with converting the magic references to super-science or anything... What probably happens is on some recently re-discovered and likely uninhabited planet, Traveling Bob and/or a crew member (the ship needs a minimum of 4 or 5 crew) gets trapped in time-out after less than a minute passes. So they tie a rope to the robot and send it in. Counting the extras bolted onto the chassis as our extra weight (really just the spotlight, radio, and some heavy duty nylon rope) we have about 3.5 kg extra mass for... almost 8 extra seconds. But we'll say someone managed to notice that the heavier robot lasted longer than the person carrying more gear who lasted longer than the person not carrying gear.

We load the robot up with mass. Specifically we'll load up the 16 liters of storage compartments with metal bits. Spare nuts & bolts, chain, random dense equipment. Finding a quick search for e-waste density says 300-500 kg/m^3 = say 0.5 kg/liter (take the high end for throwing in solid metal bits). 8 kg spare mass gives the robot... 47.6 seconds of free time. Well thank the gods for the rope going back outside or we'd just be losing people in this thing.

After getting everyone back out we just keep sending in the robot with heavier and heavier loads while it records audio & video, transmitting everything back along the data cable we attached to it (just in case). Since it can readily haul 80+ kg of stuff in a box we'll call it 4-5 minutes of run time before it seizes up and we have to drag it back in... I think we're losing heavy duty tubs full of rocks and dirt. Probably rig up a winch and use chains to haul the thing back in every time.

Eventually the 24 hours are up and we may or may not have some sort of instability warning about the zone closing. Things alien to the zone may or may not be ejected or left behind on closing. The robot may or may not be in there when it happens. Either way we have 16-20 hours or recordings & readings and maybe a few interesting objects from within a 5 minutes walk of our entry point. TB sticks around doing bunches of scans and tests, then when everyone is out of ideas they go back to civilization to become rich and famous science explorers. Because nobody knows about this or else there's be a massive government army of heavily weighted robots tromping around looting the place and being reeled back in on super strong cables.

Weirdly there's probably no dice rolling in any of this past the first couple of rolls to notice mass=time and maybe one instance of people hauling rope before they set up a winch (or tie it to the bumper of the air-raft and use vehicle power).

Paranoia: A few hundred hyper, twitchy, drug crazed, panicked, concussed, heavily armed troubleshooters from at least three different complexes end up fighting their way through the city trying to recover anything that looks useful and explode the opposition who all look basically exactly like themselves. Some of them have nukes.

Completely ignoring the 'thousand years' thing. The Computer, in it's infinite wisdom, occasionally resets the date and has everyone mem-wiped in regards to things like calendars. There's just no way to know and, more importantly, it's not funny so we get to ignore it.

Briefing: About fifty troubleshooters show up for the briefing. The Computer has located Delta Complex. It is trapped in a temporary repeating time loop. Skip the PLC, go directly to R&D for equipment. NOW CITIZEN! NOW!

R&D: Drug injector rig (normally used for intravenously delivering de-carbonated Bouncy Bubble Beverage Double-Caff during all nighter brainstorming sessions... which honestly explains a lot about R&D), an insane cocktail of drugs to improve speed & strength while medicating the side effects away for just long enough, a spare de-armed (not disarmed, de-armed) Alpha Complex army power armor with a 900 pound lightweight mobile teleporter (with a 19 minute timer and a red button on a cord) unit bolted on the back, instruction booklets that nobody is given time to read anyways, a heavy weapon bolted on the front of the power armor.

Fifty random troubleshooters, high on drugs, heavily armed, and nervous, are transported to the site and sent in. Oh, and there's some shooting on the way in. Beta Complex and Gamma Complex (and maybe a few others) are doing the same thing. The place is a war zone. So this is more like "chucked out of an airplane at high speed while it's dodging missiles with a regular old parachute".

A few hundred hyper, twitchy, drug crazed, panicked, concussed, heavily armed troubleshooters from at least three different complexes are now fighting their way through the city trying to recover anything that looks useful and explode the opposition who all look basically exactly like themselves. At least a few of them are armed with cone launchers (for the uninitiated that means "rocket launchers") and nuclear cones (exactly what you think). Funny how history works out isn't it? And Delta Complex thought there were being invaded by enemies.

Assuming that Paranoid Bob survives the landing and immediate combat zone silliness the best bet is to find an ultraviolet High Programmer to follow around and swipe something important looking before triggering the teleporter to get back to Alpha Complex. Shall we list the ways this can go wrong?

1. The drugs cause a random mutation and we get a new uncontrolled mutant power.
2. PB decides that PURGE will be happier if R&D gets blown up and triggers the teleporter early to start shooting up Alpha Complex.
3. Nukes.
4. PB has nukes and needs to roll a 1-8 on a d20 to hit the intended target.
5. The power armor seizes up.
6. The teleporter explodes.
7. The teleporter takes PB to Beta Complex.
8. The teleporter brings Beta Complex to PB.
9. PB can't reach the button because the cord is too short.
10. The timer is jammed.
11. The interaction between hundreds of teleporters and the time wibbly wobble traps everyone in nested Groundhog Day style time loops within time loops.
12...
It just keeps on going. There's no way this is going to go "right" for anyone. But it's a fun wacky ride while it lasts and in Paranoia that's a success.

DtD40k7e: Turns out that while it's potentially within grasp, it'll be easier and more profitable to let other people get stuff and then take it off them. Also, this thing has been farmed for the last 10,000 years.
This actually all works out OK in Dungeons the Dragoning. I could just drop it into the setting somewhere, no problem. Thing is... well... Neither Diplomat Bob or Gun Whore Bob have any interest in going in. Well, maybe.

So this is a known thing that's been going on every thousand years for... let me check the history... probably 7000 to 12,000 years. With divination magics, gods, and people capable of crushing supposedly impossible target numbers for doing research & investigation. This probably happens on a planet that's been declared neutral simply to stop people from fighting over it too much and erasing the whole planet from history (that's happened, see additional spoiler). At some point in the last three cycles someone (probably ComStar) sent in a big anti-gravity raft (we can use the living vehicle template and an A.I. if it needs to count as a person) with lots of sensors and a bunch or extra mass. Like, lots of sensors and 300 metric tons of spare mass. Using perception of 10k10+20+rerolls (average score 100ish when 35 is 'impossible') using everything from sonar to radar to hard x-rays to pure magic to techno-magic to cameras & eyeballs on the ends of kilometer long tentacles. Then the governing body set down rules. No combat in the time loop zone, it reduces the amount of stuff returned. There's probably other stuff too but that's the big one for us. Naturally it isn't perfectly enforced, just where it's easily watched and punished (add a wave motion cannon or two to the big scanner raft).

The place is mapped, nearly every second of everyone's movements in the open and in unsecured buildings is known in detail. Governments, militaries, megacorps, religions, adventurers, and random looneys have all prepped. Teams, individuals, magical, robotic, furry green aliens from wherever, on jet packs, on magic carpets, capable of teleporting at will, trying to abuse stasis fields... the Runners are all prepped and just waiting for the portal(s) to open.

At least one team is made up of about 100 conjurers* (it's a 1/1000 year thing we'll plan a decade or four in advance) who can cast Porte, a spell that works like a portal gun. They have a sequence and a plan. Within two minutes of the start there's a Y shaped network of portals chained through from one end of the city to the other, splitting the city into three zones. The end of one portal is within 5 meters of the end of another portal and each one covers 60 to 80 meters of distance. You can get from one end of the city to the other by covering about 500-600 meters of ground. This team will not be going in. They're charging a percentage of returned value for use of the portals and they'll end up... well 0.5% of a (butt pull a number) billion credits is still a nice five million credit payday per person.

* Cocaine Wizards who want to participate have to take a drug test before hand and have a current valid clean psych evaluation.

On to the PCs.

Diplomat Bob works for Aztechnology, a low morality megacorp. They have a team or three, but that's not what DB is here for. DB with good social skills and the ship with a teleportarium is here to sweet talk someone who came out with something and kidnap them. There's a lot of competition on this end of things too. Nice social adventure module potential though.

Gun Whore Bob is already extremely wealthy, can cast Porte and Gate, has a Cocaine Wizard and cleric of Lolth as contacts, has both a magic carpet and a jetpack, and is wearing power armor (Bun-Bun the tyrannosaurus rex company mascot doesn't play a part in this one). GWB is here because there's something specific to get. Let's be honest and call it a MacGuffin. If it's location is known GWB will just take a couple minutes to race across the city on the magic carpet/Blink/Porte, cast Call Item on the thing, and walk away. Calling the item out at either the edge or outside the time zone (depending on details I haven't bothered to work out yet) and safely back in a secure area. If GWB is going for "the big prize"... pfzzz... See, there's a spell in DtD40k7e that lets you see the past. While it is a 5th level spell in default DTD40k7e (3rd in mine because of real power level competition), it has no time limits. I suppose that the inside of the vault would be un-findable except as seen though the doorway. Teleports in DtD40k7e don't care about 'extradimensional', just about not being explicitly blocked from teleportation. Although assuming D&D style high magic stuff a teleport blocker is probably a safe bet.

Hmmm... The issue is that a bunch of people are going to drop in at the edge of the anti-teleport defenses during the first minutes and then bloody well disintegration gun their way through anything between them and the vault entrance. There's all sorts of ways to frag the head off a golem that doesn't do anything until you touch it. The least of which would be to just slap a stasis field on it then Porte it into your own Portable Hole and walk off with it to deal with at your leisure. GWB doesn't actually have teleport, took greater summons instead, and the ritual version of Gate takes an hour to cast. Mind, if nobody gets there in the first hour...hmmm... perception 50 to blind target Gate to somewhere you only know exists... drugs... oh wow, using drugs and both our hero points to drop the TN to 30 then hiring a couple magic users to assist for the free raises (contacts & wealth), GWB can actually 7k3 throw 32 +/-1 at 75% success rate. Gates don't care about regular teleport blockers (they don't share teleport's 'bypass space' details in this game) open to the size and orientation of the portal that the caster is using so we just use a big... size check a map... 28x28 meter overhead shuttle bay door and the contents of the entire room fall into the spaceship that has it's artificial gravity turned off. And then 100 people with assorted weapons start doing called shots to the head of everything that came though until it stops moving. Well we'd call it doable, but it takes an hour after the time zone opens so they probably just get whatever was left unless for some amazing reason nobody else takes the faster way.

Of course there's always the option that Diplomat Bob is taking, just with force instead of trickery. Identify the people who grabbed what you want and take it from them. We'll call that 'Plan B'.

Additional spoiler about DtD40k7e setting about explody planets

Excerpt from the description of the Jade system, sector 0,3

Godfury: ‡ Belt Earth World - Size H (72,000,000 km spread)
Clockwise orbit: 350 million kilometers (58 kVU, 19 light minutes)
Groundlings: ruins of unknown civilization, probably just one powerful spirit
Characteristics: Asteroid Belt, only covers about 12° of the orbit, thickest in the middle, high levels of magical radiation

Godfury is the remains of a large terrestrial planet that was exploded about 13,000 standard years ago. Evidence of a civilization, tentatively identified as lizardy or dragonborn, exists in the form of apparently indestructible ziggurats and a few attached ruined buildings. Investigation of the ruins is prohibited by the existence of a powerful spirit entity that jealously protects and screens the ruins. High levels of magical radiation are present and make detecting the asteroid field extremely easy as well as providing a warm glow of immanent mutation or death for anyone entering it. The original name of Godfury is unknown, it was magically erased from all time and existence when the planet exploded.

@Quertus
I love Cutter Ftord & Mr. T in this one. Though Alex Knight should just be able to take a character from any game that has a timestop function and just freeze a single memory bit so they never run out. If I'm understanding the character's abilities correctly.

Quertus

2023-05-03, 06:17 PM

@Quertus
I love Cutter Ftord & Mr. T in this one. Though Alex Knight should just be able to take a character from any game that has a timestop function and just freeze a single memory bit so they never run out. If I'm understanding the character's abilities correctly.

I'm glad you liked them. They definitely were among the ones I found the most fun this time around. Cutter was definitely the easiest character to write for, and the one I couldn't help but think in terms of as I was reading the challenge. OTOH, for Mt. T, I'm really thankful for this challenge, as it finally gave a good opportunity to showcase that side of his planning.

As for Alex Knight... Yeah, that's a smart idea. Glitching their time remaining could be problematic, but glitching their own personal timestop power would be much less likely to cause problems. The only issue would be, even Alex doesn't have the Spirit necessary to do the Magick equivalent of saying, "your Disintegrate spell no longer costs you spell slots / mana to cast", which means he'd have to rely on his (minimal) programming skills to do the equivalent of an invasive operation on one of his spirit friends. Or, rather... making a new spirit friend with the express intent of performing such an operation on them. So it's not impossible, just not something I aim for in the context of this thread, and its "below 75% success, consider it an automatic failure" conditions.

Well, that and... I just couldn't think of any video game characters with appropriate time powers. :smallredface:

Telok

2023-05-03, 07:16 PM

Well, that and... I just couldn't think of any video game characters with appropriate time powers. :smallredface:

TvTropes + time stop. There's a bunch of options. I was reminded of one of the Alice in Wonderland games from the... late 90s/early 00s?... with a literal stopwatch.

InvisibleBison

2023-05-06, 09:40 PM

Any sort of large-scale temporal manipulations requires sorcery far beyond Reyyah's ken. She'll have to settle for more mundane goals: Getting the best of the loot near the entrance.

Given that the city last became accessible a thousand years ago, there's not likely to be any good records of it hanging around, but a Study Gather Information check should get her some idea as to what's available. After that, it's just a question of waiting until someone comes out carrying something valuable and mugging them. Reyyah's not a combat specialist, but she can shoot lightning at people, so she can probably overpower her target. (If they rely on magical methods of combat that “probably” increases to “definitely” - Ghost Fighter significantly boosts her power against magical enemies, and Warded lets her resist a single magical harm effortlessly.) In the end, she gets a decent piece of treasure and possibly a new enemy – a good day's work.

Reginald has absolutely no way to mess around with the time magic that created this anomaly, and thus no chance of getting the big prize. Instead he'll focus on getting the best of the lesser prizes available near the entrance.

Rather than try to find a way to outrun or outfight hundreds of other scavengers, Reginald decides to deploy his actual best skill set: burglary. He makes a Survey roll to find someone coming out of the temporal distortion with something that looks valuable, pushing himself to get a second die and thus a mixed success, with the consequence being that the guy he's spotted spots him as well. Reginald resists that consequence, rolling Insight and taking two stress – he slinks back a bit, and the guy dismisses him and moves on. He rolls Prowl to stalk the guy through the city. With three dice, he gets a mixed success, with the consequence being the guy joins up with a few other people. That's not a problem; because he succeed on the Prowl roll, Reginald is able to get into position to ambush the group. He pulls out a rifle and shoots. Normally taking on three guys would be Desperate, but because they don't know he's there and he's attacking from long range it's only Controlled/Limited. He trades position for effect and pushes himself, rolling Hunt at Standard/Great and getting a mixed success. Reginald guns down the people, but the artifact is damaged as well. One last resistance roll to negate that consequence, and Reginald makes his way home with his new treasure.

In theory, Oturug could create some sort of device to efficiently store a large quantity of time, allowing him to explore the city at his leisure. In practice, there'd be no way for him to test the device before heading into the city, so that's far too much of a risk for him to actually attempt. He'll settle for snatching up some of the more accessible loot.

Flash potions, one of his pre-developed creations is going to be extremely useful here. It lets him move several times faster than normal for a few minutes. With a flash potion, he should be able to get to choice pieces of loot near the entrance before anyone else, or go farther into the city than other people can and obtain things that are ordinarily unobtainable. In either case, he can store the loot in his unfindable bag to prevent others from trying to take it from him. Depending on how many flash potions he has, he could accumulate a considerable amount of treasure from this enterprise.

Quertus

2023-05-14, 01:58 PM

Yeah, I wasn't going to mention it for a month yet, but I wanted to do a survey at the end of this asking people to rate the systems they used on a scale from 0 to 6 (which is sort of like, the number of times across the 6 scenarios that this concern was relevant), and then do like a high dimensional scatter plot of the various systems to see which things are correlated and where there might be unexplored design space.

For me, so far based on the responses I've read, I think I'd ask (overlaps with several of yours):

- (For each system) how many of the scenarios were difficult to play (self-GM) because of the removal of randomness? E.g. how often did 'not being able to have a rare lucky thing happen' or 'not being able to have a small chance of failure' seriously warp the system for you?
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios were difficult to play because of the lack of interaction with GM who could answer questions, take on roles, adjudicate things, or introduce new information? I've noticed several of the responses have had comments like 'the GM would need to decide how good of a negotiator this character is' for example, whereas others are more like 'yes, I literally have a spell that says it does this'. So this is the 'how necessary is the GM for the actual dynamic of play?' variable...
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios could you tell definitively, 'oh, my character can't interact with this because I made the wrong character gen choice' or 'oh, I made a character gen choice that just totally resolves this'? This is your 'fail at character creation' category.
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios required you to perform either a literal or mental book dive for specific options that weren't on your character sheet (as opposed to e.g. brainstorming plans for using the stuff on your sheet already)? Call this a 'research' category I guess?
- (For each system) in how many of the scenarios does it feel like the character would come out behind even after resolving the scenario, the 'I should have stayed in bed' factor?
- (For each system) how many of the scenarios did you feel your character could actually deal with? Overall 'surface area' the system permits.

Well, it’s been a little while, so I can look back at these challenges with somewhat fresh eyes. I guess if there’s not a new prompt, I’ll just poke at these.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing about these questions is that answering them literally vs answering what I believe to be the intent of the question could produce opposite results in some cases. Hopefully, I’ll square that circle correctly. And hopefully I’ll also answer them in the correct “direction”, and not misread, and give a system a “6” instead of a “0” or something.

Warped by removing randomness

As much as I’m a self-described CaW Player, I’ve got to say, for me, every RPG feels strange to force into exclusively CaW mode, except (of the ones I chose to test) Paradox (and MtG). But there’s a little more to it - after all, why does it feel off? I think, for me at least, it’s related to the notion of “playing to find out”. That when you haven’t reached a proper CaW “yeah, of course this should work” point (which IMO is well after 75% - possibly at more like 200%; that is, “even if this guaranteed success should somehow be made invalid, there’s still sufficient alternate / backup plans that also guarantee success that there’s no point rolling”), moving to CaW removes the “Playing to find out” phase.

Which might mean that this question is meant to ask, “for how many of these challenges would you have normally moved to the level of narrative resolution this thread dictates, vs for how many would you have brought out the dice?”. Which is to say, “would you normally have resolved this as CaW or CaS?”. Or perhaps the focus of the question is meant to be more about the feel of this specific level of calibration; ie, “did this specific break point cause issues for the system?” Or perhaps it’s a system outcome variance question; ie, “how different would / could your answer have looked if you had rolled things out?”. Or maybe it’s even a question of how integral random chance is to the expected play experience; ie, “how many times did it feel like you weren’t playing <system> any more simply because you didn’t pull out the dice?”.

These different questions will produce different results; more importantly for my lazy self, they’ll require looking at different facets of play, and I’d rather not waste effort generating an unwanted answer.

So, for the systems where it didn’t feel weird to always be in a diceless CaW mode, there’s different reasons for that.

Paradox 1e don’t feel off as pure CaW, because the switch from dice to diceless didn’t change how I play it: layered Contingency plans, with an eye towards flexibility “in the moment”, to all but ensure that something works. If I had taken it as “atomic actions automatically fail unless 75% success”, the world would fall apart, because literally nobody in the world would ever succeed at any rolls to do anything, except my character would succeed at telepathy, and a few “high level” experts would succeed at their specialty. People not only wouldn’t wear their pants on their heads, they wouldn’t even wear pants, because almost nobody could ever succeed at crafting pants in the first place. :smalleek:

Paradox 2e… well, that was primarily a matter of the… not the build of the character, but the character of the character. Everyone who “took the default build options” (ie, who didn’t have something weird on their character sheet, like the telepathic vampire’s “blood is mana” rule) could do exactly the same thing, just nobody did. So if I played a character with a different personality… I assume gameplay would default back to Paradox 1e “layered contingencies” mode. So still not weird, just more math than the simple 1e percentile system produces to figure out which Contingency broke the “75%” limit. Shrug.

And MtG, obviously, wasn’t something where I was accustomed to using Rule books and dice to resolve outcomes.

And this brings up several other conversations. Like “active vs passive challenges”. Simply put, all of these challenges felt fairly static; none of them really felt like there was speed to be an active, sentient opponent responding to the PC(s) (although the Wizard in the boat challenge felt like they easily could have gone that route), or really even anybody reacting to the PCs actions or acting on their own agendas in any way that would make for a moving target of any sort. Such static/passive challenges are much better suited to CaW, and are much easier to get someone else to resolve, but it is worth pointing out that limiting the questions to static challenges skews the data/results somewhat. Which is related to your second item:

Necessity of the GM

So, here’s the thing: active challenges are very GM-dependent. However, when dealing with passive challenges like those given, it is almost certainly a case of barking up the wrong tree to just wholesale attribute scenario questions to “the system needs a GM”. Here are a few much more likely causes of this state:
Lacking NPC write up. Many questions would be really easy to answer if only the NPC (or other scenario element) had defined stats. And such stats certainly could be included in the module. At best, this is a question of “how much module detail does this scenario require”, or “is the system based on opposed rolls / challenge DCs that are variable by target or subject”.
Lacking PC write up. Ok, this is probably mostly a me thing, as I was too lazy / rushed / book deprived to come to the thread with finished characters. :smallredface:
Scale too large. If the PCs are in control of a spaceship, and in the course of the adventure they land on the moon and get into a fight (in a system where terrain matters), the module isn’t going to have detailed the entire moon. So, sometimes, the scope of the scenario necessitates GM intervention. If the system finds such scope to produce variable results in that system. At best, things in this category could be used to evaluate how detail-oriented the system is (ie, does it care about terrain specifics, or is a more narrative handling of that adequate), which admittedly has a high correlation with the system requiring a GM, but the two should not be conflated.
Too many options to detail them all. Sometimes, there are just too many valid approaches to a scenario to comment on them all. And characters in one system - or just one specific character in that system - might tend towards the unmentioned options. Which wouldn’t be as likely to skew the data if the scenario has been designed and worded with the system in mind. Or it could be a player thing, where the particular player tends towards options other than those the GM / scenario designer detailed ahead of time. For things in that set, I could meaningfully compare my characters to each other, but not to ones other people ran.
Character has unexpected ability / idea / approach. Rather than just being System- or player-specific, it could be an attribute of the character that they tend towards solutions other than those the scenario was designed to accommodate. Just look at how different Cutter Fyord is than, well, anyone else ever, despite the fact that Paradox 2e would likely “successfully compile” any other character’s stated actions.
Scenario poorly suited to module play. While there’s a lot I could say here, this is probably the one place where different systems actually have meaningful differences in how they handle telling two stories that share absolutely nothing in common besides the starting state.

So as much as “how many times did you feel like you needed a GM?” sounds like a solid data point, I’m leery of basing too many conclusions on that broad data point, especially conclusions that start with the bias of “this means that the system requires a GM”.

Also, the number of times per scenario that this came up seems a relevant data point.

Whew, that was long. :smallbiggrin:

I guess I’ll stop there for now.

NichG

2023-05-15, 03:17 AM

Thanks everyone who participated for playing!

As Quertus mentioned (thanks for posting that by the way, was travelling the last week...), there's a number of metrics I was curious about evaluating. There is of course the qualitative analysis aspect but it might also be interesting to do things as a simple count, e.g. 'out of all 6 scenarios, in how many of them would the system ...?'

But, qualitatively and reading people's posts, I've noticed certain motifs though I don't know if I'd say they're because of the system or the particular builds in play:

- Most strongly with Paradox (I think?), in some systems/builds you can basically ignore the details of the scenario and use a character's standard operating procedure at the mechanical level plus just having to describe something at the player level to resolve 'basically any situation'. E.g. you have the ability to author your own contact surface with whatever is going on, but it costs a resource, so given a standard operating procedure to farm that resource and enough time to do it, you can 'do your thing' and contact the scenario.

- Certain systems seem very fundamentally tied to randomness (Paranoia gear loadouts), to the extent that the dice decide 'whether its even going to be possible for the character to succeed' in the sense of determining what tools the character has to work with, not just 'does the character succeed?'

- There was a variety of topologies of how 'resolving a scenario' looks, though again I don't know that I can pin these to systems in particular. You have the 'solve in one step' topology, the 'multiple (deterministically ordered) sequential steps' topology, the 'multiple parallel attempts of which only one needs to work' topology

Interestingly to me, I don't think a single character/system/player/GM/scenario combo played out 'the way I had imagined play to go' - not just in terms of the details, but also in terms of the overall structure of play. Like, which things people thought would depend on each-other, what sub-questions would need to be answered, etc. In part this is probably because of the self-GM aspect of the game.

In that vein, people reacted in a lot of different ways to the self-GM aspect of this, which surprised me in some fashion. I didn't expect people to go as far as to rewrite the scenarios to fit them into even things like the setting associated with given systems, but that happened. At the same time, I did expect people to write in details for e.g. NPCs or other such things that they found they needed, which tended not to happen. None of that is bad! But it does suggest that if I were to do another one of these in the future, it might be worth spilling more ink talking about the whole self-GM part of the exercise and giving examples or at least using a different metaphor than standard table-top play to explain it (describing it more as a CYOA writing exercise maybe?)

Actually to that point, I'm curious what people would have done differently if from the start I had described this as a writing prompt for fiction based off of TTRPG systems, rather than as playing a character. Would that have changed how people regarded randomness and the freedom to add details missing from the scenario briefs?

Anyhow, if anyone wants a bonus scenario:

After everything, your six clones from each of the six scenarios are invited to a wrap-up party that lasts 3 hours, and takes place in an extradimensional ballroom with a curious device where the orchestra would normally be. It is explained that this device would allow any subsets of clones to fuse their bodies, minds, and abilities. After the end of the party, any clones/bodies left alive can be sent wherever in the multiverse of all fiction they might desire. Clones gain any bonuses for successful completion of their scenarios (or things gained in the process/lost in the process) as promised - e.g. successful clones at scenario #3 get to attend the party as ascended deities.

What happens when you meet yourselves?

Quertus

2023-05-15, 01:24 PM

though I don't know if I'd say they're because of the system or the particular builds in play:

- Most strongly with Paradox (I think?), in some systems/builds you can basically ignore the details of the scenario and use a character's standard operating procedure at the mechanical level plus just having to describe something at the player level to resolve 'basically any situation'. E.g. you have the ability to author your own contact surface with whatever is going on, but it costs a resource, so given a standard operating procedure to farm that resource and enough time to do it, you can 'do your thing' and contact the scenario.

Ah, good question. Before I forget, “always do the same thing in basically any situation, generally involving farming resources” is how I’d describe how Fate sounds.

So, Paradox was intended as a universal system, where the PCs could be in Star Trek one session, D&D the next, and then move on to talk to friend computer, all while seamlessly playing the same character. As such, the rules were… somewhat generalized? Like, most mages (in 1e) literally had a skill named “Magic” - if they hailed from a D&D ripoff, their players would have them use their cast very D&D-like spells; if they were from a Harry Potter ripoff, their players would have them cast very Harry Potter-esque spells, etc. But statistically, the two characters might be exactly the same. Well… one might choose to have special rules like “Spell book” and “memorize spells”, while the other might have special rules “Wand focus” or something.

Anyway, as (I think) I said earlier, I tend towards building specialists, characters who tend to “stay in their lane” as a way to automatically / organically promote spotlight sharing in team play. So even in Paradox, my “mage” characters tend to be specialists: the telepath, and the “very slow ritual magic, focused on creation / summons” (even though mechanically the 2e character wasn’t limited to that). Thing is, I’ve played both these characters, and they’re among my favorite characters. So I’m pretty good at using those abilities to achieve my goals. Put another way, despite the fact that I thought I was pretty good with “Matter transmutation”, if you gave me a Matter transmutation mage in Paradox, I’d struggle in the same places (such as creating a new layer of hell) in Paradox as I did with the M&M character. It’s a product of the surface area of the abilities, and my aptitude with each.

Point is, “always attempts the same thing” is a characteristic of my style of play, and of my style of characters. The vampire… in “normal” play actually favors talk / run / hide, viewing telepathy as an expensive, hunger-inducing last resort / trump card, and “fight” (most of the other PCs go-to action) as something that gets vampires killed, and a good reason to use that talk / run / hide / telepathy to get out of it. However, this scenario being solo play, generally larger objectives, and being focused on “how would this system handle this?” distorts things from normal.

Farming resources… for 1e, that was very much a product of the character build - nobody else could really “farm resources” that way. For 2e, technically every single character could do exactly the same thing as Cutter (assuming they didn’t take special rules saying that they couldn’t), but for some reason, most characters don’t default to “attempt a lengthy ritual spell” as their default action, especially in the middle of combat. But, yes, “ritual spells” in 2e were accomplished by farming for resources. There weren’t special rules for this, I was just the only person who ever “built up mana” to “hit a higher DC”, to put it in common parlance. I guess that’s almost the equivalent of saying, “I was the only person in Fate who ever created an advantage”? Because, mechanically, they seem similar to me.

Then there’s the “rules” of the thread - you asked us to bring Omnicompetent (my words, not yours - you probably said something like “generalists” or something) characters, and the infamous 75% rule. That, and hitting the character limit, meant I didn’t spend much virtual ink detailing the characters’ failed attempts, unless they would impact the flow of events. I generally skipped to the “how could they succeed” part of the conversation.

So, short answer, while Paradox 1e has wide surfaces, they often were concepts like “D&D Magic”, so individually aren’t wider than any other RPG; “resource farming” was a product of the character; and “attempt stacking” was the logical flow of the game. In 2e, one could very much “author their own contact surface”, but the DC was too high without repeatedly “creating an advantage” / “resource farming”, so nobody but me used it; attempt stacking was (I believe) the logical flow if you weren’t busy creating an advantage.

EDIT: oh hahaha, I think I get it - the “build up mana” option in Paradox 2e isn’t explicitly labeled the “build up mana action”, and the way Cutter approaches taking that action is obfuscated by his own distinct style (which hides a subtle bit of optimization). Cutter is just taking the “build up mana” / “create an advantage” action until he has about twice as much “advantage” as he needs to hit the DC of his intended action. That’s all that’s really going on with Cutter. Which is something nobody else who played Paradox 2e (in my presence, at least) ever bothered to do. That’s probably why you think Paradox involves “ignoring the scenario and writing your own content” (or however you said it), because his “creating an advantage” / building up mana looks entirely unrelated to the scenario.

EDIT2: in Paradox 1e, most characters refreshed their mana daily; my vampire lost mana daily, and refreshed mana by drinking blood. In Paradox 2e, everyone… lost all mana… daily? Every encounter? (I just remember “started with 0 mana” as the important bit), and gained mana (functionally, “advantage”, I think, but not tied to a specific cause or event) through specific circumstances that nobody else bothered to intentionally trigger because spells were just skill checks with set DCs; ie, spells didn’t “cost” mana, mana was just a resource one could use to make any checks easier (mechanically, to get additional dice to add to the roll).

- There was a variety of topologies of how 'resolving a scenario' looks, though again I don't know that I can pin these to systems in particular. You have the 'solve in one step' topology, the 'multiple (deterministically ordered) sequential steps' topology, the 'multiple parallel attempts of which only one needs to work' topology

And multiple steps in somewhat random order? And (important for if the dice get added back in) flow charts of steps and contingency plans?

. I didn't expect people to go as far as to rewrite the scenarios to fit them into even things like the setting associated with given systems, but that happened.

And I’m glad they did - I looked forward to such scenario rewrites at least as much as I did the actual responses. :smallbiggrin:

Actually to that point, I'm curious what people would have done differently if from the start I had described this as a writing prompt for fiction based off of TTRPG systems, rather than as playing a character. Would that have changed how people regarded randomness and the freedom to add details missing from the scenario briefs?

Oh, it would have been very different for me. I wouldn’t have brought nearly as many characters. I would have brought out the dice (and used them even more than in an actual game). I would have only chosen existing characters with established, well defined personalities - or, at least, have been very leery of doing otherwise. I would have had a very different focus: instead of focusing on “solving the problem” and “showcasing the system” / comparing this character to others in the same system, I would have focused on roleplaying and…not so much the quality as the clarity of the writing.

And, yes, as my previous experience with creating “single” author fiction from modules tells me, I would have been much more open to creating new content to make the module work.

NichG

2023-05-15, 02:39 PM

Then there’s the “rules” of the thread - you asked us to bring Omnicompetent (my words, not yours - you probably said something like “generalists” or something) characters, and the infamous 75% rule. That, and hitting the character limit, meant I didn’t spend much virtual ink detailing the characters’ failed attempts, unless they would impact the flow of events. I generally skipped to the “how could they succeed” part of the conversation.

I intentionally didn't give my own examples of how I would have answered the scenarios to not taint the experiment, but (at least from my mentality) the 75% rule almost doesn't do anything ever because its just an excuse to not actually have to roll, and in play I almost never bother to even consider trying things with less than a 75% success rate unless stuff has gone seriously wrong and its a hail mary to get things back on track. So that's a very big difference in my play experiences compared to others I think!

For example, taking an early-game Franklin Penrose from a heavily modded kitchen sink World of Darkness campaign I played in, and applying him to say the 'save the kingdom' scenario, this is what my answer would have been:

In this campaign, everyone started human and basically adopted a supernatural type (or more than one) as the game progressed, expending a dramatic editing resource called for lack of a better term Sark (after the Isle of Sark) that we didn't know we had, in order to change the rules of reality to allow a given supernatural type 'back in' after they had all been wiped out. Penrose was stubbornly 'I'm going to just use Science!!! on the supernatural and not go and just become a vampire or exalt or whatnot', and there was a whole series of subsystems of what one might call natural magic - magic that worked just because it was how the world worked and not because it was done by someone with a certain supernatural type.

Penrose basically went all-in on those related skills, which let him effectively start from 'we are stranded on an abandoned island with the contents of a hotel' and eventually build things like shuttlecraft, massive AI-powered supercomputers, mining robots, time machines, etc. While rolls could be involved in some of these things, they were largely repeatable or just determined how long things would take, and crafting largely was a threshold system - do you have the 4th rank of Metallurgy? Then you can make new magical alloys. Etc.

The major natural magics Penrose had access to before the midgame where he basically massively powered up in a way that would make the scenario uninteresting were:

- Ectomorphing: The analysis, extraction, storage, transportation, and phase-changing of special spectral essences from natural sources: ROYGBIV + UV, IR, other exotics each did a different thing as raw energy, versus when infused into a proper receiving metal. IR = Berserk mutation, Red = Heat, Orange = ???, Yellow = Light, Green = Plant growth, Blue = Telepathic static/mental interference, Indigo = Dimensional effects, Violet = Animates natural things/ensoulment/creates spirits, UV = Turns matter into information. Essences naturally occur as a gas which fluoresce in the presence of an electron beam, but if compressed can take on liquid or solid phases (the solid phase is stable as long as the crystal is unbroken, but releases everything as gas phase when disturbed). There are some 'higher tier' essences as well which aren't relevant at this stage of the game.

- Metallurgy: So much stuff! Basically, all metals when infused with the appropriate corresponding spectral essence gain the permanent property of manifesting a particular effect when placed within an 'aetheric current' (which can be produced by a closed ring of gold in the presence of ambient magic - and yes you can make coils like an electromagnet to amp this way up, or by a special rune). Elemental metals all do something, some rare alloys do something, and some rare crystals (quartz in particular creates a kind of 'universal information adapter' that is extremely important to most of Penrose's tech) can do something. Too many to go through, but you've got stuff like changing the mass of nearby matter, drawing or releasing heat, converting aetheric current to electrical current, as well as 'allowing nearby thought to influence the motion of mechanical joints' - magical Tin basically lets you become a cheap necromancer by physically puppetting a corpse, or you can use it to make a robosuit you drive with your mind, etc, etc. Metals all impact things in a radius around them, rather than the just the metal object itself.

- Sacred Geometry: Runes. These are patterns which when scribed precisely and powered by aetheric winds will spontaneously manifest particular effects on whatever they're scribed on. Stuff like 'converts aetheric wind to momentum' or 'causes object to explode' or 'puts things to sleep' or 'causes things to stick together at the rune surface' or 'modifies the shape of a metal-produced field' or 'transmits effects applying to an object bearing one version of the rune to another object bearing the conjugate rune' or 'create a portal connecting two locations bearing the rune' or 'captures runic effects from an object and applies them to something the object touches'.

- Golemcrafting: Basically a skill whose ranks determine the stats of robots/AIs/minions crafted in detail by the other stuff.

- Wandmaking: Roughly speaking, lets you make and use a focus where up to the power of the focus, you can say something that has to be a fake phrase in another language that sounds like it means something but doesn't actually mean anything. According to what the GM thinks you meant, something happens. If it turns out to be a real phrase in any language, nothing happens. But the results are repeatable. New spells are not really relevant for this scenario because they're GM dependent, but this gives Penrose some convenience effects like 'make friends with a thing', 'repair a broken thing', 'clean a thing', 'soften materials', 'glue two things together', 'speak all languages', 'transfer a memory to someone', 'make a glowing stone', 'create an 8000 degree orbital laser strike at target location' (e.g. 'the only attack action I'll ever need' when I found that one). There's... significantly nastier/weirder ones that came up later-game, but I'm not going to go there for this scenario.

So, what Penrose would do given a year to make a shining civilization...

- Hope he can find some small amounts of gold and wood to make a basic wand, to teach himself the language everyone is speaking. If no gold can be found, use the 'aetheric wind' rune and try to jerry-rig a single spellcast from a one-use disposable wand. This might involve a roll, so he spends Willpower to get an automatic success, moving on. He's rolling 9 dice anyhow (well, roughly working backwards on stats/skills he would be...)
- Get personal-scale quantities of silver and gold to start extracting essences, begin the teching-up cycle. A silver bowl lets him make concentrated enough essence to charge other metals (silver is impermeable to essences), but isn't enough to make solid essence crystals.
- Acquire and charge Tin, make a bunch of robots to basically take over all the manual labor requirements of the population, build larger/more sophisticated tools like a pressurized essence chamber to make solids.
- Use violet essence on the entire freaking desert to basically make a collective-intelligence nanite swarm (violet essence + quartz combo). Not actually as dangerous as it sounds since the sand grains can't exert very much force, not having any natural joints or movement; but this gives him basically as big of a supercomputer as he'd ever need to manage his robots in his stead.
- Solid green essence can be used to supercharge the growth of plants, so we can use that to get some farming going.
- Antimony + Orange essence is really useful to begin chemical and metallurgical processing. It causes mixtures to separate into pure compounds in the presence of aetheric wind, so if you melt ore/metal in its presence you can get very pure refined metals.
- If we can locate and extract some mercury with the mining-bots, Mercury + Red Essence + Aetheric Wind cools areas. Iron + Red Essence lets us heat areas. So we have easy air conditioning. Activated Cobalt lets you 'copy' the temperature of one object to another, so we can use this to do large-scale refrigeration.
- Aluminum + Yellow essence causes the inertia of objects in the field to be reduced, so by alternating this and having something like a flow of water in a circle around it, you can basically create a drive that violates conservation of momentum and has no inputs/outputs. So we can use this to make drones, flying vehicles, etc.
- It's eventually possible to replace the green essence crystals for plant growth with permanent installations using an alloy of gold, silver, essence-activated calcium ('true electrum') further activated with green essence.
- If we need weapons to defend ourselves versus the locals, we can use runes to make exploding drones, kinetic railgun like weapons, etc that can all be controlled by our AI-desert. So this is solved.
- If we need products to trade with neighbors, we have all of this tech and we can keep the true power source secret (the aetheric wind rune) and just sell 'batteries' in the form of condensed aether crystals.

What if we want to actually find and solve the underlying issue? Penrose would take a bunch of temperature measurements and triangulate the epicenter, correcting for altitude and weather (thanks desert-AI!). Once in the neighborhood, its time to build an 'aetheric double-polarizer'. This is basically two panes of polarized glass with a particular color of aether crystal in between. Different colors visualize different things. In this case, Indigo (dimensional effects) might return a reading, or it might actually take a UV crystal which in the aligned-polarized configuration specifically detects 'dimensional warping' and in the cross-polarized configuration detects 'portals from platonic reality to normal reality'. So that plus excavator robots means we eventually find the portal.

How to close it? Well, it turned out that an alloy (amalgam?) of manganese and mercury, when aetherically activated and powered, creates a really frightening material which becomes colder the more energy is deposited into it. The specific mechanism of action is that its basically creates microscopic portals to a voidspace within the area that only allow energy to pass, and which grow bigger the more energy passes through them. So basically you could make a Stargate style iris out of this stuff and build it around the portal, using the portal itself to power the thing which dissipates it in a feedback loop. Depending on the GM, this might eventually extinguish the Plane of Fire which some might argue would be bad. But probably not soon!

Alternately, the non-Ice-9 solution would just be to mess with the portal. Several of the metals interact with this kind of thing. Osmium+Gold can be used to form spatial portals in the right configuration (on its own Osmium 'deforms the fabric of spacetime to make things heavier', but you can basically make a wormhole with this used correctly), so basically trying to create a portal on top of the planar portal might disrupt it or 'do something to it'. Aetherically charged silver (or better yet, platinum) can be used to create a kind of ward against magical things so you might be able to contain the portal that way.

Alternately alternately, hey this thing is cool, lets just build a research lab around it.

In contrast, what Penrose would have done in the 'the model ship burned down scenario' would have been much simpler:

Since I have not been separated from my resources, I have a time machine. Go back and move the ship before the lightning strike. Done.

So a lot of variance there...

And multiple steps in somewhat random order? And (important for if the dice get added back in) flow charts of steps and contingency plans?

I think practically speaking there wasn't that much of 'bushy tree' type plans just because of the amount of text it would entail. Where there were contingencies, I felt like it was either 'here is the one important branch' or 'here are a bunch of parallel things that aren't interdependent on each-other and I only need one to work'. You would see more bushy trees (or at least the spine of a bushy tree?) in actual play I guess where people might make it two or three steps down a given plan before the entire thing collapses and they have to go back to scratch. But even then I'm not sure the meta consideration of 'its boring when stuff stalls out' would really allow too much of that to manifest even in real play...

Telok

2023-05-15, 02:55 PM

Thanks everyone who participated for playing!...

... Certain systems seem very fundamentally tied to randomness (Paranoia gear loadouts), to the extent that the dice decide 'whether its even going to be possible for the character to succeed' in the sense of determining what tools the character has to work with, not just 'does the character succeed?'...

...I didn't expect people to go as far as to rewrite the scenarios to fit them into even things like the setting associated with given systems, but that happened.

Hey, it was fun!

Paranoia especially has a thing where the whole game conceit is that you're playing a regular person (plus lol-random mutation & secret society indoctrination) in an impossible situation and are set up to fail by everyone. Played straight without humor it's depressing (it's a valid optional play style but you need some optional rules toggled to specific things in order to make it work). But these scenarios are aimed at generally highly capable special flower characters. So any Paranoia character basically can't effectively interact with them unless they're given special permission.

But the Paranoia system explicitly says at the meta/GMing level to give exactly that. As GM you're supposed to give them R&D toys that'll let them do the mission, if it's natively impossible for the character. Granted, the R&D gear is also supposed to be glitchy, undocumented, hazardous to the user's health, and fail-dangerous (opposite of fail-safe). Really I should have been giving Paranoid Bob R&D gear tailored to maximun mayhem and comedy for each mission, but I only really did so for the last. R&D gear in Paranoia isn't supposed to be fully random (about half is a good rando level), but lovingly hand crafted for each mission to make the players want and need to use it despite knowing that there's some inescapable and darkly humorous tragic flaw that will come out at the funniest/worst possible moment.

It isn't a "neutral arbiter GM" game. You're actually intended to be working against the players, not in the bad "******* tween on a power trip" way, but trying to engineer reasonable situations where characters turn on each other or take desperate risky measures. The trick is that you're trying to spread it fairly across the table and do it in such a way that it's funny so everyone can have a laugh. And that meta level, the give and take of perversity points, using ooc knowledge without getting caught out, the focus on "funny>winning", is integral to the game in a mechanical/rules way that it isn't in other games.

Which was also sort of the reason for the rewriting scenarios to fit. The Paranoia system is part of the setting and vice versa. That's why the "copy of Paranoia Bob in D&D-land" thing is an auto-fail. Once PB is out of the setting the character basically becomes mostly non-functional for it. PB is an ordinary (ok, except for the mutation) person with attributes that just don't work outside that dedicated integrated system & setting.

Sort of like why I wouldn't use Amber Diceless for this. That game isn't about these sorts of set ups so they're all trivially solved in that system just by walking around. By definition any scenario happens somewhere in a Shadow and a character just walks to an adjacent spot where everything is exactly the same except for one little detail, which can be literally anything the character wants. And the only opposition is another Amberite character. That first one with the lich? One of an infinite number of Shadows. Character walks out of the room and back in. Now it's real that the lich's magic is fatally flawed and all fails so there's no problem. Or that the lich is a pacifist and didn't set a bomb, or the attack simply never happened. Any of an infinite set of possibilities in an infinite variety of Shadows. And that's just the first basic character ability in the game.

So Dungeons the Dragoning? D&D junk fits fine (hey lets go wight-pocalypse Krynn for fun and farm tarrasques as torpedo warheads) but the entire setting is operating at a higher power/optimization level than most of the given scenes. Traveller & Paranoia? Many of the given scenes don't even compute or function without translation, they're garbage in = garbage out without rewriting.

Bonus:
Diplomat Bob(s) compare notes and try to take the machine with them. Combining and alternate realities is useless to them.
Gun Whore Bob(s) party party party! If the machine isn't blown up by stray machine gun fire during the party they try to take it home for a trace back to the bugger who engineered all this so they can introduce them to a proctological power fist health exam.
Travelling Bob(s) does some quick note comparing, spends most of the time analyzing the machine, combines, goes back to whichever reality they ended up richest in.
Paranoid Bobs mostly just swear a lot. Do you know how much paperwork and form filling this is going to cause? And it's not like the Computer is going to increase our food or housing allowance just because some idiot at the cloning tanks screwed up and decanted all PB's clones at once. This happened to Paranoid Sam last year-cycle and PS is still sleeping three to a bunk even after turning in half their selves for treason.

NichG

2023-05-15, 03:55 PM

Hey, it was fun!

Paranoia especially has a thing where the whole game conceit is that you're playing a regular person (plus lol-random mutation & secret society indoctrination) in an impossible situation and are set up to fail by everyone. Played straight without humor it's depressing (it's a valid optional play style but you need some optional rules toggled to specific things in order to make it work). But these scenarios are aimed at generally highly capable special flower characters. So any Paranoia character basically can't effectively interact with them unless they're given special permission.

But the Paranoia system explicitly says at the meta/GMing level to give exactly that. As GM you're supposed to give them R&D toys that'll let them do the mission, if it's natively impossible for the character. Granted, the R&D gear is also supposed to be glitchy, undocumented, hazardous to the user's health, and fail-dangerous (opposite of fail-safe). Really I should have been giving Paranoid Bob R&D gear tailored to maximun mayhem and comedy for each mission, but I only really did so for the last. R&D gear in Paranoia isn't supposed to be fully random (about half is a good rando level), but lovingly hand crafted for each mission to make the players want and need to use it despite knowing that there's some inescapable and darkly humorous tragic flaw that will come out at the funniest/worst possible moment.

It isn't a "neutral arbiter GM" game. You're actually intended to be working against the players, not in the bad "******* tween on a power trip" way, but trying to engineer reasonable situations where characters turn on each other or take desperate risky measures. The trick is that you're trying to spread it fairly across the table and do it in such a way that it's funny so everyone can have a laugh. And that meta level, the give and take of perversity points, using ooc knowledge without getting caught out, the focus on "funny>winning", is integral to the game in a mechanical/rules way that it isn't in other games.

Which was also sort of the reason for the rewriting scenarios to fit. The Paranoia system is part of the setting and vice versa. That's why the "copy of Paranoia Bob in D&D-land" thing is an auto-fail. Once PB is out of the setting the character basically becomes mostly non-functional for it. PB is an ordinary (ok, except for the mutation) person with attributes that just don't work outside that dedicated integrated system & setting.

Sort of like why I wouldn't use Amber Diceless for this. That game isn't about these sorts of set ups so they're all trivially solved in that system just by walking around. By definition any scenario happens somewhere in a Shadow and a character just walks to an adjacent spot where everything is exactly the same except for one little detail, which can be literally anything the character wants. And the only opposition is another Amberite character. That first one with the lich? One of an infinite number of Shadows. Character walks out of the room and back in. Now it's real that the lich's magic is fatally flawed and all fails so there's no problem. Or that the lich is a pacifist and didn't set a bomb, or the attack simply never happened. Any of an infinite set of possibilities in an infinite variety of Shadows. And that's just the first basic character ability in the game.

So Dungeons the Dragoning? D&D junk fits fine (hey lets go wight-pocalypse Krynn for fun and farm tarrasques as torpedo warheads) but the entire setting is operating at a higher power/optimization level than most of the given scenes. Traveller & Paranoia? Many of the given scenes don't even compute or function without translation, they're garbage in = garbage out without rewriting.

It would have been really interesting if someone had played a 'no character sheet self-insert' for these scenarios. At least as far as getting at 'those things you can do by virtue of being a person in that world' rather than things you can do because you have a system helping you do them. I don't think it would have been easy in any of those cases, but I kind of feel like - at least as far as fiction goes - I could imagine a piece of fiction in which a 'powerless' character does actually manage to resolve all of those situations through lateral thinking of various forms. Which may in many cases be something like 'I go find someone to help me who does have setting-relevant powers' for example.

Like for the model ship scenario, "Hey are there wizards? Is that a thing? Can we just pay someone to teleport the nobles to where the real ship is and show them directly?" or "Could we just decorate our barge and make it look like some kind of special vessel? Papier mache or painted cloth or something? Put on a performance and make it about the performance rather than the actual ship?"

Jakinbandw

2023-05-15, 06:37 PM

Scenario 6: Timeless City

Once every thousand years, a temporal distortion opens up to a lost city existing within an Interval of Time that was cleaved from the timeline in a battle long ago. The city has a number of powerful magical items, artifacts, hidden and lost lore, and other things of comparable import. Every time the distortion opens up, the city is reset to its state at the beginning of the Interval, meaning that these valuable things can be harvested.

The distortion remains open for 24 hours.

The only problem is, time doesn’t come to pass within the distorted Interval. Any character entering the interval carries about 30 seconds worth of time with them, after which all mechanics that operate via the next moment coming to pass – getting actions when another round begins, restoring resources, etc – simply don’t happen for the character. For every pound of material carried that is denser than the character’s own body, the character gains an extra second of carried time. Things summoned by the character or effects created by the character and sent outwards take from the character’s pool of remaining time in order to do their thing.

The city is filled with individuals repeating the same day in which the city was removed from time, over and over . Even though external time does not pass, these individuals follow their predetermined paths unless interfered with. Someone from outside touching them will split their reserved time with them 50/50, allowing novel interactions. Bringing someone from the city through the exit portal is a thing that can be done, at which point they will gain full autonomy and indefinite time.

There is somewhat valuable stuff even within a few hundred feet of the portal. Though, move fast, because lots of others will be trying to loot these areas the moment the portal opens. If this is your main focus, focus on how you’ll be faster than your competitors or prevent your competitors who are largely Equal combat encounters but number in the hundreds from beating you to the loot.

If you want to go for the big score though, supposedly somewhere within the 3 mile radius city is a hidden vault of the time magic artifacts that were used to fight in this battle and to preserve the city even when its past was erased from existence.

As far as the ‘keeping your time going’ aspects of this scenario, things that interact with time could absolutely interact with that effect, and I leave it up to the individual poster to rule on how they think it should work.

The vault itself is hidden in the cellar of a particular tavern (you would have to have a way to find this...). Its protections are first and foremost that the contents are in an extradimensional space which only connects to the cellar of the tavern when three objects are bought together to form the hoop that acts as the gateway. These objects have a Magic Aura on them to make them appear mundane. Within the gateway, the character will be immediately faced with a time magic protection in the form of a manufactured predestination paradox showing them leaving the vault without the artifacts on their person. That paradox must be either thwarted, tricked, or just ignored – I leave it up to the individual system as to whether that would have a consequence and whether that consequence would be worth just taking as ‘damage’. Beyond the predestination paradox there is a golem (counts as a Stronger encounter if combat is used, though by default the golem has no time and will just remain stationary guarding the loot) that has the artifacts integrated into its body, and a repeating Disjunction trap set to attempt to nuke the artifacts if the body chamber containing them is forced open. The golem’s instructions are to provide the artifacts to anyone showing an insignia of military office of the city at the level of Captain or higher.

That insignia could be found elsewhere in the city, specifically on ten or so military personnel fighting the city’s last battle. Each such character should be considered Equal if combat is utilized, but of course if they aren’t given time then they’ll just do predetermined paths and won’t actually fight. Only 2 of the ten people know about the vault though – the General of the city’s forces, and one of the captains that works with the mage battalion.

At around the 23 hour mark of the scenario, the General (assuming he hasn’t been deflected from this course) will enter the vault to use the artifacts to defend against the oncoming attack responsible for the city’s current state. Therefore following the General and sneaking in behind him would be a valid way to locate and bypass various protections of the vault. Note that the General does not disarm the predestination paradox – indeed, the point of it is to force the artifacts to be used in place, and not removed even by the command staff.

Going with my character Susland here.

So to begin with, the money isn't really the goal, it's saving all the people within the town. This starts out easy enough (Ropes are cool!) But then it starts to get a bit tricky. Susland can call on the Astral element, which once it paints a surface, creates a portal to the nearest other surface within range that also has astral element on it. These portals last only 5 minutes, but that's longer than we have. Susland can throw the astral magic up to 150' away, and the astral magic he can summon can link up to those within 50'. This probably makes it easy enough to clear the entrance without having to step inside for more than an instant or two. Basically, put a splash of astral at the entrance, then drop some under a person walking so they fall through, and right out the entrance.

So with those people saved, they can be questioned. Hopefully they will be able to at least give information on what was going on.

Next, I feel might be a stretch, but the Harmony element allows for multiple objects hit by a single splash to all act as if they were the same object while the element remains. At Susland's level he can cover objects that are up to 30' apart with a single splash. Normally the element fades after 5 minutes, but if Susland burns effort when he summons the element he can make it a permanent enchantment.

By linking items already linked together, over the course of many days, Susland can build a long pole with a hook at the end that he can use to pull people out with. Permanent Force enchantments on parts of the Harmony artifact will provide lifting force to keep it from being too heavy to lift, though it will still be unwieldy. Depending on the dimensions of the city, different variations can be created to allow things like reaching around corners, and over buildings.

So from here, I'm doing some guesswork. Once all the people that can be saved with the previous methods have been exhausted, Susland would need to look for alternate options. He could call on his pact with his god to learn about the nearest artifact that would let him survive inside the time bubble, and although grumpy, she would point him towards the Captain.

So from here, it becomes an interesting test. He could throw up walls of Aegis magic, and with clever placement of astral magic and aegis walls he could slowly build a passage through the city, each time returning to the entrance. Since he has a storage ring allowing him to carry 15 additional pounds, and uses heavy armor, I'll figure he has about a minute of time max. I think that he could manage to create a set of portals from one side of town to the other without running out of time (assuming he keeps returning to the entrance). In this case, the status field is working in his favor, as the astral magic can only last either 5 minutes, or until the town resets. Since it gets frozen in time however, it will stay until the end of the day when the city resets.

So Susland should manage to reach the captain, and pull him out of the frozen city. He'll talk with the captain, convince him to help, then go and examine the artifacts. The captain has to activate them on time as per normal to keep the city looping, but hopefully Susland's wisdom will be high enough that he can figure out a better solution to running out of time than sprinting through portals across the city.

Based on what has been said, I feel that the fact that the Time Element in it's simple form slows down the local time for an object is a perfect match for what is going on inside the city, too much time magic causing issues with those from the outside suffering simple exposure. If this is the case, then the Light Element protects objects from the outside environment, and specifically from time preserving whatever is coated. On the other hand, the dark element dispels the simple effects of all elements that it interacts with. Since the city is both being preserved, and is suffused with time magic, then coating oneself in the dark element should be enough to buy more time within the affected area.

Mixing it with a proper dispel check now that they know how the enchantment is accomplish, should be able to disrupt the effect locally, allowing Susland to freely move through the city rescuing everyone, until the Captain is the last one left, and he brings the captain and the artifacts out, shutting down the effect forever.

Satinavian

2023-05-16, 03:45 AM

It would have been really interesting if someone had played a 'no character sheet self-insert' for these scenarios. At least as far as getting at 'those things you can do by virtue of being a person in that world' rather than things you can do because you have a system helping you do them.I am not sure why someone with the powers of a random bystander should be able to solve problems all the other random bystanders can't. That is way too close to "only PCs get to be smart, NPCs are all stupid" for my comfort.

Furthermore, i don't count "ask someone else to do it" as solving the problem unless you actively use a power that is making that other person help you.

And the biggest problem is that to use the powers of "a person in that world", there is just not enough background knowledge of the world. Unless a system gives a PC explicit worldbuilding powers, they can only use what has explicitly established or can be extrapolated. Which is not much for those scenarios.

I have now read most of the solutions and it has been interesting. However i am skeptical about how a lot of those characters and their abilities fit the requirement of being roughly of a powerlevel of a lv.9 D&D character.

NichG

2023-05-16, 08:29 AM

I am not sure why someone with the powers of a random bystander should be able to solve problems all the other random bystanders can't. That is way too close to "only PCs get to be smart, NPCs are all stupid" for my comfort.

In real life, I can solve problems you can't and you can solve problems I can't. Furthermore, there are problems I have that you could solve but won't, because they're my problems and not yours.

Everyone IRL only has the 'powers of a random bystander', and yet people run businesses and countries, invent new technologies, explore new lands, etc. Just because 'some random person can be the monarch of a country' doesn't make it an uninteresting question to ask 'what would I do if by dint of happenstance, I was appointed as a monarch?'. Or just because some random person could be a police investigator solving a murder successfully doesn't mean it would be uninteresting to say 'what if that murder were my job to solve?'

It only implies NPC idiocy when it's some apocalyptic thing that should be everyone's priority to deal above and beyond other considerations, even things like the structure of authority in their society as far as who has command in solving it. Which is only really the case in the first scenario and maybe the fourth (but only once you figure out it's escalating)

Furthermore, i don't count "ask someone else to do it" as solving the problem unless you actively use a power that is making that other person help you.

To me that reads as a blind spot because of metagame conventions and norms surrounding TTRPG culture. It absolutely is a solution, but people don't feel like it is one, so they pass over it. That's precisely why I think it would have been interesting to see it as a baseline, because I suspect there would have been cases where characters in some systems 'could not succeed' using their mechanics, where a real person in that situation with no powers or character sheet could succeed.

And if it's a system that creates that outcome rather than the aesthetic of the player, that's definitely an aspect by which one could compare that system to others. Also subtly distinct, systems that encourage the aesthetic of 'use your character sheet to solve ' vs 'use your choices to solve'.

Quertus

2023-05-16, 09:31 AM

I am not sure why someone with the powers of a random bystander should be able to solve problems all the other random bystanders can't. That is way too close to "only PCs get to be smart, NPCs are all stupid" for my comfort.

Furthermore, i don't count "ask someone else to do it" as solving the problem unless you actively use a power that is making that other person help you.

And the biggest problem is that to use the powers of "a person in that world", there is just not enough background knowledge of the world. Unless a system gives a PC explicit worldbuilding powers, they can only use what has explicitly established or can be extrapolated. Which is not much for those scenarios.

I think you’ve chosen the wrong dichotomy - I think it’s not about smarts vs stupid, but knowledgeable vs ignorant; ie, “what can I, with my knowledge of modern processes / goods / physics / etc accomplish that ancient societies wouldn’t think to do?”.

Granted, this involves the Dead Art of Roleplaying, of understanding that different characters have different knowledge and perspective. And it also relies on understanding prerequisites and (side) effects of such things that render it prohibitively… too… something… for me to attempt.

EDIT: or ninjas could say that this sloth was barking up the wrong tree. Guess I interrupted that comment the wrong way.

I have now read most of the solutions and it has been interesting. However i am skeptical about how a lot of those characters and their abilities fit the requirement of being roughly of a powerlevel of a lv.9 D&D character.

I guess that depends on your optimization level. :smallbiggrin:

More seriously, most of my PCs in this challenge would fail in combat compared to even a 5th level D&D character, being statistically just “some guy/girl”, or even “a kid”.

Probably my strongest entry was Cutter Fyord, from Paradox 2e. Thing is, aside from the aesthetic of the bouncy balls, Cutter never touched his character sheet. Put another way, he only did what literally anyone could do in that system. You could make your character “a small child” (or, even better, “a small child with the Stunted Magic trait, but trained by Cutter”), and pull off everything Cutter did (give or take it being reasonable to do so in character; ie, you could mechanically pull off everything Cutter did short of having unlimited bouncy balls). Without leaning on the rules of Paradox 2e, Cutter would probably be able to keep up in a 5th or 6th level D&D party in a normal adventure. Maybe. If the party optimization level matched “naked Warlock with random powers and no eldritch blast“. EDIT: upon reflection, Cutter could probably pull off an EB equivalent, it just wouldn’t be reliable.

Because of this:

I'm not interested so much in 'how powerful' as much as 'what is the feel of resolving these situations in different systems?'.

I was focused more on the comments of how wide the characters were, tuning power as a secondary consideration.

But, yeah, most of my characters intentionally had more out of combat width than your standard 9th level D&D character, to optimize the odds that I’d be able to provide the answer to the question of, “what does a solution look like in this system?”.

Telok

2023-05-16, 11:40 AM

But, yeah, most of my characters intentionally had more out of combat width than your standard 9th level D&D character, to optimize the odds that I’d be able to provide the answer to the question of, “what does a solution look like in this system?”.

I think that's because D&D these days is mostly a combat game where, if you don't have significant combat capability then your characters die a lot. It also depends on the game in question. The "9th level D&D" is the half way point in D&D's zero-to-hero character building arc, but it's a massively different arc between different classes & editions as well as between played & purpose built.

Back in AD&D I ended up with a 5th level fighter who had lots of "soft power" simply through engaging with the local nobility and being polite & well dressed. These days the character would be mechanically unoptimized and considered weak, especially outside that home province. Even if I just built a "better" higher level AD&D fighter by picking gear & stats the system (before name level) doesn't mechanically five them much beyond hitting stuff (no real change through to 5e). In these scenarios the difference between those weak and built AD&D would boil down to it being in/near the home province of one or if we'd picked a magic item for the other.

But outside D&Ds the concept of "9th level" is really iffy. For my characters I picked about half way between starting value and a nominal "end of the full campaign scope" value. That's why, for example, Paraniod Bob was down 3 out of 6 clones. But lots of games, by not doing D&D levels, have a lot more variability in advancenent. You see some in DtD40k7e with Diplo Bob having combat ability like an average nameless soldier and never advanced that, but took lots of assorted skills & ability improvements. Or GWB who just took the same xp total and dumped it all into getting maximum level & conjuration magic (with a side of "fights really well" from the class requirements). Then Paranoid & Travelling Bobs come from systems that don't really do "character advancement" as D&D conceives of it, outside of gear that comes & goes the character doesn't ever change much.

Then take a system like Champions. Supers game, 350pt starter hero is normal, but there's no functional upper limit. What's "9th level" there? And you sure aren't on any "zero to hero" because you're starting at super. Heck, it's a game in which you can build a flippin unicorn murder-hobo or Tony Stark (any version & who's actually easier to fit in the starting character budget) and has literal stop signs* on some of the abilities that tell you to get GM buy-in. But without a level cap or end game the idea of "middle of character arc" is meaningless.

* Yes really. Little octogons with 'STOP' on them as big, and right next to, the power name. But if you avoid those and use the official book of pre-built powers, then you can put out a good starter character in 15 minutes.

Satinavian

2023-05-16, 12:12 PM

In real life, I can solve problems you can't and you can solve problems I can't. Furthermore, there are problems I have that you could solve but won't, because they're my problems and not yours.

Everyone IRL only has the 'powers of a random bystander', and yet people run businesses and countries, invent new technologies, explore new lands, etc. Just because 'some random person can be the monarch of a country' doesn't make it an uninteresting question to ask 'what would I do if by dint of happenstance, I was appointed as a monarch?'. Or just because some random person could be a police investigator solving a murder successfully doesn't mean it would be uninteresting to say 'what if that murder were my job to solve?'

It only implies NPC idiocy when it's some apocalyptic thing that should be everyone's priority to deal above and beyond other considerations, even things like the structure of authority in their society as far as who has command in solving it. Which is only really the case in the first scenario and maybe the fourth (but only once you figure out it's escalating)
Yes, but structures of authority, titles, wealth, connections, special knowledge etc are powerful things that many systems put a price tag on. If none of those powers are on your character sheet, you don't have them.

To me that reads as a blind spot because of metagame conventions and norms surrounding TTRPG culture. It absolutely is a solution, but people don't feel like it is one, so they pass over it.I disagree. It is a solution. And imho "asking for help" happens quite a lot at tables. But it doesn't really count as the character solving the problem, someone else does it instead. So it is not really valid for this challenge.
It gets different when the "asking for help" involves throwing the characters money around or invoking the characters authority, using their connections or their incredible social skills. That is arguable part of the characters power. And several of the entries do exactly that.

That's precisely why I think it would have been interesting to see it as a baseline, because I suspect there would have been cases where characters in some systems 'could not succeed' using their mechanics, where a real person in that situation with no powers or character sheet could succeed.Why would a "real" person be more successful ? What exactly gives a real person a mechanical secure 75%+ chance that asking for help works and is not regarded as automatic failure ? Social powers are powers as well.

NichG

2023-05-16, 12:36 PM

Yes, but structures of authority, titles, wealth, connections, special knowledge etc are powerful things that many systems put a price tag on. If none of those powers are on your character sheet, you don't have them.

I disagree. It is a solution. And imho "asking for help" happens quite a lot at tables. But it doesn't really count as the character solving the problem, someone else does it instead. So it is not really valid for this challenge.

Given that I set the challenge, and I've even discussed this point upthread somewhere already, I will explicitly say: "Yes, doing this would be valid for this challenge". For this challenge it is completely okay - desirable even - to play 'the character' as in that particular person/agent in the world, rather than playing ''the character sheet' as in the list of mechanical abilities granted to you by the system.

If you want to restrict yourself to playing the character sheet out of interest, aesthetics, or because you think it will show you something more clearly about a given system, you're free to do that. But please don't insist that others who might choose differently are doing it wrong.

One of the few explicit 'GM ruling' interventions I'm willing to make on this thread: No, they would not in fact be doing it wrong.

It gets different when the "asking for help" involves throwing the characters money around or invoking the characters authority, using their connections or their incredible social skills. That is arguable part of the characters power. And several of the entries do exactly that.
Why would a "real" person be more successful ? What exactly gives a real person a mechanical secure 75%+ chance that asking for help works and is not regarded as automatic failure ? Social powers are powers as well.

Real people don't 'roll for results' at the level of things like social interactions. People take actions, say specific things, etc, and the consequences of those things are the consequences that follow. If I go to hire a contractor to replace the roof on my house then either that contractor has room in their schedule and I have the money to pay them, or not. There's incomplete information in that I don't know that contractor's schedule before asking, but there isn't inherent randomness to that and certainly nothing like 'if I happen to use slightly nicer words, then suddenly the contractor has room in their schedule to fit me' that I'd be relying on in 90% of such cases.

Rolling for outcomes is an abstraction introduced in order to handle the fact that in TTRPGs you don't - and can't - resolve stuff down to e.g. the quantum scale of physics where actual randomness starts to occur; nor can you hold on to every little detail about the state of the world. Similarly real people don't have a character sheet with powers that they need to spend CP/XP/whatever on. If the scenario is 'you're a baron' then you're a baron. Rolling for outcomes, having to pay a resource to justify being able to do a thing (or having only things you pay for be meaningful things you can do) are TTRPG conventions and that's why I would still maintain that this is - and on this thread has been - a significant blind spot for people who are too deep into those conventions.

If the system you chose to use for this thread was 'I'm just going to play myself', then you have no rolls, no character sheet, no failure rates, no need to justify things like 'actually being the baron that the scenario appointed you as being' - and that is completely allowed!

Jakinbandw

2023-05-16, 12:46 PM

Given that I set the challenge, and I've even discussed this point upthread somewhere already, I will explicitly say: "Yes, doing this would be valid for this challenge". For this challenge it is completely okay - desirable even - to play 'the character' as in that particular person/agent in the world, rather than playing ''the character sheet' as in the list of mechanical abilities granted to you by the system.

If you want to restrict yourself to playing the character sheet out of interest, aesthetics, or because you think it will show you something more clearly about a given system, you're free to do that. But please don't insist that others who might choose differently are doing it wrong.

One of the few explicit 'GM ruling' interventions I'm willing to make on this thread: No, they would not in fact be doing it wrong.

Interesting, as this opens up many more options. In this case, I believe for the time city, and many others, I could probably track down the correct allies and ask for their help. Getting a Time sorcerer on board would make the whole situation much easier, even if they are only level 0 or 1.

Satinavian

2023-05-16, 12:49 PM

If the system you chose to use for this thread was 'I'm just going to play myself', then you have no rolls, no character sheet, no failure rates, no need to justify things like 'actually being the baron that the scenario appointed you as being' - and that is completely allowed!I get that.

What i don't get is why you assume that this lack of rules would mean that the character would be expected to be more successful when attempting the same thing than a character who has sheets and stats.
Rolling being an abstraction means it should result on average to the same thing but being less granular. And in most games PCs are supposed to be far more powerful than regular humans and thus than self inserts. So shouldn't even without a character sheet, the self-inserts fail more than a typical PC ?

animorte

2023-05-16, 12:56 PM

I disagree. It is a solution. And imho "asking for help" happens quite a lot at tables. But it doesn't really count as the character solving the problem, someone else does it instead. So it is not really valid for this challenge.
In the beginning, I got the impression that the challenge was about how whatever character in your system(s) of choice would find a solution. What does the system allow? If the system itself provides you with guidance and mechanics on how to employ assistance, that's worth taking into consideration, at least for the purposes of this challenge. If it doesn't, that's also worth mentioning.

Satinavian

2023-05-16, 01:10 PM

NichG

2023-05-16, 01:30 PM

I get that.

What i don't get is why you assume that this lack of rules would mean that the character would be expected to be more successful when attempting the same thing than a character who has sheets and stats.
Rolling being an abstraction means it should result on average to the same thing but being less granular. And in most games PCs are supposed to be far more powerful than regular humans and thus than self inserts. So shouldn't even without a character sheet, the self-inserts fail more than a typical PC ?

I wouldn't expect that by default in all systems, characters would be more successful this way. But I do think there would be particular system/scenario combos in which this would end up happening, and because of the reasons you state, we would likely find those cases to be surprising - e.g. from the point of view of experiment design, this would be a highly informative experiment to do.

For example, when Quertus noted that the 75% success threshold would be extremely hard to achieve for almost any action in some of the systems they presented, that kind of flagged to me 'this is probably a system with this property, since in real life we can on a daily basis accomplish quite a lot without having even a 5% chance of things going unexpectedly wrong or failing to succeed in an atomic action we initiate'. So even if it didn't come up, Call of Cthulhu is likely to run afoul of this, as is the Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG (both which use percentile dice versus things which for basic characters can be well below 50% success rates even for day to day skills). Any system with DCs or particular ways of deciding when to roll could potentially have this issue for things if the DCs are set under particularly narrow assumptions which don't hold up once you start doing unexpected things or facing unexpected problems.

Other cases where this might happen would be systems which have a conceit that 'nothing happens without a roll' or 'nothing happens without a move' e.g. where the dramatic beats in a scenario are tied to (or even locked to) rolls or moves to potentially render characters less competent than a powerless SI on diverse scenarios (but likely hypercompetent within specific kinds of things germane to the system). So I'd be curious how things like Powered by the Apocalypse games, FATE, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc hash out against this baseline.

The thing to do would be to run an SI through each of these scenarios, and then scan all of the responses for which characters from systems failed scenarios where the SI did better. Then ask, in those cases, why? Was it characterization? Was it a difference between the players (aesthetically, approach, creativity in the moment, etc)? Or was it actually because of the system?

Also even outside of system design, I think its not a bad exercise to do for developing lateral thinking and avoiding treating one's engagement with fictional worlds as having to go through specific 'buttons'.

Telok

2023-05-16, 10:44 PM

Hey NichG, if you want I can throw out some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing.

Edit: oh, and CoC runs on the usual not rolling or easy rolls with free retries for daily/trivial stuff. Easy being anything from +50% to double your score to both. The whole thing where you have swimming at 20% doesn't mean people drown 80% of the time the water gets chest high. It's the usual 'swim a river without complications while mi-go chase you with spay/neuter ray guns' stuff that you have 20% on.

NichG

2023-05-16, 10:46 PM

Hey NichG, if you want I can throw out some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing.

Sure, lets try it!

Quertus

2023-05-17, 09:53 AM

Honestly, pretty much everything a sheetless self-insert could even attempt to do would have to be resolved via the self-gming.

Which means the success of such a character would be completely dependend on how permissive the GM is.

This is actually the biggest thing I've been wanting and forgetting to talk about. Well, OK, it's tied with thanking everyone for all the enjoyment I've gotten reading people's answers, and how, given my love of "the floor is lava",

From now on, the Sharp Blade will be playing "the sky is water"

"the sky is water" is something I need to add in to something somewhere. :smallbiggrin:

But the thing I keep forgetting to say is, I very much played my characters knowing that I was GM, knowing just how permissive of a GM I am in most respects (despite my reputation with Wish), and knowing what areas I might... hmmm...respond poorly to, or even cause the character problems for attempting (if one insults nobility, one can expect consequences down the road, or if one builds a reputation for unusual powers, one can expect some reaction, for example).

Knowing that I could fly through a lot of gameplay at a high level, knowing that the GM would generally, as NichG put it, base the success of hiring the contractor on their availability (and things like the aforementioned "effects of insulting the nobles") rather than a Charisma check, really made a lot of the sections fly by for a lot of the characters.

At the same time, knowing that the GM would make the skill / cost / honestly of the contractor vary, and that finding / choosing the right contractor wouldn't just be a given, also affected my gameplay, as part of the Knowledge:GM based "promises of the world". Further, most of my characters would avoid known pitfalls (like insulting the nobility) with an "I don't want to have to deal with that" attitude, to the point of avoiding situations where such could occur unless absolutely necessary, even when as GM I knew there wasn't so high a threat (ie, for "insulting nobles", I as GM knew that there weren't any nobles actively seeking to take offense from the PCs).

Having a different GM could definitely have produced different results. For example, a GM who throws monsters at the PCs if they plan too long, or who requires the PCs to use OOC information to solve quests, or who always has active opponents who learn from the PCs actions even if there's no way for them to do so, or who determines contractor availability with a Charisma check? Any of these would greatly impact gameplay. And if I had to go in not knowing who the GM would be, and write up a flowchart of the character's actions to be run through by a random GM, I'm not sure I could complete even 1 such set of actions per challenge per week.

And there's another related (even if it is perhaps an inverse relationship) thing I noticed. I tend to start my characters with a certain level of... naivete. Despite in the 1st challenge knowing that of course anyone with any clue would build their contingency plans with Hard Mode's "if you don't hear from me" clause at a minimum (and my experienced characters doing much more), my characters went in not expecting that.

Running back through my memories, I'd have to say that, the way I run my characters, their level of Planning, Preparedness, and Paranoia is... complex. Under a few rare GMs for whom I have adequate Knowledge:GM and found their approach reasonable, I might create a character who starts with a high PPP rating that isn't meant to be played for laughs (the telepathic vampire is one such example of a competent paranoid; there are at most 2 or 3 other characters I've made who started as such); most everyone else starts at what I consider more or less 0. Then, as the character gains experience, their PPP cap increases, and their PPP rating usually increases with the cap ("right, so now we know we need to fill out the forms in triplicate, and have them notarized by..."). Only "usually" because particularly unwise characters might not take the lessons they've learned to heart.

When they find themselves in a new situation, their current PPP rating might fluctuate. Their cap may raise slightly from the situation, and their rating might rise to match the unfamiliarity. Or, if everyone in the world thinks differently (as you get from a different GM running all the NPCs), some of their usual PPP might not apply to the new global thought patterns, and their PPP rating might actually be reduced (at least until they get to know the new world).

Not that I've put conscious thought into it before, but that seems to describe my experiences better than most RPG rules sets simulate their reality.

That said, I'm not sure if any of this is particularly actionable information, but those are my thoughts wrt how much the GM matters to these challenges.

But outside D&Ds the concept of "9th level" is really iffy. For my characters I picked about half way between starting value and a nominal "end of the full campaign scope" value.

... Yeah, I spaced out, and forgot to mention that detail: I considered trying to build all the PCs as "X sessions in". The problem with that was, "9th level" means something very different in 2e (and earlier) than in 3e (and later?) in terms of play time. So the M&M characters were actually starting characters (or, well, they would have been, but, per the thread rules, they had "half a level worth of XP to spend"); the rest were generally much less experienced than 2e Arma.

So if I had to group them by experience... some systems are quite variable in how quickly one advances / how much "XP" one earns, but it might look like...
Noob: Alex Daeus (M&M), M&M Omnimancer
Acclimated: Shadowrun Troll, Alex Knight (WoD), Harry (WoD), Paradox Telepathic Vampire, Cutter Fyord (Paradox 2e)
Experienced: Whizzy (D&D 3e), LtC Staltek Vir (Star Trek), John Faseman (Marvel)
Veteran: Arma (D&D 2e), Mr. T (Warhammer cludge)

(The MtG deck gets a N/A rating, although they're technically by backstory a noob who just inherited their power)

I'm not sure how much would change if I advanced them all to being equally experienced, other than that the 3e character Whizzy might be throwing Epic Spells at the challenges. :smallamused:

I did expect people to write in details for e.g. NPCs or other such things that they found they needed, which tended not to happen. None of that is bad! But it does suggest that if I were to do another one of these in the future, it might be worth spilling more ink talking about the whole self-GM part of the exercise and giving examples or at least using a different metaphor than standard table-top play to explain it

Actually to that point, I'm curious what people would have done differently if from the start I had described this as a writing prompt for fiction based off of TTRPG systems, rather than as playing a character. Would that have changed how people regarded randomness and the freedom to add details missing from the scenario briefs?

To me, one of the big draws of a Module is the Shared Experience it offers.

If you comment that you just watched the Doctor Strange movie, and your friend replies, "me too!", but you come to find out one of you watched the modern MCU movie, while the other watched the 1900s cartoon, it's not going to be the same conversation as if you'd both watched the same movie.

If someone says they've seen The Tempest, and I ask if they think the spirits will let Prospero go, and they respond with "Who? What spirits?", there's that same lack of shared experience.

Which is to say, approaching these scenarios as a module, I was deincentivized from adding such additional details; or, put another way, another value of this thread is that one could mine the "request for information" comments for tips on writing modules.

However, more germane to this thread, I felt that the "common experience" part of the challenge would be more valuable to comparing how characters from different systems approached challenges. After all, if you wrote up 100 challenges, and dealt 6 of them out to each of the various characters, would it have been as informative?

(describing it more as a CYOA writing exercise maybe?)

I completely missed this part earlier. I've seen CYOA books that involved dice; some of these prompts could have been pretty cool for making such books for some of these characters IMO. :smallsmile:

NichG

2023-05-17, 10:52 AM

I completely missed this part earlier. I've seen CYOA books that involved dice; some of these prompts could have been pretty cool for making such books for some of these characters IMO. :smallsmile:

I meant more like things like Jumpchain or Celestial Forge (there are tons of these, probably more of them than there are stories that actually use them, but those are the two I've seen more than just one story based on...), which are kind of like LitRPG for fiction authors. Also things like 'quests' which are kind of forum-driven fiction with one author and the forum-goers voting on choices or actions or even setting details, often within some kind of very loose mechanical system that the forum-goers may or may not actually know the details of. These things can involve dice, but they can also be purely vote-driven or even just author chooses.

Telok

2023-05-17, 11:45 AM

things like 'quests' which are kind of forum-driven fiction with one author and the forum-goers voting on choices or actions or even setting details,....

There used to be a bunch (may still be as I haven't followed) of these on the DwarfFortress forums. Do either an adventure mode or firtress mode, write up events decently, take votes on what to do next. Voters provided general direction, DF provided the rules & randomization, op had a nice creative writing exercise.

Quertus

2023-05-17, 07:36 PM

For example, when Quertus noted that the 75% success threshold would be extremely hard to achieve for almost any action in some of the systems they presented, that kind of flagged to me 'this is probably a system with this property, since in real life we can on a daily basis accomplish quite a lot without having even a 5% chance of things going unexpectedly wrong or failing to succeed in an atomic action we initiate'. So even if it didn't come up, Call of Cthulhu is likely to run afoul of this, as is the Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG (both which use percentile dice versus things which for basic characters can be well below 50% success rates even for day to day skills). Any system with DCs or particular ways of deciding when to roll could potentially have this issue for things if the DCs are set under particularly narrow assumptions which don't hold up once you start doing unexpected things or facing unexpected problems.

Yeah, a lot of systems are really weird, and would demand some bizarre worldbuilding to match how things work. Paradox 1e was a simple percentile system, with no concept of "difficulty", so it produces aberrant results for an atomic 75% success requirement (among other oddities). CoC, (most editions of) Warhammer, and one edition of Star Trek use percentile systems, mostly in ways that don't stand up to scrutiny.

So I'd be curious how things like Powered by the Apocalypse games, FATE, Dogs in the Vineyard, etc hash out against this baseline.

I considered doing a section called "Catching up with the Jonses", where I ran through these scenarios with more characters, like a normal Paradox 2e character, a bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear, the "me" Isekai from the "sell me on the multiverse" thread, or even characters from other systems, but nothing ever jumped out and said "this is what these challenges really need". And I'm not really the one to run those systems you mentioned, I don't think.

Anyhow, if anyone wants a bonus scenario:

After everything, your six clones from each of the six scenarios are invited to a wrap-up party that lasts 3 hours, and takes place in an extradimensional ballroom with a curious device where the orchestra would normally be. It is explained that this device would allow any subsets of clones to fuse their bodies, minds, and abilities. After the end of the party, any clones/bodies left alive can be sent wherever in the multiverse of all fiction they might desire. Clones gain any bonuses for successful completion of their scenarios (or things gained in the process/lost in the process) as promised - e.g. successful clones at scenario #3 get to attend the party as ascended deities.

What happens when you meet yourselves?

For giggles, let's imagine they're all invited to one big after party (Alex Knight was never actually Isekai'd, so isn't here). Ultimately, this matters very little, as they'll mostly group up with their alternate selves, except... One of the Arma would open the party by asking if anyone else has any matters more important to discuss than the destruction of / saving of her world(s), in an attempt to hijack everyone else's expertise. Although there's some suspicion of her Daemonic appearance, she is Charismatic, and I'm not exactly running any Paladins, and most everyone has a deific version of themselves, so it's probably fine. The Cutters (who would have their balls set to ephemeral) would offer to bend time if necessary (see, they can do more than just summon stuff, they just usually don't) to make sure they can talk long enough to share ideas, and would recognize the Telepathic Vampires, and (if this party wasn't properly catered) offer to provide them appropriate refreshments.

Not that it matters. The 6 copies of Arma have more knowledge to share with one another than most anyone else can offer (the Telepathic Vampire can facilitate things, like letting them share that information instantly, or forming links to keep people in touch with one another), but everybody quickly realizes most everybody else other than Arma is out of their depth / has no relevant information or advice to offer. Ltc Staltek Vir #3 is the only possible exception, being able to integrate magic and Federation technology. While being a deity removes any concerns about the Prime Directive, it also limits their ability to assist without an invitation. Ultimately, the Armas will take what they learned from one another, get a Telepathic Vampire created trans-universe mindlink, and promise to share their results with one another as they head back to their respective worlds (give or take #3, who probably tries to send an avatar or something). At least until they understand their true nature (if the host didn't explicitly explain it, the Telepathic Vampires would figure it out when preemptively scanning minds on their homeworld, and finding that they're still there. The Telepathic Vampires would also come to realize they're just a decoy anyway, and subsequently plan to create their own decoys), at which point... the 5 non-deific copies of Arma would want to be sent to save 5 copies of their world. Unless they blew up a new world while here (dagnabbit #5!).

Meanwhile, Mr. T #3 is in a 3-way standoff with Mr. T #4 and the other 4 copies of Mr. T, as the non-ascendant copies aren't sure they want to merge with the Daemon Princes. The presence of others reduces the odds of this getting violent (although the 4 are definitely pointing plasma rifles at the 2 Daemon Princes, who are themselves eyeing one another). Assuming their host is amenable, by lottery, one of the 4 is "sacrificed" to one of the 2, and spat back out, to test whether they really want this or not. Ultimately, I think they do, as they were the same person until recently, and being 1 6-bodied Daemon Prince with a few extra memories beats being 6 individual space marines. After working to develop some form of shared consciousness (Telepathic Vampire with the assist?), they probably take the most time choosing 6 different worlds to inhabit - #3, their point of origin, and 4 completely different worlds, most likely. Say, WH40K Earth in its prime (mostly just to study (and collect?) "lost" gear/tech), the original D&D movie (to slaughter everyone, because they deserve it), the world of Wreck it Ralph (pathetic modern Earth population + unique micro-Daemons), and one detailed below?

Hopefully, someone with a clue (like their 6 familiars) get the 6 copies of Whizzy to merge together before they kill one another (or the other guests). They likely retire back to the world where they're already a god - quickly, if anyone else in the room has anything to say about it.

The 6 Cutters do not want to merge with one another, but share ideas about creating Mana Stones (and #3 shares at least a weak mana potion or 2 with each of the other copies, as I finally realized they actually would be useful for Cutter). They examine the copy-merging device to attempt to add it to the list of things they can summon / create, and are joined by John Faseman and LtC Staltek Vir in that pursuit.

The Johns have encouraged one another to learn Gate, and they're definitely geeking out about the different devices and children they've created. They all want to go back to the worlds they adventured in, as they are all Guild Masters (or, in 1 case, a Deity Count) in their respective worlds, and have responsibilities. They likely try to poach some talent from those gathered. [Senility willing, I'll edit this / add something at the bottom to say who went with them.]

LtC Staltek Vir #3 has encouraged the other 5 to come to world #3, as they can learn magic there, which would be useful to their goals. Unfortunately, getting back to their respective planets isn't a solved problem. So one of the Cutters would volunteer to... hmmm... to go with them, to provide transport, except the other Cutters don't want that. A Cutter... discussion... ensues, where they debate whether they shouldn't all stick together, and go to one of the worlds the original Cutter frequents. But at least #3 and #6 have obligations in their worlds. So they... probably (plan to) create magical tables, to let them sit down and chat with one another (and the original, and others) while being in different worlds. That settled, 1 volunteers to go with the Virs, to send them back to their respective planets (and through time, so it's like nothing happened) when they're ready.

Anyway, at a minimum, Staltek Vir automatically makes his rolls to understand the alien technology, and between the 3 engineers and the Telepathic Vampire, they promise to share the tech / their findings with others as needed.

Alex Daeus will be really torn about the concept of merging into divinity... at least until their divine self denies them the opportunity, encouraging them each to find their own way. They'll poll the other party attendees for suggestions for good worlds for ascension, and... throughout all fiction? I'm sure Playgrounders could give better suggestions that Divinations could provide than the attendees' best answers of generic D&D 2e and Paradox worlds, but I'm drawing a blank on any good ascension stories. There is, however, a D&D module or two that might help.

The M&M Omni-Wizards should be able to go world-hopping on their own, and will pull divinations to determine whether it's better to remain as individuals, or merge and self-duplicate, before considering such.

The Shadowrun Trolls remained hidden, spying on others' conversations (and occasionally bumping into one another in mid-air), until the Telepathic Vampire contacted them with the offer for others to perform divinations on their behalf as well. They end up scattered throughout the multiverse, occasionally appearing (or, well, not) in my single-author fiction, among other places.

The MtG mages will want to partner up with the M&M Omni-Wizard(s), as friendly Planeswalker = opportunity for more sources of spells. I see no reason for them not to agree to this.

Alex Knight... will mostly likely merge, and rally all his forces on world #3 before heading out into the area between worlds, an order of divine knights ready to do battle with any who would pose a multi-world threat.

And the Telepathic Vampire's decoy's clones would be nursing a grudge against the host, for costing them 2-5 lives each (one for every time they travel to another world); ultimately, other than contacting the original Telepathic Vampire about all this, I think they'd all look for somewhere nice to retire - the Count back to their domain, and the others... I've heard some stories of places with eternal night, and one with a literal ocean of blood that I think they'd love. And Cutter #6's "new" city sounds ripe with opportunities.

The deities will get together and discuss forming a religion / pantheon / whatever; perhaps even look into an empty universe in which to create their own world when they get strong enough. One of the Telepathic Vampires has themselves sent into that future. I'm sure nothing will go wrong with this grouping of characters.

All in all, I think John Faseman's recruitment efforts could nab several of the M&M Omni-Wizards (at least temporarily, and potentially with corresponding copies of the MtG Mages) / the merged Omni-Wizard (& MtG Mages) depending on what their Divinations suggest, a couple Cutters, one Telepathic Vampire, and one copy of Warhammer Mr. T. Not the worst possible results, I suppose.

Ultimately, I'm kinda sad I didn't have any of the right kind of Explorer personalities among these PCs, rife with stories of cool places to go. At best, they can (get someone to) perform Divinations to search for worlds matching specific patterns (world of weak-willed simps with unique Daemons to study -> Wreck it Ralph, for example). So the opportunity to be sent anywhere seems wasted on them. Then again, I'm not sure if even "Isekai Me" from the "sell me on the multiverse" thread would, if placed in this scenario, have had a better plan than to... be sent to a world where they can get the tech to start abducting copies of me from various worlds, to see which copies know what, and have that information shared across worlds where it's needed that aren't affected by their Enemy. I'll have to ponder whether I'm even capable of running a character who would in character actually make good fun use of this ability.

That said, if the Host literally said "wherever in the multiverse of all fiction they might desire", there'd be some definite questions for the Host about Fiction, Fact, and the nature of the universe, probably spearheaded by the newly-forged resident expert on the topic, M&M Omnimage #4.

NichG

2023-05-17, 08:04 PM

'Isekai me' given the 'anywhere in fiction' prompt would start furiously writing...

Telok

2023-05-17, 09:47 PM

Ok, I've got some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing or anyone wants to run characters through them. Choices: Easy, creepy, or silly?

NichG

2023-05-17, 11:18 PM

Ok, I've got some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing or anyone wants to run characters through them. Choices: Easy, creepy, or silly?

Start Easy, then get Silly, and mood whiplash with Creepy?

Telok

2023-05-17, 11:58 PM

Start Easy, then get Silly, and mood whiplash with Creepy?

1. You're minding you own business when you suddenly meet yourself.
1.a. Treat as a surprise round if it matters.
2. Without warning you've been mugged or otherwise had your valuables swiped by yourself who then runs off.
2.a. Other you seems to know the exact things needed in order to escape yourself.
3. It happens at least once, and possibly a couple more times, over the next week.
3.a. There may or may not be a note explaining things left by this doppelganger.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

You've been caught up in a partial Groundhogs Day style time loop. After about <rolls dice> 11 days from the first instance you stop experiencing sequential time. Every time you lose consciousness you awaken some time within the next decade at random. One day you're seven calendar years ahead, the next you are four calendar years before that, the next day is six calendar months after that. It quickly becomes apparent that spending more than a minute in your own presence is extremely dangerous as coincidences like random explosions, falling pianos, packs of rabid dogs or small knife-wielding children, and other calamities try to erase you from existence. It gets more dangerous the longer you spend near yourself. While you personally experience time sequentially as normal the 'when' of that time is random within a window. You're basically naked every time you wake up, any clothes or possessions don't time travel with you when this happens and your general position in the world doesn't change even if a house burned down or was built around you between appearances.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

If you try to commit suicide or self harm it works. All calendar times occur within <rolls dice> around 8 years of the onset. If you haven't fixed it then after about 3 subjective years the Doctor (any, although I personally prefer the 3rd or 8th for this) appears, janks around a bit, explains that this is always happening somewhere to someone and it's just the universe being a ****, then fixes it for you and leaves. You resume normal time/space relationships at the 8 calendar year mark.

If you feel like gaming it out there are around 3000 possible days (or 24 hour increments) and you'll experience about 1100 of them in a random order.

Your task: Deal with it. There are no further steps.

The Bobs attempt to deal.

Travelling Bob: Goes to the personal spaceship, gets a long term dock/orbit, enters data into the computer, and charges other researchers rent to study the effect.

Sure, it's a long and annoying stint as your own lab rat. But it's a provable effect (future sports betting for start up money & evidence) with serious potential benefits. Time passes and the issue is eventually resolved. Weirdly boring and safe.

Paranoid Bob: Has problems as the Computer doesn't believe in time travel but does believe in commie mutant traitors.

During some of the times PB is 'missing' the clones will be woken up on the assumption that PB died somehow. Eventually the time hopping is figured out and PB is forced to register as a mutant, becoming a third class citizen. PB's pay is docked and demerits entered for missing work. PB is not compensated for doing double duty even when there's four copies running around at once. Eventually R&D get a hold of PB and everything gets worse. At some point R&D blows up and it's blamed on PB. Eventually PB runs out of clones and/or tries to turn in or kill the Doctor as a commie mutant for wearing the wrong colors (it doesn't work). Everything gets worse, then it's time to fill out your taxes and get executed for submitting too many or not enough copies.

Diplomat Bob: As an immortal photosynthetic vampire dryad this is a short term nuisance. We'll still try to fix or profit from it though.
Goes to and stays on board personal spaceship, delegates day-to-day running things to loyal followers. Works contacts & backing & mentor to figure out what's happening. Straight on 5k4 +1k1 from the universal library computer on the ship +10 from help actions (and not using divination magic from our navigator magician the spelljammer comes with)... yeah, breaks past the TN 35 'basically impossible' barrier at about an 83% success rate. Ok, found out what's going on but there's no common magics to fix it and it's not really monetizable (already been tried by previous folks). Probably use it as a information double pincer, take info from a future project/adventure into the past to affect outcomes. Determinism in time loops is questionable but we'll do it on the assumption that it helps. Be nice to the Doctor when they appear even though DB will still try to download everything from the Tardis computer while that's going on and maybe swipe 'how to build/repair time machines for dummies' book if possible.

Gun Whore Bob: Delegate day-to-day mercenary company operations to the next in command. Be very annoyed and grumpy for years.

GWB is actually the one who might experiment with a suicide run, or possibly shoot his future self hard enough to make it stick. Other than that it's Wealth 5 easily renting a mansion (leave the credit cards in a safe so we don't have to mug ourselves for food money) to stay at and hitting up the contacts until some solution appears. Hmm... The Cocaine Wizard contact might be able to track down the effect but would you trust the research/solution they want to do? Or it could come up when GWB tries the stock market future info trick and get's "noped" by the powers that be. Looks like a wealthy semi-retirement until it gets cleared up one way or another, as long as we don't get too cranky and get killed.

NichG

2023-05-18, 02:17 AM

1. You're minding you own business when you suddenly meet yourself.
1.a. Treat as a surprise round if it matters.
2. Without warning you've been mugged or otherwise had your valuables swiped by yourself who then runs off.
2.a. Other you seems to know the exact things needed in order to escape yourself.
3. It happens at least once, and possibly a couple more times, over the next week.
3.a. There may or may not be a note explaining things left by this doppelganger.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

This is kind of annoying, not because of the loss of funds or valuables, but because of things like driver's license, smartphone, etc. But also amazing, because this is clearly something impossible. I'm not the sort to run after a thief, even if the thief is myself, but I'd definitely call out 'Hey wait, what's going on?'. And if this is e.g. a time-travelling version of myself who needs resources for something, well, I'm not the sort to care about petty things like not changing the timeline, so that sort of me would stop and info-dump if they at all could do so. But they'd also just ask for the stuff rather than mugging me, (so as GM running this scenario for myself - its not time travel; if I were running it, probably something like a spirit or fae or some kind of thing like that; guess we'll see when I read the spoiler)

Once the first theft happens, there's not going to be much to steal the next time. But that'd be enough to establish a pattern for me.

So lets give me something to steal, so I can figure out what I'm up to here and maybe get in contact. I'd get a GPS tracking device (air pods maybe the easiest for this? or like a pet tracker...) and put it in my wallet - or maybe a backpack with an old laptop or some other bait. Then I'd stand around my yard looking like an idiot, waiting to get pickpocketted by myself. I'd have a camera observing the interaction and recording it, and I'd have set up my computer to be logging the GPS coordinates of the tracker continuously. So hopefully I'll see something interesting when it vanishes or ends up somewhere. Oh and of course I'd be peppering my wallet with messages to myself "Hey, give me a hint, what's going on?", "Look if you need something lets talk", etc.

Whether I would actually stick my neck out to go investigate that location though, hm... That depends a lot on where the location ends up being. If its like some place I can drive by, or a public place, I'd probably check it out. If its like a warehouse in a city or something, at that point discretion is the better part of valor. Maybe try to get a neighbor or someone to back me up if its like a forested area? I basically will auto-lose any kind of combat scenario though.

Alright, now reading the spoiler...

Huh, well I guess it is time travel. So given these details, I would definitely do back and forth messaging, geo-caching messages to myself, etc. The obvious thing to do here is to get myself to become rich enough I can set up a nice set of landing sites - a place with backup clothing and gear and nice stuff that I can hang out at, then move to another one in sequence to minimize the chance of landing. Also for the years in which we can do it, setting up a message center so we can talk with ourselves without being in proximity.

The situation is a bit stressful, but fundamentally more interesting than status quo existence. I think I could enjoy just going with it at least for a minimum of five years of subjective time. I'm a physicist IRL, though not the right kind of physicist for this kind of thing, but this would basically be like a fantasy come true to study a phenomenon like this. Well I'd think so at least, but I guess I'd have to experience how annoying it could get. So first we test what sort of time travel this universe supports - are we in a branching time lines kind of thing or is it a universe with Novikov self-consistency and all of the proximity hazards are basically quantum events trying to prevent even harder to resolve causal loops?

If we're in a Novikov universe, score! We can use this to generate infinite computing power, even manipulate events at a distance by having something where there is only not a paradox if the event goes a particular way. Its not going to be ascension to godhood (because among other things, if you dying of a stroke is the easiest way to resolve the tangle then that will just happen) but its still pretty awesome.

But the real mystery is what caused this time loop thing in the first place, so I'd also be trying to pin down that event, location, and time to see what factors I can identify there.

Okay, next spoiler...

I guess I have more patience than the Doctor, so he shows up in the middle of me messing around with this and trying to get it published in PRL or Nature or something (well actually I hate formal publication process, especially if I'm time jumping and can't even make a career out of it, so really this would be blog posts and tweets), at which point I probably just drop everything and try to hitch a Tardis ride. Because whatever I've used 3 years of time manipulation to achieve on Earth I can probably learn a heck of a lot more actually just learning from someone who already knows all this stuff. But I'm probably more of a problem-of-the-week than companion material.

Edit: Ooh, occurred to me too late (after reading all spoilers) but doing studies to see what making one tiny change would do would be really interesting. Is temporal inertia a thing, can I use this to actually trace the patterns of causality in society, how much does saying the right thing at the right time matter, etc? Basically a viewpoint on the workings of the world that you really cannot get any other way.

Quertus

2023-05-18, 07:56 AM

'Isekai me' given the 'anywhere in fiction' prompt would start furiously writing...

Touché. That is a very reasonable response; one I would expect from most intelligent beings of sufficient wit (depending, granted, a bit on their experiences with Wishes). However, *if* this were presented to a “real” being, and the associated cost of that offer was that the individual became “only a story” / less “real” in the process, would it be worth it? I made a… thing… based on that question at one point, and that’s not unlike why I took the tack I did, questioning, probing for details, to understand the offer.

For example, for any fiction, does it really need to be written? Could a fictional universe that lives in one’s imagination work? Of course, there’s probably something to say about living in one’s head…

Ok, I've got some diseased imaginings... I mean scenarios, if you want to try your insert thing or anyone wants to run characters through them.

I’m certainly game. :smallbiggrin:

Any rules or preferences for characters before I read the scenario details?

Telok

2023-05-18, 10:31 AM

I’m certainly game. :smallbiggrin:

Any rules or preferences for characters before I read the scenario details?

Not really. I tend to be a lot more vague about setting, although I'll certainly throw some specific stuff in. So if a character has a defined 'home setting' you can use that, or not if it's more fun/interesting. This is a thought experiment thread so I don't really assume clones, characters experiencing & remembering all the scenarios, or using gear/items from one scene in another. But just because that isn't my assumption doesn't mean it can't be.

And yeah, first one is real easy mode but a couple Bobs still could die (or for Paranoid Bob run out of clones/fate worse than death) from it.

meschlum

2023-05-19, 03:07 AM

Coming into this late, and blind, for scenario 6.

Let's see...

An utterly hostile environment that tries to freeze you into its twisted causality the longer you stay there? Check.

Wonderful treasures inside that the locals don't appreciate? Check.

Silly combat maniacs rushing in to grab those treasures without appreciating them? Check.

Sounds like Creation! A place the Butterfly is extremely adept at navigating, so how much worse can this be? Quick - retrieve or create a storm with ominous thunder. If the Butterfly is going to do this, it's going to be done right, with all cliches firing at maximum output!

Since the portal is a known thing, the Butterfly has time to prepare. This should be suitably terrifying. Spontaneously know everything that can be researched about the topic in the background, because the Butterfly wants to know what common sense to ignore, darn it. Make sure the pets are nice and shiny, polish the WMD, brush the dust off the dress, adjust the eyes so the gaze is just right... lights, camera, action!

"It's a place that could only have been made by Sempai (factually wrong), where everyone is made to feel like I do around Sempai all the time. Which means they'll all feel the way I do about Sempai... Unacceptable!"

"None of those hussies are getting into Sempai's private... drawers... chest... MINE!"

Killing the competition might make a mess, and that Will Not Do. Nothing but the best for Sempai's secret... box...

Clean thoughts, clean thoughts. Must seem normal for Sempai.

Assuming the city isn't something that can be Shaped, and that time lock, despite being so much like Stasis and Calcification, isn't something that burning Essence can avoid (because otherwise the Butterfly has all 24 hours to operate), it becomes convenient to pre-summon a few things. The Fair Folk are experts at that, and invoking her castle is simple. Let's assume that little diversion is not allowed (otherwise, it's 24 free hours and some of the competition is... no longer around to disturb Sempai. Maybe they went sailing?).

Sadly, the Butterfly didn't specialize in summoning mecha, so a double size Tyrannosaurus Rex will have to do. Plus some depleted uranium barding, so it's the one carrying her, a lot of time, and then shares its time with her. What it does afterward is irrelevant - maybe it goes back to fill up on time again and recharge her? Maybe it grabs a few snacks on the way? As long as it's not desecrating Sempai's personal... place...

A swarm of butterflies covers the city, and is aware of everything in it. The Butterfly uses the Uber Martial Art she picked up on a whim to toss herself a mile at a time towards the hidden... treasure...

KYAAAA!

Stuff the loot into the pocket dimension, start decorating the Shrine to Sempai, reach through dimensional space to claw meschlum's eyes out. All is well.

Loadout for when things inevitably go wrong in the city is a few Tyrannosauri (because why not? Also they're good at opening doors), social and lore skills set to YES, and half a dozen different kinds of murder touch. Plus magical stealth (while preserving Sempai's bounties... from the undeserving) because there might be a time constraint? Flight, of course, and supersenses because people forget about those all the time.

So over the course of millennia, this frozen nightmare has been barely explored, because visitors get locked inside? I've been through a few of those, and they're not easy to unravel, but... wait. You're sending in people carrying heavy rocks so they have a bit more time, then grab whatever is close by, and run out? And that's what you've come up with in literally thousands of years?

BOW BEFORE MY GENIUS! MY MIND HAS SURPASSED THE HEIGHTS OF THE ANCIENTS AND (couch, cough)

BEHOLD! MY INVENTION WITH WHICH THIS ENTIRE DREAM WILL BE REVOLUTIONIZED AND EXPLORED BEYOND ALL MEASURE ATTAINED IN THE PAST!

I CALL IT...

THE ROPE!

Get a very long rope. Or many. Optionally enchant it to be harder to break or even extensible. Walk into the city while holding the rope, with others on the other side of the portal holding it too. Time flows in through the rope, exploration is now possible as far as it can stretch. Tie more ropes to the rope, if needed.

Direct consequence of coming from a setting where you're not stronger than a mob, and being clever and creative matters.

If for some hidden reason the Dreamer's genius is not acknowledged, they can get a hefty amount of mass in by transmuting air into metal at the portal entrance. If that does not work either... The Dreamer can detect magic, scry within line of sight for better loot, possibly summon a plot coupon to help solve impossible puzzles?

One suspects that the hidden information might help, but unlikely to do well barring some (plot coupon) insight into ways to trick the system. Which is in genre, so could happen.

The robocaller summons hordes of very fast flying critters, sends them into the portal, maps the landscape. If it forgot to watch its Karma, it might have the critters self detonate once their jobs are done, just to add a bit of carnage to the environment (also, makes it easier to recognize landmarks).

When the time comes to grab a particularly interesting piece of loot, it can summon something bigger and faster to carry it there, take it, and return. It can attain speeds of yes (not quite supersonic), so thirty seconds could be plenty. Or summon something heavy and flying, and go in with the extra time.

Since it's very good at murder, and not fundamentally opposed to the act, taking out the competition might occur - on the other hand, it does tend to go for drama (Karma being what it is), so a quest for the hidden loot should appeal more.

If it goes into the portal (why? it has summons to do the job, at least until minibosses are found), it will opt for speed and bring along a swarm of summons with the Self Destruct power. Minibosses go boom, time gets shared by a relay of summons made on the other side of the portal (fly in, share time with critter inside, return. Inside critter goes further, shares time with critter deeper in, returns. Repeat). It's mana intensive to keep up a relay, but it works.

Mana recovery and a boss deep in the city are the most likely difficulties, and can probably be powered through.

This place is possibly worse than water. At least, if an Indestructible Sentient God Weapon gets tossed in a lake where no wielders can find it and it goes mad from sensory deprivation, it still has continuity of self. Repeating the same few seconds of its existence is either essentially death for the Rapier (if it loses awareness of time outside the loop), or slightly delayed madness (if it's aware of being stuck in a loop).

On the other hand, there are lots of reasonably powerful people coming out of the portal with loot. Attack them! They might die, in which case you now have their loot. Or they kill your wielder, in which case they now have your loot, including an Indestructible Sentient God Weapon which will point out they could get even more loot by repeating the process...

City exploration: 0. Bloody battlefield: 1. Satisfied Rapier with a tough wielder and a ton of loot: Yes. Success!

So, as expected, the Butterfly's main obstacle is the Butterfly (and those *** that look at Sempai wrong). The Dreamer goes for the clever off the wall solutions, the Robocaller just applies more power until it or the opposition collapses, and the Rapier stays away from the plot and has a grand time murder-hoboing the setting.

Next I'll read the details and make a new post based on what I learn... later!

Jakinbandw

2023-05-19, 11:18 AM

1. You're minding you own business when you suddenly meet yourself.
1.a. Treat as a surprise round if it matters.
2. Without warning you've been mugged or otherwise had your valuables swiped by yourself who then runs off.
2.a. Other you seems to know the exact things needed in order to escape yourself.
3. It happens at least once, and possibly a couple more times, over the next week.
3.a. There may or may not be a note explaining things left by this doppelganger.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

Using Susland Mason from my current campaign. It's from my custom system, where he is but a level 1 character (which is close to a level 3 dnd character).

Okay, this is actually really hard to figure out how to do. While my doppelganger can certainly rob me, and might be able to set up a situation where they can outrun me in the short term... In the long term actually escaping is fairly impossible. I have access to a half dozen ways to track someone down, and not a single thing around hiding or fleeing. Even trying to catch me during the surprise round would fail, as my character can act freely during surprise rounds.

Honestly, the only way I can see this working is if my mimic recruited a bunch of other people to catch me when I was alone, and then beat me up. As I haven't read further, I don't know if that is allowed.

Either way, they would know they can't hide from me, so their only option would be... yeah, I don't know. There is nowhere they can go that I can't, and presumably I can ask from help from my party when tracking them down.

Still, first things first, I'd probably ask Aqua (my characters Divine Patron) to help me understand what the deal was with my doppelganger and improvise the following ability in.
Ritual of Guidance
You perform a ritual, communing with your divine patron.
Spend 2 karma during a short rest, stating a specific goal: You learn one piece of information that you didn’t already know that would be the most helpful to you in achieving that goal. You may not use this ability for the same goal twice.

You've been caught up in a partial Groundhogs Day style time loop. After about <rolls dice> 11 days from the first instance you stop experiencing sequential time. Every time you lose consciousness you awaken some time within the next decade at random. One day you're seven calendar years ahead, the next you are four calendar years before that, the next day is six calendar months after that. It quickly becomes apparent that spending more than a minute in your own presence is extremely dangerous as coincidences like random explosions, falling pianos, packs of rabid dogs or small knife-wielding children, and other calamities try to erase you from existence. It gets more dangerous the longer you spend near yourself. While you personally experience time sequentially as normal the 'when' of that time is random within a window. You're basically naked every time you wake up, any clothes or possessions don't time travel with you when this happens and your general position in the world doesn't change even if a house burned down or was built around you between appearances.

Your task: Deal with it. Decide on a course of action before checking the next step.

So the good news based on my first step is that I know know about the whole time traveling thing. I figure that I won't get any of the specifics, so I don't know I have 11 days before it starts happening, but at the same time I feel like I would probably know it happens when I lose consciousness (as I feel like that was be reasonably part of the one piece of info, ie "You're traveling to a random place in time, forward or backward, within 10 years whenever you lose consciousness").

I think the easiest response to this is to move into our dungeon, and request that the party build up it's defenses so it will last 10 years (something not guaranteed, and might mean I lose the challenge immediately upon the first time jump. World ending situation is going to take around 5 years to resolve. Then again, predestination suggests that if I did die on the first jump, then I could have never could have robbed myself). I'd ask the dungeon boss and party to make sure that I have food, water and clothing in the room I sleep in, and tell them that until the mess is over, that I'll be leaving them messages about the future. They just need to keep a record for me to read in the room, then when I jump, I can read up on where I am in the timeline, and transcribe any future knowledge I have, leaving it outside the door. If I some how double up in time, then I have a minute to just exit the room and get away from myself. Actually, thinking about it, other than having cloths in the room when I sleep, I could actually have alternate rooms that I go to immediatly after waking up, starting with number 1. If I wake up and the clothing and food has been eaten, I move to room 2 of the dungeon, and so on, just to minimize possible interactions.

I improvise Ritual of Guidance a second time, and ask for info that would help with ending the time loop in a way that allows me to continue on with my life.

If you try to commit suicide or self harm it works. All calendar times occur within <rolls dice> around 8 years of the onset. If you haven't fixed it then after about 3 subjective years the Doctor (any, although I personally prefer the 3rd or 8th for this) appears, janks around a bit, explains that this is always happening somewhere to someone and it's just the universe being a ****, then fixes it for you and leaves. You resume normal time/space relationships at the 8 calendar year mark.

If you feel like gaming it out there are around 3000 possible days (or 24 hour increments) and you'll experience about 1100 of them in a random order.

Your task: Deal with it. There are no further steps.

So once again, this is tricky for me to work out. How does the Doctor fix it? Is it something that I could replicate? Assuming that all I know is that someone will fix it, but I'll lose 8 years, I think I'd be fine with that (Again, assuming that the world doesn't end). I would be curious to see how dying interacts with the time loop, as my character can craft Auto-Resurrection charms:
Blessed Iconography
You bless an object meant to represent your faith, granting protection to those who carry it even if they do not believe. Burn Effort and choose an object: It becomes a single use charm that grants one of the following Effects:
- Gain a fact: ‘If this person would die, they are resurrected within 72 hours of their death.’
- Negate the wounds and stress from an attack that would down them.
- Gain a Fact: ‘If you would fail a check, you may ignore any dangers, surviving or escaping the situation.’
These charms only work while you know this ability. Attuning a charm requires a long rest or Burn Effort as an action, and only 1 may be attuned at a time. Additionally, you may instead spend a downtime action to create several (0) of these objects.

Can this be used to break free of the time loop? Basically, when a character dies, is their soul sent on a random time jaunt or not? Could my character be targeted by the start of the time loop if they are dead when it would normally begin? With clever wording, and choosing the right goals to ask Aqua about, I could probably be dead when I would supposed to be infected.

This is of course without getting into the party attempting to save me themselves. They could train up time or dark sorcerers, and we already know an NPC with the Belief class, any one of which has the potential to alter reality to free me.

As I said, too many judgement calls to know for sure what would work, and what wouldn't. In my best guess, I feel like the suicide method over the time when I would be selected should prevent the entire mess, and the predestination paradox is a left over shadow from another world. Stealing from myself isn't what I'd do anyway, so it being an mirror timeline version of myself that got shunted in through shenanigans feels pretty on point.

Quertus

2023-05-19, 01:13 PM

Not really. I tend to be a lot more vague about setting, although I'll certainly throw some specific stuff in. So if a character has a defined 'home setting' you can use that, or not if it's more fun/interesting. This is a thought experiment thread so I don't really assume clones, characters experiencing & remembering all the scenarios, or using gear/items from one scene in another. But just because that isn't my assumption doesn't mean it can't be.

And yeah, first one is real easy mode but a couple Bobs still could die (or for Paranoid Bob run out of clones/fate worse than death) from it.

Given that you said "easy mode" I thought about bringing characters from systems I discounted as not competent enough to use for the original 6 scenarios. But, given that you mentioned Paranoid Bob, you seem to be referencing your characters when you say some Bobs could die - which, given how I view your characters, makes me concerned with your definition of "easy". :smalleek: Not that several of my characters wouldn't have trivially died to a guy with a gun...

Anyway, as to what I should bring... hmmm... we'll see if this is a valid choice, but I'll just... prepare a roster of characters, and seemingly randomly only talk about anyone (on or off that roster) whose personality, perspective, powers, or underlying mechanics/system make them interesting for me to comment on. So, since the 3 challenges you have planned aren't connected to begin with, my entries into each might not be connected / might not involve any of the same characters.

Guess I'll read the "easy" challenge now, and see what interests me.

...

Are you sure this isn't the "horror" one?

This is probably going to be invalid for so many of my characters, depending on the underlying secrets in the spoilers. Like, me, or most characters based off me, would be engaging in (I'll misuse the term) "microtransactions", evaluating every minor detail of not only what the character does and doesn't do, but exactly how they react to every action either of us take or don't take. How they move. Where their focus is. And that would be true even if I ended up acting like a CoC character with a sanity-loss-induced panic attack (not that I've ever had one) or screaming my head off (a tad more likely) or just staring dumbfounded while the mugger had to manually remove my wallet (actually reaching "could happen" chances) or assailed the mugger with questions (the most likely result - and if the mugger was me (or a proper doppleganger thereof), I'd learn a great deal, even from their silence). And of course look at the handwriting of any note. But it's hard for me to gauge the extent to which some of my characters could evaluate their assailant in that regard.

Whereas many of my characters (especially D&D characters, who are known for their Christmas Tree of items) take a very long time to fully mug of their true valuables, *and* often are surrounded by powerful allies. Taking their coin purse could be done in a surprise round, I suppose. And some have special rules, like Armus would just say, "but that's mine" and his Polyhedron Gateway would teleport back to his hand, or Quertus would invoke narritivium of "always wins against his copies". Or the Signature Item rule (that works better than Armus' Polyhedron Gateway).

Anyway, what they're after could be quite informative as well, to let the character determine, well, what they're after.

D&D has (in 3e parlance) a static DC for Sleight of Hand / Pick Pockets rolls, but that isn't necessarily the case in all systems. So while (depending on the scenario) either case could inform us that "the copy isn't the original" if they can perform feats of legerdemain that the original is incapable of, but other systems, where it's an opposed roll or some other resolution method, could easily result in a character who should be immune to their own attempts, as another reason the scenario might (depending on the hidden details) be invalid in some cases.

And I can't imagine what one would take from the bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear - a lock of their hair?

And different people would make different assumptions upon "seeing themselves" wrt the likely root causes they'd consider: time travel, alternate reality version of themselves, clone, doppleganger, disguise, illusion, coincidental likeness, etc.

And the presence of a note, and its exact contents, could be a huge game-changer. I really can't decide a course of action without knowing what the characters would glean from the encounter about the nature of the copy.

But most of all, what senses the characters have (the ability to sense Time shenanigans, the ability to sense alt-reality shenanigans, the ability to see through disguises, Quertus' ability to uniquely identify individuals, telepathy / mind reading, aura sight, precognition, my own micro-transactions of Sense Motive, someone with Sherlock Holmes Perception or equivalent Sense Motive, etc) will greatly impact this scenario.

So I guess I'll read the spoilers, and see if there's anyone for whom the scenario is both valid and interesting.

So my first thought was right, and it really is time travel. Well, while it can work in Single Author Fiction, Time Travel is pretty horrible in most RPG scenarios, as making the mechanics both match the fiction and be interesting is quite the challenge. Especially given that the initial prompt makes little sense from either a Roleplaying perspective, or from the PoV of some of the "better" time-travel mechanics.

Oh. Huh. I had, every single time, pictured the copy as wearing the exact same clothes as the character. Which would only be true by default for the bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear. :smallbiggrin:

That changes things. A lot.

Sadly, it actually makes the correct "time travel" guess less likely (or lower on their list) for several of my characters. After all, if they don't have the same clothes with the same rips and stains, then it's less likely that they're... several things, including a time traveler. Sigh.

But... why would any character, trapped in that scenario, mug themselves? That... just seems... either really dumb, or really out of character, for most of the characters. I can see being starving, and stealing enough money to eat, maybe. But that would result in some obvious tells in the time-shifted copy. Leaving a note, OTOH, seems really wise: especially in the "get to a place that will forever be a good starting point (when naked)" vein.

That said, I can see LtC Staltek Vir stealing tech in an (automatically successful) attempt to break out of the time loop. It's just a matter of having enough time (in repeated jumps) to build the Science!-powered tech.

And... wouldn't the original self have noticed the random explosions, falling pianos, packs of rabid dogs or small knife-wielding children, and other calamities? That also should have a huge impact on the scenario. These details matter to the initial reaction the character would have.

Also... not all characters sleep. So this scenario is invalid for them.

Anyway, the first time somebody does some landscaping, you're dead. And what keeps things like random sticks or someone moving the furniture around from killing you? Even the very first jump should likely be fatal, the way I tend to adjudicate things / expect physics to work. Yeah, I'm a **** like that.

So, probably, the only way to stay alive is to have already stayed alive to jump back far enough to meet yourself, and arrange (perhaps by giving yourself a note, perhaps by meeting the Important Party yourself) for a Permanent Bed, by arranging for a Benefactor. Which, you know, you could easily pay them back with foreknowledge... or just make investments or win the Lottery yourself in certain worlds.

Oh, wow... what if the time travel period is "10 years", and one spends more than 10 years in this scenario? Also, is it random when you appear - for example, does one run the risk of waking up naked with themselves?

So, assuming the nigh-impossible static causality, the character who fares the best in this scenario is, actually, me. Under the assumption that I survive long enough to encounter myself, I give myself a note letting me win the lottery, and quickly use the funds to obtain my "Forever Home" (somewhere I know hasn't fallen into sinkhole, burned down, etc in as many years as I've been in the future by this point), and I sleep there (naked, so as not to lose anything) from then on. In fact, I've probably started sleeping there before then, as I've likely enlisted Family (who don't trigger craziness) to inform me to go there when I come to them for help. Some prescient investments (intentionally not always successful / optimal), and I'm set for money for life. I doubt I have the ability to research this phenomenon, or turn this into "I have time powers!" myself, and I know I don't have the trust to want to be a test subject, or to risk anyone less trustworthy than myself being able to utilize this. And I'm annoyed that I can't do anything coherent over time, like write code or write stories or interact with normal people's lives. But I can read books, watch movies, or perform other actions in "random order", like self-training, and I've got funds, so it's not a bad existence. Meeting the Doctor is just icing on the cake! Although I try to con him into a better arrangement for both of us, I doubt he'd agree to most of my ideas (like improving his future, or turning whatever time energy was affecting me into something useful (especially "me as a TARDIS" per one of my goals in the "You gained a level IRL" thread)), but maybe we still get something out of meeting each other. Still, worst-case scenario, I end 3 years older, 8 years in the future, and 8 years out-of-touch.

Probably faring second-best is Isakai'd me from the "sell me on the multiverse" thread. Able to sleep warded and invisibly in mid-air, Not!Me is in little danger of dying once they learn the rules (and move somewhere warm enough not to wake up naked in a snowstorm). And this sounds like the perfect opportunity for Not!Me to learn Time magic like they wanted (and also sounds like it could be caused by them making a mistake with said magic...). The Doctor in Isekai land is just totally awesome, and Isakia'd Not!Me interacting with such a Doctor might actually find one another to be much more helpful / useful to each other.

While the Shadowrun Troll is also able to sleep invisible and warded in mid-air, the Troll is much more gear-dependent than I am, and isn't a Doctor Who fan, but is arguably more likely to actually be useful to the Doctor as a Companion. Regardless, the introduction of such mechanics to Shadowrun would make our Troll potentially one of the most powerful beings in the setting.

LtC Staltek Vir... Aboard the Zero, could instantly convince the best time experts in the Federation to help him solve this. On his Not!Isekai Not!Fantasy post from this thread, he's the most likely character to trigger the "talk to self catastrophes". And would not only trivially solve the problem (transporter to refresh self to never sleep, automatically make all rolls to analyze and build tech to solve problem), but would also investigate the "catastrophes", to see how to utilize or even weaponize whatever energy they use, and would likely accidentally invent the Evil Eye. But he'd probably acquire a 2nd bed for that point 6 years in the future when he appears, so that he doesn't accidentally wake up naked next to himself.

The other character who does well in this challenge is a joke character "Minecraft Guy", who effectively considers their game buggy. They fall asleep in their bed every night, and wake up to no inventory and somewhat random (but perfectly sorted) items in their chests. They just continue grinding for years, occasionally seeing evidence of sorting their goods into their chests to exactly some configuration they've seen before, before the Doctor comes in with a bug-fix patch.

With me as GM, pretty much anyone could randomly end up dead just by "a bird / spider / whatever was where your head was when you woke up" levels of all-but-unavoidable death. And while I might hand-wave air, and use relative positioning (instead of "the starship (or planet) moved, you appeared in the void of space and died"), don't get me started on "your skin fused with your sheets", when you moved from a you-indented bed to its un-slept-in copy. So most everyone who survived this scenario had to have very different physics than I would have space-locked time-travelers use, or not me as GM.

Anna is one of the first characters I thought of at the prompt of stealing from themselves, as her rare Death Seeds would be quite valuable to most any copy of herself. However, Anna has no... no basis on which to grasp the concept of time travel. Honestly, she would probably never make it to the described scenario: her companion, Fang, would sense her time-traveling self before she got close, and Anna would head-shot future-Anna, assuming she was a monster or using a doppleganger-style psychic power or something. That is to say, even a future copy of Anna has no ability to successfully mug herself, especially if she starts naked instead of with her treasure, The Far Death. But now we have the paradox of "why would future Anna, if she comes to grasp the concept of Time Travel, who has already lived through the past and knows she'll shoot herself, why would she approach herself that way in the first place?" Maybe if she were delirious from fever from starvation and exposure? It quickly descends into a cyclic "how can we get to a self-consistent outcome?" that plagues many versions of time travel.

Speaking of paradox, although the Paradox Telepathic Vampire can literally make people give him the clothes off their back, if Time Travel counts as Reality Travel, he'd run out of lives before the Doctor comes to save him. The only surface area he has with which to interact with this problem of "time hopping" himself is if someone had intentionally caused this to happen to him, he could find and approach them telepathically. Which doesn't seem to be the case. Fortunately, he has a great network of allies whom he can contact, and who could solve this problem for him (if he cares (yes) or realizes the danger (maybe)).

Nami of the Thousand Eyes (from some random Naruto homebrew) is so dead. I put the "child" version of herself on my list of potentials for in this thread; in this scenario, her enemies would doubtless take advantage of this phenomenon to kill her (even if she survived until after the Doctor saved her, she'd still be "behind the curve"), unless her Rivals managed to keep her alive. But most likely, she died in the first time-skip, from random life changes to her outdoor sleeping spot (things growing where she was sleeping), or the paradox of foes she isn't yet aware of predicting her movements and killing child-her in her sleep.

Obviously, the M&M characters I entered previously would have no problem "gearing up", so you'd think they'd have no problem with this challenge, right? However, as (in their homeworlds) they tend to move around and sleep in hotels, they might well wake up - or, well, not wake up - fused with another person on their first time skip. So the only way for them to survive is for them to survive to meet themselves, to warn themselves. While this sounds like my "me" success story, the issue is how much less likely they are to survive in the first place for that to happen. And this fate could easily befall most D&D characters IME, and anyone else who lives a life on the road, too.

But perhaps the worst luck is held by Ambrosia Slughorn. She is pretty helpless without a wand. Her best bet would actually be to mug herself, and sleep in her own extradimensional storage (with her wand in there with her, but "unequipped" so she doesn't lose it) - something, given the curses her past self could place on her, likely only worth her risking doing with the rules of this challenge. But not only are her odds of surviving to that point rather slim, as she'd likely fuse with someone sleeping in her bed on her first time skip, she has a habit of confiding in the wrong people, so she might well get turned into components for Time Turners, even if she somehow survived.

Telok

2023-05-19, 03:08 PM

Well as I said, not all challenges are appropriate to all characters. It is interesting to see different assumptions at work. For example, I would have felt free to adjust the initial encounter away from a mugging to something else quick enough not to trigger the calamities based a particular character's personality or capabilities. Nor would I have assumed instant death scenarios. And one thing I didn't even think of until just now is there's nothing saying you don't have repeats, which could make using a single resting place dangerous.

But details take time to write. Some of these are short (~500 characters) and some are long (10k characters). You get to fill in any details you need.

Any ways, yeah, that was the easy one. What we have now is; Creepy, Silly, Magical, Talky, and Mayhem. So if most people agree or are silent we'll do Silly, then Creepy, then...?

Quertus

2023-05-19, 05:15 PM

Well as I said, not all challenges are appropriate to all characters.

You did? I guess I missed that. But that makes sense, in many ways. Of course, OTOH, you are the master of rewriting challenges to makes sense for characters... :smallbiggrin:

It is interesting to see different assumptions at work.

Indeed!

For example, I would have felt free to adjust the initial encounter away from a mugging to something else quick enough not to trigger the calamities based a particular character's personality or capabilities.

Really? That's surprising, given that the entirety of the "unspoiled" text revolved around the mugging. And given that there was a "decide what you do (before proceeding)" prompt after that. So it's kind hard to "Decide what you would do", then retroactively change the scenario, no?

Not that that stopped me, of course. :smallbiggrin:

But... Oh, I shouldn't say anything more, in case others take this challenge.

Nor would I have assumed instant death scenarios.

Really? What did you expect with
your general position in the world doesn't change even if a house burned down or was built around you between appearances.

And one thing I didn't even think of until just now is there's nothing saying you don't have repeats, which could make using a single resting place dangerous.

Oh. I took that as a literal reading of
If you feel like gaming it out there are around 3000 possible days (or 24 hour increments) and you'll experience about 1100 of them in a random order.

But details take time to write. Some of these are short (~500 characters) and some are long (10k characters). You get to fill in any details you need.

Sure enough. Still "add to" and "change" are actions which I take with different degrees of... word... care? trepidation? effort? resistance? seriousness? Eh, "I'll add before I'll change" details (not that that stopped me, obviously). But I prefer to do neither to the extent possible, to maximize the "shared experience" factor.

Hmmm... If people aren't burnt out when you're done, maybe I'll consider entering a scenario or two, just to get experience from the other side, seeing what people have to do in order to use them with their various systems / characters / plans / preconceptions / whatever. Unless @NichG, you feel that's too far afield from the purpose of your thread?

Any ways, yeah, that was the easy one. What we have now is; Creepy, Silly, Magical, Talky, and Mayhem. So if most people agree or are silent we'll do Silly, then Creepy, then...?

I have no pie in the horse... I mean, I have no dog in the race of which order we do things.

Quertus

2023-05-20, 05:27 PM

So, seems I potentially made a few errors in my evaluation of the Easy scenario.

So, assuming the nigh-impossible static causality, the character who fares the best in this scenario is, actually, me. Under the assumption that I survive long enough to encounter myself, I give myself a note letting me win the lottery, and quickly use the funds to obtain my "Forever Home" (somewhere I know hasn't fallen into sinkhole, burned down, etc in as many years as I've been in the future by this point), and I sleep there (naked, so as not to lose anything) from then on. In fact, I've probably started sleeping there before then, as I've likely enlisted Family (who don't trigger craziness) to inform me to go there when I come to them for help. Some prescient investments (intentionally not always successful / optimal), and I'm set for money for life. I doubt I have the ability to research this phenomenon, or turn this into "I have time powers!" myself, and I know I don't have the trust to want to be a test subject, or to risk anyone less trustworthy than myself being able to utilize this. And I'm annoyed that I can't do anything coherent over time, like write code or write stories or interact with normal people's lives. But I can read books, watch movies, or perform other actions in "random order", like self-training, and I've got funds, so it's not a bad existence. Meeting the Doctor is just icing on the cake! Although I try to con him into a better arrangement for both of us, I doubt he'd agree to most of my ideas (like improving his future, or turning whatever time energy was affecting me into something useful (especially "me as a TARDIS" per one of my goals in the "You gained a level IRL" thread)), but maybe we still get something out of meeting each other. Still, worst-case scenario, I end 3 years older, 8 years in the future, and 8 years out-of-touch.

Speaking of paradox, although the Paradox Telepathic Vampire can literally make people give him the clothes off their back, if Time Travel counts as Reality Travel, he'd run out of lives before the Doctor comes to save him. The only surface area he has with which to interact with this problem of "time hopping" himself is if someone had intentionally caused this to happen to him, he could find and approach them telepathically. Which doesn't seem to be the case. Fortunately, he has a great network of allies whom he can contact, and who could solve this problem for him (if he cares (yes) or realizes the danger (maybe)).

In particular,

If I already encountered myself, I’d be willing to encounter myself; however, some versions of Time Travel in common media have various silly problems arise from encountering yourself (usually involving nigh-instant obliteration). So, if we ran a “clean” run, “on the first loop”, fearing instant Annihilation from encountering myself, I’d probably not mug myself in the first place, getting Family to deliver my note to myself for me. Yeah, I’m bad at roleplaying myself. :smallredface: In my defense, I did specify the brand of Time Travel required to make that series of events make sense; I just left out how the scenario changes with alternate underlying mechanics.

And the telepathic vampire doesn’t sleep. So, after living 3 years linearly, Dr. Who would show up to remove the condition he didn’t even know he had. :smallamused: Unless it triggers at a specific time each night, and things like caffeine pills (which I didn’t bother mentioning anyone (except LtC Staltek Vir, with his transporter hack) using) to stay up are useless in delaying the next jump.

But the bigger point was, most Paradox (just 1e? Unsure.) characters would die before reaching the 3 year limit, as they have a hidden stat I’m calling “lives”, which determines how many “jumps” they can make. So the underlying system can greatly impact that particular scenario’s outcome (at least, if Time Travel counts as a jump (which I think it should, for most mechanics of Time Travel)).

But it also subtly brings up the question of whether, if the time of the jump is determined by sleep instead of occurring at a pre-set Time each night, if the character’s sleep schedule is nonstandard, do they get 1100 jumps, or X Time conscious? Do I need to not take a nap (at least not while carrying anything important) for 3 years / does taking naps reduce the amount of subjective time I spend in the loops or increase the number of jumps I make (not that I’d know, in character, anything about the limit)? And, if triggered by unconsciousness, characters who fall unconscious in battle are much less safe than those I commented on (see also Super heroes fighting in busy city streets, or flight abilities that cut off when KO’d).

Those are among the details I didn’t really comment on or experiment with. Alongside things like “is it possible to intentionally leave a note different from the one you remember receiving?”, or other tests regarding the type of Time Travel being experienced.

Telok

2023-05-20, 07:38 PM

I have no pie in the horse...

Silly it is then.

1. You're in downtown Tokyo (or whatever's the closest approximation for the character's setting) having a nice day.
2. The warning sirens go off. The sky darkens. The theme music plays. People are running around screaming. The military starts rolling out heavy artillery in the streets.
3. Godzilla.

Your task: Do the appropriate in character things that change the course of the rampage. That can be saving more people, saving the city, stopping Godzilla, helping Godzilla, marrying Godzilla, whatever.

Godzilla vs some Bobs.

Thankfully I can stat up Godzilla in Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e.
GODZILLA as a vehicle:
Size:44, Size Remaining:0, Cost:881, Price:Wrecked Capital City, HP:47, Resilience:44, Length:~125m
Static Defense @ M=0:0, @ M=1-5:5, @ M=6-9:10, @ M=10+:15, Maneuver:0, Acceleration:1, Base Speed:5, Total Speed:8
Speed:32m/momentum, 11.52 kph/momentum. Drive: Walker (x4) Treats impassible terrain as if it were merely difficult; if flipped over or knocked down it may stand back up as a half action. Ramming: TN=12+mom, Damage:10k10 +47 +5*momentum. Other Drives: Naval (x3) May not leave the water without crashing; if this is the only drive the size costs are halved. Size: 1, Cost: 20, Micronized x-1.

Other Stuff:
Control System: Berserker AI System, Size: 1, Cost: 10, Effect: Runs a 6k3 killbot AI if the pilot is disabled or missing. Frame Type: Reinforced Frame, Size: 0, Cost: 5, Effect: Adds 3 HP & Subtracts 3 Maneuver. Camouflage: Basic Camo, Size: 0, Cost: 5, Effect: The vehicle has colored paint on it. Living Vehicle, Size: 1, Cost: 20, Effect: Heals 1 HP per day, stands up if knocked over. Submarine, Size: 2, Cost: 40. 1x Magnetic Couplers for additional drives, Size: 1, Cost: 10. Armor: Heavy Ferro-fibrous (20 ap), Size: 4, Cost: 50. Hexagrammatic Wards: Heavy Aura (20 Aura), Size: 2, Cost: 80. Manipulator Arms (Strength 10), Size: 7, Cost: 55, Effect: Vehicle has arms. Void Shield 20, Size: 10, Cost: 60. XL Engine 3, Size: 3, Cost: 60, Effect: Adds 3 Speed.

Features: Radiation sense (attracted to radioactivity, may eat highly enriched elements as a snack without suffering heartburn). Kaiju sense (attracted to other kaiju, will normally fight kaiju of other species). Building immunity (does not take damage from impacts with buildings, having buildings dropped on it, exploding buildings, buildings with guns, etc.) Any other features decided as needed (heals from nuclear fallout, can become magnetic, regenerates over time unless 120% absolute destruction, etc.)

Weapons(6k3 all attacks, 90% 18+ & 50% 25+): --Two Handed CQC-- BITE/SLAM, 10k5+20 R/I p5 Unwieldy(cannot parry), Size:1, Cost:20.
--Flail CQC-- TAIL, 10k2+25 I p5 Flexible(cannot be parried), Size:1, Cost:20.
--Wave Motion Cannon-- BREATH, 7k4+35 E p20 s\- 500m(250/1k/1.5k/2k) Recharge Accurate Blast(5), Size:10, Cost:30, [Optional ammo rules: more when angry].

knock down & grapple: str+size = 54k10= 10k32= 10k10+110(90% 155+ & 50% 170+)
climb & swim: 10k10+5(90% 50, 50% 65) = speed by drive type & terrain
jump: run/stand TNs 10/15, 10k10+5(90% 50+, 50% 70+) = 10m +1m/raise & half as high = at least 20 meters

Defense: To-hit is roll over 5 or over 10 depending on speed (technically rolling over 15 could be needed sometimes). Then Void Shield 20 means being in melee, having your own void shield, or using a weapon with armor penetration of 20+. Armor and Wards (magic armor) plus resilience mean you need to throw down 64 damage to inflict a single wound then another 44 damage per additional wound.

Gun Whore Bob: Can't really confront big G unless we change up the conjuration magic school for a sword school or gun kata. The only other option is trying to use Gate to set a giant teleport trap, and at an hour long ritual that'll be super tough timing. So let's see about beating up Godzilla.
Interestingly none of the magic schools in DtD40k7e have much that would directly affect the big G. Abjuration could throw around some 5x20 force walls, divination could make the big guy unlucky, evocation is out of luck as it's damage tops out at 10k5 a spell and there's no way to get enough aura penetration to reliably overcome that resilience+20, big illusions are a maybe until big G breathes on them, transmutation has transformation & control weather but random tornadoes and a 2x speed Godzilla size wolf isn't an improvement, necromancy has a couple 'lose half remaining hit points' but can't kill anything, enchantment could technically be used to stun-lock & mind control & confuse. The issue is that you have to beat the casting test with a -20 roll vs regular target number to affect big G. Direct damage magic doesn't do that, instead it just applies aura as armor to the damage roll. With first level spells being 15 to cast and 5th level spells being 35 to cast that puts affecting big G with most spells out of reach of most casters, and that's before we talk about saving throws. Like a maximum level & skill sorcerer dedicated to enchantment could throw a dominate (normal TN 25 gotta roll 45+) that would stick about 2/3 of the time, but has a mere 12% chance of not invoking perils of the warp and random bad crap happening, and then big G gets a save at 6k3 vs 25+(however much the caster rolled over 45) which is about 50/50 (28% 30+ and 13% 35+) and then the classic repeat saves if you want big G to to do stuff against it's nature like not eat the caster.

Change the conjuration magic focus to sword schools (requires a minor change in exaltation but no ability changes other than shifting 2 points from willpower to strength) to grab Devoted Spirit 5 instead of conjuration 5 and then Setting Sun instead of the Crisis Zone gun kata. Gives 16 style points to build a special attack using the Power Fist (10k5 reroll 1s for 7k3 impact, armor pen 4, power field), 5 style points freely then have to offset with restrictions. Crying shame we don't have power attack (-5 dice/+5 dice). +3 for Foe hammer (for each die that explodes (rolls 10) on damage roll an additional die of damage (may also explode)), +6 for Castigating Blow (add devotion score to rolled damage dice and heal yourself or an adjacent ally hp equal to the wounds you inflict), -2 no reactions until the start of your next turn, -1 roll a medic check vs target static defense or the attack fails, -1 attack has no armor penetration, then -7k0 to attack with 6x inaccurate and +7k0 of damage improvement. Finally name the attack "Can of Whoop-Ass". The attack will be at 3k3 reroll 1s to hit and do 7k3+6k0+7k0= 20k3= 10k8 damage with an additional die rolled for every die that explodes.

A Noble Sacrifice: GWB has gone insane and decided to attack Godzilla. We'll wait until the big G is near a building to pull a 2 die stunt involving surfing past the face on a magic carpet, through a window, grab a beam/door jam to swing around, then back out another window for a Can of Whoop-Ass uppercut to the jaw. That nabs us an extra 2k0 dice for all rolls, we'll drop a resource point to boost the medic check and a hero point to reroll anything that fails. Since we'll do this while big G is going less than 55 kph we only have to hit 5s (big stuff is easy to hit, hard to hurt). 6k2 vs 5 and 5k3 vs 5 just succeed and then we need to roll damage. Before rerolling 10s we actually have a 71% failure rate to wound big G (an actual melee focused build would have been better) so we run a simulator and... 45% chance to wound, So about a 70% chance to do one wound to big G if we use a hero point to reroll on failure on the damage.

If we instead went with a gun kata it's trickier because we have to punch through that void shield. But Silent Scope at 5 to go all sniper on big G gets us 15 style points for: +2 One Shot, One Kill to apply the Accurate property to the attack (adds more damage the higher the attack roll vs target number), +2 Boom, Headshot to apply a roll twice & use higher plus double armor penetration, -1 to make the attack require a perception pre-check, +2 accuracy improvement for 2k0 to hit, +1 for +2 more armor penetration, and -1 difficult shot for being unable to use the attack again on the next round (that's fine as our las cannon needs a recharge round and we have to take the aim action to enable the Accurate ability. This gives GWB an aimed attack of 10k6+2k0(aim)+2k0(atk)= 10k8 reroll 1s and roll twice take best, to do 5k5 damage with armor penetration 24 with the bonus that every +10 over the to hit number we roll adds +1k1 damage.

Perception of 6k3 makes the TN 5 or 10 to 'hit' big G and we roll our attack. As we're keeping 8 dice we can't miss and our most common result is ten raises (9, 10, & 11 raises covers 44% of all results) and we'll go ahead and skip the whole roll twice thing, for a cool 10k10 damage vs 44 resilience (because the 24 armor pen ignores the 20 point void shield and the 20 points of armor). 90% chance to wound, but only about a 5% chance to deal two wounds and (because we use the ginormous vehicle rules for a 125 meter tall Godzilla) force a test vs stumbling/crashing into something.

Now, big G whomping on GWB... hp 20, resil 6, ap 12-all, defense 11, dodge 2k2 (avg +5 def) or Porte spell if we prepped a landing spot at 10k5 drop 10s (avg +17). Big G attacks at 6k3 mostly for 95% hits if just dodging or 34% hit rate if we can Porte (but GWB ends up at the other portal so we can't use that every round), and the breath weapon would be used blast instead of accurate so that's +10 to hit on that which puts us back over 90% there. So, damage, breath at 7k4+35 (penetration > armor so armor has no effect) = 25% 62+, 50% 67+, 75% 74+ for 10-12 wounds per hit means 3 hits to dead dead but it can only shoot every other turn. If we get bit (lower chance to hit but no recharge) 10k5+20 -(12-5) armor vs pen = 10k5+15 for 25% 50+, 50% 57+, 75% 64+ for 8-10 wounds per hit means 3-5 hits to dead dead. The tail slap is just lower damage but can't be parried and since GWB isn't a kaiju or giant mecha that's probably not happening anyways. With heavy stunting and some teleportation GWB might get as many as 10-12 shots off before being pancaked or crisped. Not a win.

Diplomat Bob: Calculates the chances of orbital bombardment at too low to really work, plus the scatter on the missed shots would be... fun... But, if we want to do more than be a 'save the sheeples' taxi we have another option.
Calls for teleportation back up to the ship. Nukes Godzilla from orbit until it goes away. Dang, I forgot that DB's ship has a mostly defensive armament setup. Basically a "this will hurt A LOT if you try to engage" more than any sustained fire capability. This means the secondary energy weapon armament isn't going to cut it, we'll be limited to our 15/combat torpedoes (reloading the tube magazines from deep storage is too slow during the time a combat encounter takes). Running the numbers it looks like a 73.3% hit rate and the average scatter on misses is 7.72 kilometers. 11 hits at 10k10+15 ignores armor & shields, instant destruction on a direct hit (Godzilla seems to have survived being shot with a small black hole so even that's questionable) and half damage for every 400 meters from impact. Go the the sims labelled "kill big thing" and "blow up vehicle", now input the numbers... there's a 1/4 chance we take big G down but we can't kill him, we're basically doing 1 wound per hit and we've got a max of 15 to his 44.... from orbit. The partial wing console (anti-grav instead of an actual wing in this case) allows for atmospheric flight and planetary landings. Let's try RAMMING.

Godzilla is a size 44 entity at 125 meters, the ship is a size 57 entity at around 325 meters. To try to clip big G without crashing we'll be throttling our speed down to "helicopter" but since we don't need to shoot we can devote maximum crew to flying safely for a 10k3 vs big G's defense + dodge attempt. Still have a 90%+ hit rate even on above average dodge attempt if big G is moving 60-100 kph. Gonna call it all hits. Damage will be 57k10+27= 10k33+27= 10k10+142 average roll 60= 202/44= 4 wounds (+/-1 at most from damage roll variance).

Since dodging doesn't do anything Godzilla gets at least one shot with the breath weapon at 10k3 (aimed + accurate + stunt bonus for waiting until the last second) vs 0 (because size + direction of movement + range) doing a mere 7k4+35 plus an uncapped 1k1 add on for every 10 rolled over the target number. Most common is 5 or 6 raises so go with 6 that's 13k7= 10k8+35 with armor penetration 20 vs 57 resilience & 57 armor & 60 hull points (void shields cancel each other), so 94 to get that first hull point and 151 to reach the second. Calculators say... about a 30% chance to get 94+ and... well the million roll simulator did record hits of up to 169 bit it doesn't even get to 151 until 15 rankings after we drop below 0.1% chances. That's probably at best a 1/80,000 chance. Still, kaiju is kaiju and thus the damage warrants rolls on the ship critical calculator... if the fight goes 15 passes there's a 2.8% chance that Godzilla (well probably multiple plasma leak/engine breach crits) takes out the ship. On average though, over 15 passes the ship takes about 6-8 hull damage and loses 7.7/16*536= 257 crew. We are, of course, not considering random stunts the player & GM might think of in the middle of the fight. Also there's a 1/10 chance per hit of disabling a random console which has a 1/4 chance of being the anti-grav that lets us fly around in the atmosphere. Looks like DB could use the spaceship to ram Godzilla into going away, but at significant cost and risk.

Paranoid Bob: Gets issued a nuclear hand grenade, goes out, gets stepped on because this is Alpha Complex and it's funny. Gets issued another nuclear hand grenade, goes out, discovers the blast radius is farther than the throwing range. Gets issued another nuclear hand grenade, goes out, tries to use it to set a trap, and (50/50) either big G kicks it so it lands somewhere funny (next to PB, under a super-tank that flies up and lands on PB, something like that) or it explodes sending big G up in the air to come down somewhere funny (on top of PB, next to PB, on something important). It's a win by Paranoia measurement in that we're probably all falling down laughing, but not so much for Paranoid Bob.

Traveling Bob: Runs away before getting stepped on to watch the show from high orbit. Gets a bit of remorse and sends the robot back in the air-raft to rescue people while running data analysis on the rampage. Might figure out the radiation attraction. If so, then after the robot drops off a batch of people to safety sends it to a nearby nuclear plant or research station. Tries to convince the people to load a big lump radioactive of material on the raft (a research station might be more willing to try it) and orders the robot to fly it out near big G, hopefully leading it back out to sea. It either works or it doesn't, but either way TB starts filling out insurance claim forms immediately. So saves a bus load of people or two and could maybe lead Godzilla away, but at a possibly steep financial cost.

NichG

2023-05-21, 09:35 AM

Silly it is then.

1. You're in downtown Tokyo (or whatever's the closest approximation for the character's setting) having a nice day.
2. The warning sirens go off. The sky darkens. The theme music plays. People are running around screaming. The military starts rolling out heavy artillery in the streets.
3. Godzilla.

Your task: Do the appropriate in character things that change the course of the rampage. That can be saving more people, saving the city, stopping Godzilla, helping Godzilla, marrying Godzilla, whatever.

Well, both in temperament and ability, I'm probably ill-suited to do much here. Realistically speaking, its 'go to the nearest shelter as directed and wait'. I never even watched the Godzilla movies so its not like I have any kind of special relevant knowledge outside of general cultural awareness. I *might* be able to assist in an effort to translate or communicate or do movement/aggression predictive inference via machine learning techniques if an existing effort was underway and had support from the SDF, but its a long-shot that I would even get tapped for that kind of thing. So I guess I try to stream the Godzilla movies before the internet goes down and hope I understand things enough to not make any dumb moves? Or find the nearest Godzilla otaku and ask them what we should be doing...

If we were in full fiction mode and all tropes engaged, I did have a network of scientific contacts so I could hurriedly form a focus group of origins of life chemists, geologists, high pressure materials scientists, astronomers, ALifers, people from various space agencies, etc to come up with the one or two liner revelation to the actual protagonists of the film which ends up saving the day, and at least have a shot of 'appearing on camera'. "Tip it over! We can't hurt it but because of the square-cube law it will hurt itself!". But with a realistic no-character-sheet SI, this is more likely to produce a bunch of reflective papers 2-3 years after the event than to do anything radically effective in the heat of the moment. The only kind of thing I know which could be fast enough to possibly do anything within a 24 hour period would be the aforementioned statistical modeling stuff.

This one is definitely a 'there are people whose job it is to deal with this, and are better suited to dealing with this, and they aren't me' type of scenario for self-insert me.

Quertus

2023-05-21, 05:49 PM

The Silly Scenario

IIRC, Godzilla likes nuclear / radioactive material.

Unlike most lesser Kaiju, Godzilla pretty trivially just soaks conventional military firepower.

Well, the Telepathic Vampire could simply dominate Godzilla, and Dominate whoever was in charge of the military, and create an immediate cease-fire on both sides. He could even Mindrape Godzilla into his pet monster, and keep him long-term. But, really, if he could get to the shelters, he probably wouldn't bother - what's in it for him? Unless... unless he was a decoy copy from the previous challenges, now attempting to set himself up in Tokyo. In which case, "owner of the company with the pet Godzilla - a pet which destroys all military forces attempting to confiscate it from said company" sounds rather lucrative, even if a bit more high-profile than he'd prefer - he'll have to run the company from the shadows, I guess.

Alex Knight could easily be reskinned as a shut-in Otaku(?), I think. In which case... oh, right, minimal computer skills. Well... I guess there's a chance that, if his player pleaded with the GM, saying something like, "Tokyo's power grid always gets hacked in films like this, so surely it should be really easy to do for this challenge, right?", he might be able to con reality at a meta-level beyond what most Mages attempt, and get control of the power grid, causing selective brown-outs to attempt to distract and lead Godzilla, foiling the army's plans to attempt to electrocute the giant lizard. And, if his house gets destroyed, he can jump to the Umbra / Internet, where, if someone happens to be working on a giant robot, maybe he can install himself as its OS, destroying any chances that the robot will have any skill at fighting Godzilla. So... kinda impactful, maybe?

If push came to shove, Arma could fly up Invisible, and attempt to Polymorph Godzilla into a shrubbery. Given that he doubtless only fails his saving throw on a 1... wait, maybe I should check the table. Huh. Unless a Gargantuan, or the legendary Gargantuan Godzilla have special rules, he'll fail on a 3. But even 4 castings (2 per loadout) wouldn't be enough to hit 75% chance of success. Hmmm... Checking... Oh, and she took Enchantment/Charm, so her 5th level spell could be Hold Monster - which, when cast at a single target, imposes a -3 penalty to the saving throw, so Godzilla will fail on a 6. Math... 1-(.85^4x.70^2) -> 74.4%% chance of landing a spell. So close! So, if she's back home, and can spend her funds on a scroll, she should be able to hit 75% chance of doing something (if she has the opportunity to use two optimal loadouts...). That said, giving Godzilla a Quest sounds so much more fun that using Hold Monster to attempt to just decapitate him or something - and he'll take a -4 penalty to his saving throw vs Quest if he happens to be the same Alignment as Arma. As both are probably "undefined", it might count...

Depending on how Godzilla is statted, the MtG Mage with the Elven Chronomancer deck could, if they could manage to get going without interference, spam enough elves to use Wellwishers to tank Godzilla's attacks. With the stats I'd give Godzilla, the deck would just summon elves and extend time until the weight of all the elves multiplied over NI time caused Japan to sink into the waves. However, MtG apparently did a Godzilla-themed set, so, by his "real" stats, he'd be something of a pushover.

"Oh **** me, why didn't I prioritize finding the shelters" is about my first thought upon hearing the sirens, followed closely by "I hope somebody speaks English" or "are they blast shelters, fallout shelters, air raid shelters, or what?", depending on just how useful my brain is feeling at that point. Most likely, I die clutching my translation guide while explaining they my pie needs to use the lavatory in Spain, or something equally incoherent.

In an absolutely amazing display of Luck, Whizzy could have Flight and Tongues prepared, and be in the optimal position to fly up to Godzilla and come to understand exactly what the giant monster wants. Unfortunately, given his Charisma, he probably ticks Godzilla off, and it's Initiative to determine whether Godzilla eats the 3e Wizard before the army "accidentally" catches Whizzy in the crossfire. (Granted, if he's the merged Divine Whizzy from the previous set, he's probably just pulling a Fizban Feathersplat).

Matter Transformation should allow one to create radioactive material with which to distract Godzilla. But you know what the problem with that is? Alex Daeus doesn't have the "extras" to create such material safely, and isn't immune to radiation poisoning. I think he could spend a Hero Point to pretend he has the right extras once; after that, it's a sacrifice play.

Few can understand the will of Tzeentch, fathom what twisted schemes might have made him want Mr. T to encounter Godzilla. If Mr. T felt compelled to get involved, he would probably attempt to fire plasma rifles at Godzilla's tail from behind, doing approximately nothing to the giant lizard until it noticed him, turned around, and ate his power armor for the nuclear power. In the Grimdark of running Mr. T, sometimes Mr. T is the mid-battle snack. And I guess it could be funny if eating the mutant flesh or Warpstone in that snack caused Godzilla to mutate, and he got... <roll> Extra Mouth?! If Mr. T had been smarter (which, you know, maybe he realistically should have been), and activated his senses, and sensed Godzilla's mutations, he could have used Suppress Mutation to remove Godzilla's energy breath, or his regeneration. Or, you know, actually taken Godzilla's side in the fight. Or actually built some scheme on the fly, like... grrr... if this was actually Tokyo, in "Earth of the past", offering (as the only being as strange as Godzilla) to use his "strange origin advantages" to help analyze any samples taken from Godzilla. Which... probably wouldn't make any change to the "plot of the movie", as it were, it would just set Mr. T up to interact favorably with the highest levels of government moving forward. Which, of course, should be in no way concerning for said government.

Kane0

2023-05-21, 07:50 PM

Needle in a haystack: Nothing of note gained
Nautical Forgery: Nothing of note gained
Gotta be the Economy: Ruler of a small town
Dreamsick: Is affected by the dreamsick state
Suntan Lotion: Orbital death laser on-call (as long as he stays on that world)
Timeless City: A few looted doodads

The lizardmen will probably just compare notes on any cuisine they've encountered then go their separate ways, picking new times/places that interest them.

Lizardman is not equipped to fight a breath-weapon tarrasque. He will be getting the hell out of there, maybe looting some choice items along the way. He probably won't be able to outpace a determined pursuit but stealth wouldn't be a problem.

There's a 1 in 6 chance this would be Suntan Lotion Lizardman though, so maybe the space laser would have an affect on it? Lizardman would need to get *awfully* close though, probably not worth the risk.

Telok

2023-05-23, 06:38 PM

Well silly was silly. Although sending Godzilla on a quest would be really funny.

So after the Creely one we have Magical, Talky, and Mayhem. Opinions on order of operations?

1. People you know start acting weird. Not the important people, but the nobodies. The regular bum on the corner by where you work, the retiree with no family or friends who lives down the street, the kid in a dead end job and no social life. While they keep doing the same stuff there's no longer any worry, self pity, or unhappiness about it. They just have this sort of dull "loading... please wait" expression on their faces.
2. Eventually there's a few break ins around that the people who'se houses were broken into don't seem to care about. One morning after a commotion there's a house with a couple busted windows but the family doesn't call the police or anything. They just fix the windows and carry on. The whole family just has this sort of dull "don't care much" expression on their faces.
3. About a week later everyone like that goes away. The bum wandered off, the retiree booked a cruise, the family went on vacation... and they just don't come back. The houses go up for sale, cars are towed off for auction, and nobody leaves any forwarding addresses or anything.
4. At some point in the next year you might notice someone you know as a medical provider, like a general practitioner doctor or a dentist, is a bit off. They're still polite and professional, but the smiles are perfunctory and they don't do small talk any more.
4.a. If you use medical services then the next time you visit a doctor they look up your nose and find a cancerous lesion or weird lump or something. They'd like to cut it out and do a biopsy. There'll be a little anesthesia involved.
4.b If you are in the medical services you'll notice an up tic in nose cancers and biopsies that involve usually unnecessary general anesthesia and turn out to be benign.
5. It's your turn.

Oh yeah, this is one of those 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' things. They came from dimensional portals to somewhere bad and started out looking like fast hairy worms. Crawled in the noses of the homeless and isolated while they slept. Followed the nasal nerves into the brain and took control. Moved into other isolated individuals with few connections looking for their lever. Later they ganged up to attack families, ten or twelve body snatchers at a time, holding people down and shoving other brain worms up their noses.

Eventually they hit on the medical providers. Doctors and dentists mostly. Start grabbing them and ditching the old hosts. Now they're not finding nose cancers, they faking them. Using it as an excuse to put in, not a brain worm this time unless you're a medical person yourself, but an egg. They're small, maybe 5-7 mm or a bit less than a quarter inch across, and will hatch in 3-5 years.

This will depend a lot on the character's native setting and interactions with medical providers. Medieval types in our history would happily put a dried lettuce pellet up their nose if someone reputable swore it would ward off gout or plague. Far future people might have home medical scanners that can't be fooled. Shut ins might be targeted early by four or five of the body-snatched in a dark alley. People who never go to a doctor or dentist may not notice anything until a few more years down the road when world politics takes a sudden turn for the weird.

"Dr. Bob, paging Dr. Bob"

Paranoid Bob: Doesn't notice anything wrong until it's too late. Far far too late.

The body snatchers went for the cloning vat techs. Every new clone comes out with an egg in the brain. It's only a matter of time until Alpha Complex becomes a creepier version of the creepy utopia it was supposed to be. The only chance anyone has is the occasional random exploded head exposing a mature worm taking up most of the brain space. Unfortunately that's probably mostly put down to commies, mutants, traitors, or commie mutant traitors playing around with bio-weapons. Best course of action the R&D folk get in on it, make a working scanner, and the Computer makes the correct deduction that ALL cloning vat personnel, ALL new clones, and ALL ultraviolet high programmers have to be scanned NOW or be terminated. Worst thing is they got a ultraviolet early on and there's been a line added to the Computer's code that says brain worms can't exist, it's all a commie mutant plot, terminate the clones claiming worm sign immediately. Paranoid Bob is a helpless gear in the machine for this one.

Travelling Bob: Woah, that xenobiology training came in ultra handy. I did not intend that. This might actually work out.

These things might take some frontier worlds but as soon as they hit high tech civilization with real public health reporting, A.I.s checking for patterns, and sensors that flag stuff without human intervention, then it's all over. The only question is if TB gets medical zapped or not. If (and it's an important if) TB gets the idea that something is up then it's an easy solution. Brain affecting xeno-parasites are not unknown in Traveller (seriously, people have been writing for the game for nigh on 40 years now, there is seriously weird stuff out there). They're along the lines of various things people visiting unusual or new frontier worlds check for. You know, psychoactive pollens, alien pheromones, assorted spores for mold/fungus analogs that do anything from dissolve plastics and rubbers to turn people into flesh eating zombies, an infinite variety of bacteria/virus type things, leftover weaponized nanotech from the Ancients when they wiped themselves out, telepathic animal predators.

So we have a lab ship and the knowledge on hand, we'd just have to trigger the "check the brain" suspicion. Which is... heck I don't know how likely it is. Totally depends on the interpersonal relationships between TB and the NPCs. Of course since Traveling Bob doesn't normally stick around one place for years we could, if there's no reason to visit a local doctor or dentist, just pass on through the system all unknowing. And of course any off-world brain scan by a non-body snatched doctor will throw all sorts of alarm bells, and you might get that as a general follow up from a "hey I was on a frontier planet and had a nose cancer removed, can we check to make sure it didn't come back".

I think I'd put this one down as technological civilization wins (eventually). Whether TB does or not.

Gun Whore Bob: I looked at the inventory, saw 'Doc-Bot 9000', and stopped worrying. Edit: I got to the end and started worrying again.

Merc thought process: 1) survive, 2) & 3) do the job & get paid, the order depending on the job, the customer, and our principals.

The doc bot and any mercs trained in medicine (which does include GWB because bleeding out is a thing in this game) are the primary medical go-to for GWB's followers. That means we're facing... likely a compromised employer. This imperils the "do the job" and "get paid" parts of being a merc. Right. The employer starts acting funny. Detect magic, no magic. Check for treason & blackmail, GWB is not very good but someone on staff is likely at least half decent. Check for drugs in the water, gasses, etc., and more nope but now the tri-corder/auspex have been broken out. Scan the employer, say we're checking for bugs & other eavesdropping. GWB's medical of 4k3 vs probably 20 is... wait logically doc-bots have sensitive scanners, we'll claim we've modded it for bug detection and scan the whole room including the people in there at <check the robot's build> 10k5, well freak the heck out, no wonder the bloody thing costs as much as a small Boeing 737. Yeah, it finds it and can probably extract the thing without any additional harm. Doesn't help if the worm lobotomized our employer, but at least warm bodies can make sure we get paid and don't add any mission creep.

So we've identified the problem. Can we shoot it? No, not really. Conjuration magic doesn't help outside of summoning a 4 skill + 4 attribute something to try to help for 5 minutes at a time. Call our contacts? No, Cocaine Wizard would want to mutate it, Cleric of Lolth would want to weaponize it, Rogue Trader would want to monetize it. We need to regularly scan Bun-Bun the company mascot just to be safe (because T-Rex). Hmm... Do the job, get paid, and... tell someone likely to want to fix this? Like really truly fix it, not make a deal for universal domina....tion... Call up the nearest illithid embassy. Tell them they have competition. Successful competition. That'll take care of it.

Right? Win? Maybe? Now I'd start worrying again.

Diplomat Bob: Is a vampire plant-person... We'll since DB is safe, what about... oh crap, we're going to try to monetize this for Aztechnology aren't we?

Right. Diplomat Bob has all the right skills & stats to notice something is wrong with the way people are acting and narrow it down a lot. Has a med-kit, tricorder, and laptop computer listed in personal inventory. Has 85% to personally ID target number 20s for figuring stuff out and a 20% chance per try at hitting 35+ if we reroll anything. Hmm, the dryad species date rape pollen ability probably doesn't work on the body snatchers because they aren't the ones being affected, their meat suit is. Well that's another tip off as to exactly what's wrong.

Devise a plan and put it into action: Invite a few people up to the ship for drinks and/or lucrative business contracts (sex or money, one or the other will work on most people). Knock them out and take them down to medical for a full work up. We don't have the advanced medical suite console but that just means we aren't building our own cyberware, doing any cloning, or high quality plastic surgery. Discover the worms and... open up negotiations of business opportunities. Well this went to icky real fast. Going to have to keep this real quiet from the regular crew, it's the sort of thing they probably wouldn't like... Maybe the Common Sense feat would kick in for 5k4+5 vs TN 15 to not make bone headed mistakes... Right, plan B time. Expose and end the body snatcher menace through a well crafted public awareness campaign and bomb people from orbit if they disagree. Secretly acquire some eggs, maybe an adult or two, and put them into a small stasis box that will be discreetly mailed back to Aztechnology HQ on one of our own courier ships.

Personally, ick. But it's a win as far as the Diplomat Bob character is concerned.

NichG

2023-05-23, 09:02 PM

Hm...

So, I think there's a good 25% chance of 'death during the load screen' - as I don't have that many face-to-face interactions with others, so I might end up a break-in candidate before I even know stuff is going on. On the plus side, I do a lot of interactions with others which require me to talk in an animated fashion so I'd be a real exposure risk for them - win the scenario by dying valiantly to expose them? I also don't have much contact with doctors, so if I don't get a critical existence failure early on, I've probably got a few years worth of runway to figure stuff out.

Depending on who around me does end up getting hit first, it will either be ridiculously suspicious or 'well I didn't know them anyhow'. In the second case, the break-ins and lackluster response to said break-ins would be the point at which things would be weird enough for me to consider 'something is going on that I need to make decisions about'. Either way, once I get clued in, I do regularly talk quite a bit with people in various places over the world, so I could probably establish pretty quickly that this is, at least at first, a local phenomenon. And possibly get a clue when the phenomenon spreads and how.

If I noticed through changes to my neighbors, I'd probably ask questions or probe the change in personality in a way that would get me targeted since I wouldn't be hiding that I'm suspicious or concerned = interested in getting to the bottom of things. So probably another 25% chance of getting taken over here.

My main two hypotheses would be 'some kind of cult' or 'some kind of disease that causes symptoms like a lobotomy'. Seeing whether and how it spreads would really be the thing that makes the difference there, and how exactly the things answer probing questions. The tension is, selling your stuff and disappearing says 'cult' and is really weird for 'disease', whereas having a total loss of personality could possibly be a 'disease' thing but with a cult I would expect some kind of obsession at the very least. As a third hypothesis, it could be a drug thing, but depending who I saw get this way it might have to be an involuntary drugging somehow. So the way I'd get evidence one way or another would be to look at real estate listings and see if there's a noticeable rash of houses getting sold, how that pattern spreads, and if the houses are being listed in weird ways or for prices that don't make sense. I'm not really qualified to just spot that, so I'd have to research it a bit and maybe talk to a real estate agent or two to try to put things together, but if that works I have at least a crude way of monitoring the spread. Given that, I can look at things like 'is it exponential?' and maybe narrow things down a bit. If the spread mapped this way seems targeted, well, thats enough probably to really freak me out.

Also at this point given the 'symptoms' I might be considering getting the heck out of the area at least temporarily until someone figures out what the heck this thing is. And certainly I'm not going to follow the medical advice of anyone showing this kind of symptom, so I'd escape the doctor trap.

So now the question is, okay, I've noticed something - how do I get enough evidence that I'm not just going to be taken to be a crazed conspiracy theorist? This depends a lot on how careful the invaders are being - if any of their hosts gets knocked out via blunt force trauma to the head (car accidents, people wielding fireplace pokers during the break in attempts, ...), well, x-rays and MRIs will probably reveal the invader and then other people will be more active in the scenario than I would be. If any of the hosts die in vaguely suspicious circumstances, autopsy might reveal them as well.

But lets say that this doesn't happen and they're careful enough that for some reason I have to be the one to proactively expose them. First thing is to show the weird epidemic of bad real estate judgment to colleagues and see if anyone knows anyone who knows anyone in the CDC, sort of connections. I know a few people who ended up working for Mayo clinic, and I've talked with a few people who do (pure theory) disease modeling, so... maybe? Otherwise, its kind of trendy these days to speculate about mental health epidemics from various indirect causes - COVID isolation, social media, etc - so maybe just being willing to say the right (misleading) things to a reporter in the context of 'I have a PhD and I do modeling and am willing to embarrass my profession in front of the world!' would at least get a story out that might have people investigating it just to disprove the obviously false points I'd be making. Like if I say its an epidemic of contagious bad decision-making because of people introducing each-other to ChatGPT and they're all using it to price their houses, or something clickbait-y like that. But that's kind of weak...

Just because its more funny, I think the real strategy here is to become the county coroner abuse the power of that position to ensure that autopsies including examination of the brain are done more frequently. Where I live, the coroner is an elected position and notably does not require any kind of medical certification or degree, and is not exactly the most competitive of elected public offices. So in order to save the world, I must run for coroner!

Anyhow, basic pattern of action here would be: 'avoid the phenomenon, get enough evidence to expose the phenomenon to the world, step aside and let doctors and soldiers and so on actually deal with it at scale'.

Using the real estate misjudgment model with a bit of statistical analysis to locate patient zero and finding the portal might be a fun side-branch to consider! But probably that's death by succeeding too well.

Quertus

2023-05-23, 09:19 PM

Horror Scenario

This kind of "mass mind control" is the bread and butter of superheroes like the M&M Omnimancer. A little boost to Bluff (so as not to seem to notice) and Sense Motive, followed by some discrete mind scans (of present and past versions of the target(s)) quickly clues the Omnimancer in on what is happening. A little mind / memory reading later (just in case they had some benevolent objectives), and the Worms don't live a day past discovery, their corpses handed over to experts to develop immunizations to give to the public.

The telepathic vampire decoy clone really can't be bothered to care... until the first time the Worms take control of one of his Tokya-based employees. Then (after confirming, engineering, or getting his companion to magic that they are immune), he sends clones of Godzilla by the thousands to wreck their universe (by this point, he's seen Kaiju movies, and knows better than to trickle them in). And maybe does something about the Worms in this world, too. However, if his experiments indicated that Vampires might be vulnerable to the Worms from another Dimension, that's when he'd get ugly. He would begin bio-engineering predators specifically designed for them, starting most likely with "Vampire Worms", up through plagues that cause the Worms to "Transdimensional Sneeze" when infected, in an attempt to wipe them from existence.

LtC Staltek Vir finds this almost too easy. Between his telepathic powers, tricorders, various medical scanners, and the ubiquitous Transporter, it's trivial for him to detect and remove these parasites, all with rolls it's impossible for him to fail. Oh, and did I mention that the crew of the Zero is strongly encouraged to follow and exceed the Federation's usual depravities, to the point that the Worms of greater "meh" would be extra noticeable?

The Shadowrun Troll is surprisingly well equipped to handle this. As a flying, invisible (inaudible, odorless) instant death machine, they can easily investigate these strange events (albeit poorly), remove any suspicious and unimportant individuals (ie, anyone from the entire 1st crop), get someone else to figure out what's going on, develop a Detection spell to find the Worms, and finish wiping out the Worms, long before things get weird.

Agent Ackron (Marvel) already uses Mindworms to control people, so he's intimately familiar with the concept. So it's just a "my dad can beat up your dad" question of whether his Worms can beat up the other dimension's Worms, as he's never tried to worm an already-wormed target. Failing that, surgery is a likely option he'd pursue. And, if the invading Worms are as good as his, they're worth a lot of Karma each, meaning he can afford to succeed on his rolls to deworm the world.

Harry the Happy Hermetic would be in the worst position here. As something of a "guardian between worlds", he (and his knights) might be among the first targeted. Lacking the civilian targets in which to notice the changes, all it would take would be one night of drunken festivities, people leaving to relieve themselves getting Worms until an entire shift on watch had Worms, and it would be over for the sleeping knights. Harry's only hope would be if his new divine status made him immune; otherwise, the Worms gained a powerful ally.

Speaking of WoD Mages, as he never leaves the house, Alex Knight probably wouldn't notice anything amiss until world politics got weird. By then, it would probably be too late for him to do anything about it (other than maybe raise an alarm), as his spirits can't really operate freely without the limited power he can provide them. Hopefully there's some other beings left who can handle this problem. The only plus side is, the Worms would never survive attempting to infect him.

Batting 0 for 3 for the WoD, Dr. Angelus Benway, as a Doctor, might well be targeted by the Worms, and would be an easy target while passed out.

Sleeping outdoors at scenario start once again could prove fatal to Nami of the Thousand Eyes (child version), as she may well be one of the first victims. Her older self would have never been caught by the Worms, even while asleep. Sigh.

If my doctor ever went all "meh" on me, I'd probably joke about him having been replaced. Beyond that? I'm not sure how all my microtransactions would handle Prozac Botox world. But I'd probably poke the latest Prozac Botoxians about the break-ins, which might lead to break-ins for me, too, if they cared.

Cutter is feeling kinda left out, as he hasn't really been terribly appropriate to any of the 3 challenges so far. So, evaluating them, I decided he'd have more to say about the Silly one.

(Yes, I have other characters in the original challenges who haven't been heard from yet, either. They're apparently just more patient that Cutter.)

Cutter Fyord would stare wide-eyed, trickling bouncy balls into the street while mumbling "Big. Big big big big big. Rhymes with Fig. Fig... doesn't even have a fig leaf. Big Fig leaf. Big big big big big." Once Godzilla got too close, started glowing, or started taking hits from the military, Cutter would "eep" out a short(ish)-range Teleport to get away from the action.

He'd likely continue watching, and start broadcasting useless commentary over the radio about the fight, while trickling bouncy balls and building up mana until things looked hopeless and he built up enough mana to fulfill his perverse desire to have Godzilla's head pop off, and the giant girl inside take off her giant rubber costume, and look around, confused. Deal with that, Tokyo! Take that, square-cube law! You're welcome, Tokyo.

Not the kind of magic he prefers to use, but something times call for something actions, for some value of "something".

Telok

2023-05-25, 10:17 PM

Well its been a quiet couple of days, let's see what's left in the run... magical, talky, and mayhem... in the file... Ah, magical is up next. Yeah, some characters will be fine and others might die in under 30 minutes <cough>Paranoid Bob<cough>.

1. Walking along minding your own business then ZAOOP! you're standing in dead elf.
2. Actually, it's worse than that. You're on a hillside that's seen some nasty fighting recently and there's a battlefield below you. Looks pretty standard Medieval except there's more fires, what looks like a wrecked six "barrel" rotary auto-ballista (pretty sure the operator shouldn't be pinned through the head with what looks like a ballista bolt that went backwards too), and a very dead shredded and on fire dragon.
2.a. Oh, and the elf is somewhere between deep fried and 75% covered in caustic acid burns.
2.b There's trees at the top of the hill if you'd like to hide now.
3. Some of the armored figures down below are walking around killing the wounded by shoving hooked swords in their guts and pulling out the intestines & stuff, then watching them bleed to death.
4. You're holding a note that says "Sorry we couldn't get you here without them noticing. You may want to start running."
4.a. The people down below have not noticed you. Yet.

Your task: Can we just assume you don't want to die a horrible death?

Yes, it's Krynn during one of the nasty wars. If you're an Earth/RL insert then you only have what you remember unless you habitually carry around a tablet loaded with the wikis, books, adventures, etc. No, there's no wifi or cell service here. No, they don't speak English either, Elvish is not Spanish, and Dwarven is not Gaelic.

It's likely the War of the Lance but it could be late Legend of Huma or even one of the early bits before the cataclysm. It'll be hard to tell for a while... Ok, it's the War of the Lance, just because. Any ways, the dead dragon is copper colored under the smoke & fire & blood & charred bits, and the nasty people are draconians & unpleasant human types. There's going to be some fresh fighting in fifteen or twenty minutes as generic adventuring party teleports in, two young adult black dragons (one with someone waving a staff that glows and shoots fireballs) come back around looking for you, and some mystery person in a red robe pops up about twenty feet from where you appeared. At that point the soldiers will start coming up the hillside, until the heavy magic artillery starts flying.

If you want to stick around and manage to stay out of it they'll blow up the hillside a bit, one of the dragons will be badly injured along with the rider, an adventurer gets a double acid breath bath & starts acting like that elf you stepped in, and red robes pops in and out of invisibility throwing the occasional ice storm/chain lightning that hits basically everyone other than you & him. It'll be a bit of a draw as the dragons eventually retreat, the adventurers whip out a scroll to teleport out, and red robes slouches off invisible.

There are at least three factions hunting you. Someone in the dragon armies is using Sending/far-talking type spells to coordinate. The adventurers are working for the white robe wizard faction but have the usual murder-hobo modus operandi (yes killing you and raising you later is on the table if you're easier to catch and carry that way) and Comprehend Languages isn't a murder-hobo spell. The red robe is actually completely mercenary and will pump you for information while trying to get the best deal for selling you to either side unless you can convince him/her it's more profitable to keep you around.

Apparently someone threw you in as a sort of wild card.

Bob's day out.

Amusingly Krynn is actually a part of my DtD40k7e setting. Not a nice part as the local gods turn out to be even bigger hypocritical jerks than usual. They run everything like some demented board game.

Dtd40k7e Krynn (abbreviated)

Conditions: Of all the known spheres, Krynn is considered among the most primitive and pristine. At roughly 13 billion kilometers in diameter, Krynn is considerably larger than most other spheres and is plagued by small lethal clouds of -500°C vapor that attack spelljamming vessels (the violation of absolute zero is what makes them dangerous). The entire sphere has significantly above average magical flux levels, making spellcasting more powerful and preventing sorcerers from casting fettered spells. Also of note is that while humans are a recent arrival on the galactic scene the native history of this sphere indicated they've been here all along. Yet a previous galactic census from 4000 years ago records no humans or other unknown species. Divinations have confirmed that the local god-spirits rewrote local history to include humans around 870 years ago. Not that they rewrote accounts or records or memories, they rewrote the literal history of the interior of the Krynn crystal sphere.

Traveler's Aid Society Official Danger Level Ratings
A. Combat Hazard Class 4: The planets are all those sorts of silly places with powerful spirits acting as gods to retard technological and cultural development by constantly interfering with local civilizations, starting wars, exploding volcanoes, spreading plagues, and dropping a comets on the inhabitants. They have also at least once rewritten all of history inside the sphere.
B. Magical Hazard Class 1: The entire sphere has significantly above average magical flux levels, making spellcasting more powerful and preventing sorcerers from casting fettered spells. Actually, psykers can use their powers fettered but it has the same effect as if they were using their powers normally in a regular sphere. Likewise they can use their powers normally but it results in warpy crap as though they had pushed themselves in a normal sphere.
C. Navigational Hazard Class 4: Black Clouds of -500°C vapor roam the outer reaches of the system and are attracted to technology, magi-tech, ship's shields, modern spelljamming helms, and large moving metal objects. This is because the gods/ruling spirits don't like it. As absolute zero is -273.15°C contact with these clouds is extremely dangerous. They are also invisible to normal scanners. They will not approach wooden sailing-type ships with ancient spelljamming helms that are powered by pure magic. Since the distance from the crystal shell to the nearest planet is 5.7 billion km (952 kVU) and ancient spelljamming helms top out at around 25% normal speed it'll take about 11 standard years to get there by that method.

Krynn is a typical terrestrial planet with the usual variety of terrain types, five continents and a multitude of islands. The continent of Taladas has a great lava sea in the middle that's leftover from the last time the local gods smote the planet again. The other continent to note is the big one called Ansalon. In the tropical seas of the northern hemisphere lie the Dragon Isles which are the ancestral home of the local dragon population, and where many of them dwell to this day. There are hundreds of communities of various sizes on Krynn; including sprawling cities, thriving towns, comfortable boroughs and tiny hamlets. Governments include monarchies, oligarchies, democracies, collegiums, hierarchies, patriarchies, republics, magocracies, theocracies, and more. The communities range from large towns that are a veritable patchwork of races, to smaller ethnically pure racist xenophobe enclaves. A recent world war involving some local dragonborn was pretty nasty and any visiting dragonborn can expect prejudice ranging from extra social distancing to spontaneous lynching. There are currently only two ports that are capable of catering to primitive wooden spelljamming vessels, and both are located close to major cities - one in Ansalon and the other in Taladas. Ships that land elsewhere often use both terrain and magic to camouflage their presence, to keep from startling the local populace and getting murdered. Palanthus is the largest city on Ansalon with it's port covering nearly two square kilometers, and knights and warriors loyal to Palanthas are stationed throughout the port waiting to murder any signs of trouble. Kristophan is a major port city on the continent of Taladas, the port is located on the outskirts of the Imperial City district and is under the direct control of the local Emperor. The port itself consists of a rock-tiled slab nearly 2 square kilometers with four buildings, including a large stone-built barracks to house the minotaur warriors who provide port security; a dormitory for human slaves; the port master's home and the port master's offices. At one time, Krynn was home to a highly advanced, magically endowed but morally decadent civilization. This civilization was eliminated, by the local deities, when an asteroid struck the continent of Ansalon. The impact destroyed much of the civilizations throughout the world. The loss of life was enormous, and the various nations sank into warring savagery that they are only just recovering from today.

Yeah, a primitive and annoying place to visit.

Diplomat Bob: Is annoyed at how long it will take to get back to civilization.

DB's rank 3 mentor is the spirit of dead Tiamat. Krynn is a super minor unimportant sphere so lets set the know check at 35 (near impossible) immediately on landing, dropping automatic once we corner a local and ask what the world's name is. 5k4+5 avgs 45% rate on a straight up check, so we'll assume we need to shake someone down to figure that out. Next we're glad we don't have that vampire weakness to sunlight and I think we'll back off to those trees (let's take the dead elf with us for parts) and stealth away a bit. Hmm... check the stats for a wizard capable of casting 4th level spells to see if we think we can take the red robe dude for a snack/info. No, don't check, wizards are (on average) physically a little on the weak side. If we can surprise him with a las blast to the back and a grapple+bite we should be able to knock him out. Dragons are rough customers in DtD40k7e though, even the young ones.

Let's see, disguise ourselves as the dead elf (relying on being a no-heartbeat vamp to pull off the 'dead' part with extra +1k0 verisimilitude) at 6k4= avg 30 then hide for 4k3= avg 21, then the people appear down slope say 30 meters and immediate fighting... check some average perception scores & range/distraction penalties base tn 23 & -4k0 for trees+combat is... 3k3 red robe & base warriors & caster, 7k4 dex warrior, 8k4 bounty hunter, 8k5 dragons... well bounty hunter and dragons on average spot but don't penetrate the dead elf disguise. Hmm... let's wait until after the fight to try for someone because dragons and DB isn't actually a trained sniper. Can we track the invisible red robe? Invis on RR gives about avg 25 stealth check and DB has avg 23 even on using a blood point to boost. Drat.

Well eventually someone is questioned (wait until a soldier wanders off alone to pee & start with a lasgun burst from behind then grapple/bite or first aid to stop them from dying), we summon up the spirit mentor and throw a hissy fit over being stuck in the boonies, then join the dragon armies for a while as a manager, possibly prodeuction/logistics since we have a laptop computer and know about spreadsheets. Possible to whip up a primitive Morse code radio & work->electricity set up to get a non-magic communications edge. After a while (as soon as it's obvious to us that the war isn't going to end well) throw another, bigger, fit and get our mentor to contact someone else in her cult outside the sphere to let our ship & followers know where we are. Then it's bulling/bribing an adult dragon or higher level caster to do some scrying & teleport us to the edge of the crystal sphere when the ship arrives and opens a portal.

Gun Whore Bob: Is pissed and starts by shooting people. Later takes a command until someone makes contact or there's a known ship available.

GWB starts off by heading downhill shouting at people with 5k2 command and intimidate backed up by suppressing fire from a machine gun if they get uppity. GWB is actually on par with a young dragon in combat (similar hp, armor, defense, melee, & different but equal-ish casting & ranged weapons) so probably ends up with the adventurers assuming one of the speaks gnome or GWB's remaining undefined language (I was lazy). The las cannon, rocket launcher, and machine gun will eventually run out of ammo but we're still a brutal brawler with the power armor + power glove and conjuration spells for movement. Oh, the "good guy" armies get nasty with someone on their side who has modern combined force tactics training and can cast Gate a lot. I think the war might end a bit faster. GWB probably exits the current class at some point at get a martial class that includes Power Attack and the brawling weapons sword school.

Eventually at some point I think the mercenary company will talk GWB's allies into some divinations to look for and then the Rogue Trader will do a stop by. Luckily they're actual allies and not contacts, so they're by definition GWB's friends and won't charge GWB for services rendered. Definitely own them a favor though, but that's just friends for you. Happily, once someone gets to KrynnSpace and makes contact, then GWB can Gate over to the ship on their own after a few hours.

Traveling Bob: Is crap outta luck.

A carbine and a pocket full of shells isn't going to get us far no matter how good we are with them. Mechanical engineering 4, medical 1, electronics 1, computers 1, wilderness survival 3, age 55... I think it's hooking up with the red robe and possibly ending up at Mt. Nevermind fixing the lethal flaws in the tinker gnome stuff for the rest of our life. At least we can get them to invent (and then TB fixes the designs) modern plumbing so there's a hot shower every morning and some flush toilets.

In theory we can go back to the 'computer simulation' version since magic doesn't exist in Traveller but short of a way to discover it's a sim we get the same result.

One other options is to go all Dragon Riders of Pern by Anne McCaffery on this. Traveller does have psionics and there is a (dangerous due to conservation of energy meaning altitude changes cause +/- heat gain or else momentum gets conserved) teleportation discipline. So we can have a tech fallen, lost colony, gene-geneered dragon-like lifeforms, and high levels of psionic ability in the local population. Precisely how TB ends up there is questionable given the entrance we made, but it's within the realm of possibility.

The 'gods' would end up being powerful immaterial psychic gestalts, probably having something to do with some leftover Ancients so-advanced-it's-like-magic technology installation somewhere deep in the planet. Draconians are probably a recent engineered mutation in the local dragon-like lifeform population. Overall not too much changes (except the dragons all breathe fire and need to eat specific hydrocarbon bearing rocks to use it) unless TB can find some evidence of the Ancients and cobble up a psi disruption device out of primitive materials. On the other hand xenobiology and medical training come in handy to usher in the revolutionary ideas of hand washing and antibiotics.

Paranoid Bob: TLDR - ends quickly and hilariously and long as your name isn't Bob.

PB is yoinked out in the middle of a mission. Let's see what R&D has saddled us with... foldable note pad, antimatter spray paint, collapsible gauss cloak, anti-flammable smoke weapon attachment... That's a pad of paper, death in a can, an electromagnetic shielded cloak that folds up really small, and a smoke generator that fits on the end of a gun and does not use an exothermic chemical reaction. Plus our usual 3 laser pistol barrels, personal hand grenade, shiny red reflec armor, assorted mandatory optional happiness pills, personal digital companion (smartphone), and our ability to safely eat anything.

We've done the computer sim version before, let's just play this one straight. Ye gads, color coded dragons, that'll be a hilarious culture shock if PB gets to treat a white dragon as way more important then a red dragon (from lowest to highest Paranoia security clearance: black-red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet-white). OK, looking at our skills "find hiding spot" plus a couple perversity and we're good for a while until we get over the lack of a ceiling and all the filthy dirt everywhere.

Man look at those commie mutant traitors go flashing their powers all over the place. Hey, a person in red, must be a fellow troubleshooter, take some notes about the use of unregistered mutant powers and go try to talk to them. Ouch, Alpha Complex is monocultural and mono-lingual, that won't work well and now we're in the middle of a fight. Fire up the smoke screen, run around in a panic being chased armored people with swords and giant lizards. Maybe the people at the bottom of the hill will help us escape these maniacs?

Let's drop the can of anti-matter spray paint and run away from that, it's just ultra dangerous. Oops, the people at the bottom of the hill are all mutant lizard people, run back up the hill! Running through the smoke, trying to keep away from people. Who's this in the smoke? Crap, he's got the spray paint can! Shoot him! Quick before he gets too close! The GM is so using perversity to run that roll up to 20 and a crit fumble. Look up the usual mass of spray paint in a can... looks like about 120 grams... HA! someone has an online antimatter explosion calculator... right, well that's only 5 megatons... oh hey nuclearsecrecy.com has a nuke explosion generator overlaid on google maps... 500 foot fireball, moderate damage blast radius 2500 feet, 3rd degree burns on exposed skin to 0.6 miles.

Well then, after about 30 minutes everyone loses except for people who think explosions are funny.

Quertus

2023-05-26, 10:53 PM

Magical Magical Responses.

Mr. T would just start murdering everyone. They would all crumple like guardsmen before him. He would laugh maniacally from his hilltop vantage... until two dragons wheel around to attack. Melta weapons are one of the few things that really hurt, and here someone decided to not just bioengineer living melta guns, but to field multiple at the same time?! Clearly his own bioengineering work is being put to shame. His best bet is to concentrate fire on one, then use their terrible mobility against the second, and stab it with his Sword of Magic Jar, placing an ally's soul inside the beast. Ideally, he'll get the Dragon to kill its rider, and carry the corpse of its twin off for Mr. T to collect samples, dissect the remains, and learn how to create and improve upon the awesome might of the Melta Dragon. In the gramdark of running Mr. T, the battlefield teaches that one must perfect bioweapons of mass destruction.

Arguably one of my most suboptimal characters ever, Yiiksuv is almost perfectly designed for this scenario. He'd immediately charge the armored forms, and start ripping them apart. As a flying, regenerating Troll with full elemental immunity, and a self-styled dragonslayer, his biggest concern would be getting mobbed by hoards of soldiers on the ground, or hoards of draconians in the air. The only imperfection to his design as far as this scenario is concerned is that he comes from a D&D world where Common is English. Unless the enemies mobbed him, he could probably hold out long enough for the murderhobos to appear; but even if they took him down, it's not like anyone could actually kill him. Seems like, eventually, he'd regenerate, and join forces with the murderhobos in wiping out the forces of evil. His only contribution to the war, long-term, would be in *ahem* "breeding services", giving the good dragons a strong counterpart to the Draconians.

What's a Guildmaster to do when faced with a war? "Um, nope!" One Gate later, and he's home. Now, maybe John Faseman bothers to craft an invisible Observer, to send it back in time to watch and record the battle, and to (in theory) eventually allow him to translate the language, and buy it as a new skill. Then, if he cared, he could create a faux-Adamantium Golem out of toothpaste and tinfoil, and use Gate to send it back in time to slaughter incapacitate whichever side annoyed him more. That said, if there's a side that didn't annoy him, he might open negotiations to trade for those spiffy Dragonlances; otherwise, he'll just take the Karma hit, and loot them off of both sides (or legitimately buy them from a 3rd party who looted them off of both sides). The only problem is that his clever time-travel-dependent plans likely auto-fail, due to the Raistlin-implemented temporal mechanics of Krynn. So he's home safe and sound, with a free Observer to use on some other future quest, and likely forgets all about Krynn.

Alex Daeus, the M&M Matter Manipulator, pullint tricks like "the air is death" and "your armor is lava" should be enough to wipe out most foes. The acid-breathing dragons finding that the better part of their breath weapon was replaced with Folgers Crystals All Your Base Are Belong To Us will likely have very surprised riders watching their mounts' heads explode. Of course, there's a good chance the murderhobos get the same treatment, so Red and Alex likely team up to loot the deserted battlefield. And to exterminate every single other being to enter a battlefield, ever, for the rest of the war. 100% casualties on both sides might change the outcome of the war just a tad. Sadly, this only lasts until someone targets Alex with a spell that doesn't involve matter, at which point he dies.

The MtG Mage has some pros and cons. On the plus side, as the only MtG Mage in the world, everything he sees is unclaimed, and something he can turn into his own summons / his own spell. On the downside, there's no source of spells for him to purchase. Not that any of that matters - depending on his turn length, he and his elves would likely die to the gathered army long before he really gets going.

A little bit of "Imperius" later, and Ambrosia Slughorn is all over the "take me to your leader" line. Unfortunately, despite being awed by the number of Dragons they have to field, she seems to have ended up on the losing side of this war, and... unless her squishy mage self can somehow Expelliarmus away Dragonlances without dying in the process to the counterattacks, she really can't contribute much to change the outcome of this historic series of events.

If I think this is a dream, I might just charge the armored beings below -> Death.

I might (if I don't notice / pay attention to what they're doing to the dead) try to hide among the dead bodies -> Death.

I might "I've always wanted to try this" try to hide in the dead dragon. This isn't the way my brand of stealth usually works, but, even if it does somehow pass a 1st inspection, scry & fry tactics -> Death.

If the red-robed Wizard happens to look enough like Quertus, I might try to get them to help me -> Code Red.

If I happen to find a dead armored guy about the right size, I might be able to pull off disguising myself... nah, probably can't put the armor on all by myself. OK... if the armored guys have any allies that aren't armored, I might be able to pull off my kind of stealth, don a few items, and start gutting (and looting) corpses like I belong. This isn't likely to happen, as there's no mention of such forces but... even if it does, if they notice me, I'm dead. If they don't, red-robes probably isn't there yet, thinks I'm one of them, and kills me. End result: Death.

Or maybe I somehow manage to hide long enough for the murderhobos to find me -> Death.

Death

Death, apparently, is just the beginning.

The murderhobos raise me, and I'm all like, "****, wasn't I just dead?" as I feel at my (lack of) wounds. On the plus side, I know what kind of afterlife I can expect in Krynn; on the down side, it's a huge blue expanse with giant white letters spelling out, "A fatal error has occurred. 404 ERROR - Plane not Found". :smallsigh:

Despite elves, dragons, magic, etc, as soon as I hear anyone talk, I fall for a "no true Scottsman", as my line of thought is, "I cannot recognize the language, so this probably isn't D&D". :smallsigh: So I'm not really genre-savvy ATM.

However, when their Detect Magic spells make my laptop, cell phone, wristwatch, etc glow a blinding blue, causing looks of shock from those around, and anyone else who tries to use them turns to stone, or has their hearts explode, or otherwise suffers Artifact side effects, I'll quickly get clued in by "technology becomes Artifacts, safe to use only by its owner" to 2e logic being at play. My working hypothesis would be that this was a serious 2e heartbreaker, or perhaps even the Cthulhu-realm basis for Gygax's fever dream of D&D.

Communication will be hard, and likely done through smiley faces drawn in the dirt with sticks. But, eventually, someone will come along with some Language magic, and eventually I'll find out where I am.

Oh, undead gods, Krynn! Think of all the Kender! If they see my artifacts, they'll try to take them! If they do, they'll die! Why, I'll hit epic level in no time!

Yup, OK, that's my plan: To get taken to the nearest Kender population center, and let my Artifacts kill them all, to power level up to Epic. Was there ever a more noble calling culling? :smallamused::smallcool:

OK, this isn't 3e, so mechanically, maybe I need to get trained as an Apprentice Wizard first.

Regardless, about the only other useful tidbits I know about Krynn are that Chronomancy (or, at least, "changing the timeline") isn't an option during any important events (they're "Timelocked", in Dr. Who t terms (if I remember that correctly)), and that those who travel between worlds hate Krynn for how difficult to leave it is. You'd think it was Ravenloft or something. Well, with the Kender, they're probably cousins...

Regardless, the previous challenges have ensured that there should be active Divinations giving me the option to, if not leave (depending on how the mechanics of "Krynn is a pain" are actually implemented), at least get allies if need be. But I'll ignore that option for now.

All in all, I think that the most likely result is, I die, get raised, and try to convince the "good" guys to let me become a human dual-class <Custom Class: Programmer> / Wizard. I quickly become an artifact-wielding epic level Wizard, known for wiping out whole communities of Kender simply by visiting. With my knowledge of 2e rules, very limited knowledge of Krynn, and epic power, I should be a valuable asset to whichever side / group I assist. If I manage to pass whatever test the Wizards make me take. Just... maybe not in time to actually do anything about this war I don't really remember much about.

But, ultimately, despite the Dragonlance Chronicles being the cause of my desire to write, I'll probably want to leave Krynn.

Code Red

As we try to pump each other for information, if Red goes for my artifacts, he dies, and I'm left alone wherever he took me; if not, I'm wielding multiple pieces of "technology turned artifacts" that might give him pause on the "selling me to the highest bidder" plan.

This probably works out the same as "Dead", in that I get trained as a Wizard, then go on a genocidal power leveling spree (Kender tourism at its finest), just sans the knowledge of the Blue Screen of Death.

If I stayed on Krynn, the best outcome would be to become a deity of the undefined alignment, creating a new plane in the process. One that would seem like the Far Realm to the poor 2e denizens. On the plus side, Krynn is a great place to introduce creatures keyed to that new alignment - like new breeds of Dragons. :smallbiggrin:

NichG

2023-05-27, 01:04 PM

I think it would take me quite a bit to get to the point of understanding that 'this is Krynn'. But if I did, the path is clear: Tinker Gnomes. Even magic has rules, but Tinker Gnome science is like a fountain of pure plot devices. Without looking it up, I seem to remember that the whole time travel artifact embroiled in Raistlin's godkilling enterprise was a gnomish gadget (now looking it up, I guess it wasn't, oh well!) If nothing else I could probably make a reputation for 'de-gnomifying' the various gnomish inventions, e.g. reverse engineering them and not having it so that all of the rotational stresses pass through a single hamster wheel in the center or things like that. I don't particularly remember what the Tinker Gnomes are up to during the War of the Lance though. Also, I had not remembered the thing about Mad Gnomes, which means that my 'de-gnomified gnomish inventions' would probably get me kicked out of Mt. Nevermind if they found the very idea of it offensive rather than it being an issue of 'gnomes should follow gnome norms, but you're not a gnome so we'll just look at you pityingly'.

So I've got a goal at least.

First though, surviving the battlefield. Without a doubt, 'run away' is the general idea, and even with the message I'd be dubious that these particular soldiers (and dragons) are here since it looks like the battle was concluded even before my arrival. So I guess I'd be looking to either get out of the sight lines of this army and then move at a brisk walk away from the battle site as best I can. I briefly contemplate hiding among the enemy but 1. It's armor and I don't know how to put it on or if it would even fit me, 2. These guys seem like the sort to shoot deserters on sight, and an armored figure leaving the battlefield in the wrong direction may be more noticeable than some random ragpicker or camp follower fleeing the site of the slaughter.

So some chance of getting away, lying low, learning the language, maybe paying my way with low-level engineering and repairs work until I can get to the gnomish promised land (e.g. the site of my inevitable untimely demise when trying to use their transportation systems with ballistic arcs designed for people less than half as tall...). Otherwise, I get killed and maybe rezzed by the white robe adventurers, at which point I have a bunch of mostly useless fragments of information 'Zifnab is the secret identity of Paladine! Astinus has just been sitting taking notes in a city all this time, why are you all getting hung up on whether gods exist you can just talk to the guy! There's some kind of sacrifical individual with a gem thing going on that might something something ascendancy of a dark god - I think his name started with a B and had 5 letters in, uh, English, so... yeah okay.' So, yeah, I guess that's another road that ends in 'honorary Mad Gnome'.

As far as what I could actually do engineering-wise and science-wise in a medieval setting, mostly I guess its things like testing methodologies, quantitative approaches, setting standards for parts so they can be used interchangeably, as well as the basic math and physics to understand (and calculate) torque and force multipliers through lever arms, gearworks, etc. As well as some tricks like bluing to make co-flat surfaces at least to tens of micrometer scale with nothing more than chalk dust, fine-grit sandpaper, and patience. Not sure that any of those would really have a chance to transform the War of the Lance as a whole, but a lot of this would be small multipliers on whatever was already in play - start with a gnomish autocannon that kills the operator on one in six shots, and maybe I can save the life of the future operator of that device, etc. Simple batteries, huge capacitors, ways to build large static charges are also on the table but not really militarily effective. I don't remember if the chemistry of gunpowder is specifically interfered with on Krynn, but I'd also probably go the way of strategic-level explosive charges rather than handheld weapons which would require a whole manufacturing infrastructure to be effective in an already on-going war (and D&D guns are generally just equal to or worse than crossbows anyhow).

Once the ability to study magical phenomena (not actually 'learning to be a spellcaster' - I want nothing to do with that in Krynn!) and how they interact with matter, it might open up the possibility of more serious tech. If nothing else, magical shaping of parts would make things a lot easier. So maybe some collab work with existing trained wizards could open this up a bit more. Maybe could do an engine at that point, so... tanks vs dragons?

Telok

2023-05-30, 11:26 AM

Down to the last two in the text file, talky and mayhem.

1. You've been tapped, promoted, conned, blackmailed, tricked, lured, bribed, or whatever, into being the main political consultant for the candidate of an evil alien empire.
1.a. The candidate you're working for is human... enough... probably...
1.b. Evil depends on your point of view.
1.c. No you can't tell anyone about the aliens. Yet.
2. Aliens are cool and it's your job to get it elected.
3. The policies they want to implement are all perfectly rational, logical, good for everyone in the long run, environmentally friendly, etc. Naturally they make for crap talking points and are political suicide to implement.
4. "Well of course there'll be an invasion. your planet is in a very important tariff free trade zone and just needs the infrastructure to handle all the trans-shipping."
4.a. "No your species isn't competent to handle this, that's why you'll be invaded by an army of engineers and construction workers."
4.b. "Look, we just want everyone to not panic and start flinging giant explosions everywhere while we build the stations."
5. Mostly they just need a stable world government, no wars or nuclear missiles or mad bombers, and lots of water purification services to use.
5.a. You can handle any aliens-to-your-world tourism stuff on your own after everything is built. They don't care about that.

Your task: Get the unelectable alien-in-disguise elected/advanced to a sufficiently high place of power for the good of everyone.

And that's it. No hidden agendas. No slimy tentacles. No cannibal slavers. No space/interdimensional plague. No planetary cleansing. Just a request for a single united one-world government with a strong environmental cleanup policy and no nukes (or nearest local equivalent).

I do realize, having typed all this out now, that some characters probably already have everything set up in their setting for this. That's fine. Not all scenarios are challenges to all characters.

Issues:
1. Stuff like automobile & airplane & power industries have to go 100% renewable/eco-friendly in about 25 to 30 years.
1.a. If magic is happening then no magical pollution, mutagenic side effects, cocaine wizard giant monsters, portals to bad bad places, undead apocalypses, etc.
2. You probably won't need things like large militaries or oil & gas industries. Any industries or noble titles related to those might suffer an economic downturn like a meteorite landing in a field.
3. They can feed some moderate scientific/magical and engineering breakthroughs in by hacking/faking the literature & publications, but they can't make you use them.
4. The actual human condition is irrelevant to them. A totalitarian police state that clamps exploding mind control collars on 90% of the illiterate enslaved population is acceptable and they'll say that if asked.
5. They don't care about the details of the world government, but it has to be an effective one.
6. They're completely practical and evidence based. Meaning that anything unprovable for a no-weasel-word-and-no-prove-a-negative-argument value of proof is disregarded. Those people who believe & act on those sorts of things are treated as if they had brain damage of some sort and are incompetent & unable to be trusted.
6.a. Notably the concepts of things like "inherent rights" or "dignity" might be an issue (reframing that specific example as "legally binding social contract privileges" would probably work).
7. They do have the option of doing this further away, but that costs more and will take longer to complete. Thus there is some sort of limit to how much crap they'll put up with.

The Bobs get tasked.

Diplomat Bob: This is right up DB's alley. Whether it's a solvable problem is questionable, but we'd get to play the game (for many sessions) to find out.

Gun Whore Bob: Basically can't help. This is almost pure talk, and GWB is a command & intimidate kind of person. Plus GWB & friends personally violate issues 1.a, 2, and (somewhat surprisingly) 4 & 6.a. I'd forgotten GWB has the 'code of honor (principled)' thing going on.

Traveling Bob: Is a scientist, not a diplomat. We can engage but it's unlikely to succeed since logic and reason aren't the issue here. Hmm.. Balkanized frontier planet that's barely rediscovered spaceflight and is full of raging xenophobes (otherwise no deception is needed). Nukes. Something like the Hivers making an offer... <sigh> "Cut your losses and build it elsewhere."

Paranoid Bob:
1. PB is being tasked to work with hideous mutants.
2. This while thing is absolutely contradictory to the goals of PB's secret society, PURGE.
3. The Computer is already a unified, successful, peaceable world government and any information to the contrary is treason punishable by death.
4. There's no way Alpha Complex is giving up nuclear hand grenades.
5. PB's social skills are bootlicking and deflecting blame. And barely at 50% success rate.
6. Radioactive contamination is environmental cleanliness. Polluted sewage is clean water. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
7. "What's an election?" "That information is classified Citizen. Five demerits for asking classified questions." "Thank you Friend Computer."

A quick check in with R&D... foldable vortex rope (I'm not sure what that does), second hand antigrav helmet, corrosive glue grenade, asbestos floating pill... well that's no help.

Probably the best thing to do is to rig the glue grenade to go off in the candidate's pants during an important meeting with some high security clearance people. It's funny, PURGE friendly, and we might be able to con a promotion out of exposing a hideous mutants-disguised-as-citizens invasion. It's a win for the system if someone playing falls out of their chair giggling. Paranoid Bob does not win.

Edit: I am again reminded that Paranoia is not a game about characters solving problems. It's a game about having a good time with dark humor & slapstick while the characters fail to solve problems and get blown up.

NichG

2023-05-30, 01:29 PM

Down to the last two in the text file, talky and mayhem.

Your task: Get the unelectable alien-in-disguise elected/advanced to a sufficiently high place of power for the good of everyone.

I like this task! But I think it's also extremely difficult to do the self-insert response to this within forum rules, because to be detailed enough to actually viably answer the task it involves a lot of hypothesizing about 'why is politics the way it is?'. So lets say at a minimum this is instead 'alternate Earth' with unrecognizable political details and parties and such, but maybe at least something like recognizable human psychology...

There was an anime sort of about this, called 'Kado: The Right Answer' or something like that?

So, almost certainly, the only way forward is to hitch the alien candidate to existing parties and concerns, make those concerns so dependent on the alien that they basically have to fall in line or lose power. For a unified world government, a single political position just won't do. So the aim has to be to instead be the power behind the throne of a world-spanning political movement. E.g. the aim is for the alien to be shadow emperor of Earth but have a few hundred human sockpuppets representing that on the ground locally, who can then conspire to consolidate power through signing treaties and empowering international organizations and such. Hopefully the alien doesn't want this done on a 4 year timescale, because at that point my advise as the political consultant would probably have to be 'yeah, you're going to have to invade and just wipe out the entire Earth military, and you'll still have to pay that 50 years it takes for people to get used to the new normal except now it will be in the form of dissent, guerilla warfare, terrorist attacks on your new infrastructure, etc; are you sure you wouldn't rather just use Mars?'

But okay, lets see, vague strokes:

- Norms are the most powerful tool to shape long-term patterns of human behavior. A political victory gets you the ability to take actions, but if you change human norms you'll make it so that people will take that action on their own without being told, and will accept it when it happens. So before all of this election stuff, maybe get started creating a religion, a philosophical movement, an artistic movement, a bunch of sci-fi literature, Hollywood movies, etc all preparing the population to have pre-existing thoughts about 'it wouldn't be so bad to be the Motel 6 on an intergalactic trucking route' or equivalent things. Use lots of different directions for this to appeal to different population groups. In particular, anti-nuclear norms and norms accepting the idea of nations losing their historical sovereignty would be very important here.

- The second prong of the invasion can be one of economic dependency. Create a few front corporations that use the alien tech to basically undercut everyone else on basic needs or key resources. Become so necessary that even if governments would want to tear you out, they can't because their enemies (economic and military) would be able to jump on that opportunity to gain dominance.

- Have those front corporations sponsor candidates in various countries and become allies of some (or even all) political parties. Again, become indispensible - 'if you win, ExoCorp will give the government a really good deal on these contracts, but if you lose then the political climate will unfortunately be that we have to reduce our operations in your country. Good luck!'. Additionally do this at the level of personal debts of potential candidates representing the alien interests - both in the form of acquiring debts owed by politicians you're going to use as sockpuppets as well as giving them personal-scale resources to better get into position (scholarships, etc). Details here will be different per-country as far as what is likely to best work. In places with long-ruling dictators, 'by the way we can assassinate you at any time, but we could do that to your enemies too, so wanna support us in what we need?' might be enough. In places with more churn to their politics, eventually you'd want a hook on every political party rather than backing a single side, so it doesn't matter who wins - they're all pro-alien.

- The hard part now is going to be dissolving the sovereignty of individual nations to form a world government. This is working so strongly against long-running norms as well as basic rules of power ('the first duty of power is to perpetuate itself'). I don't want to say 'you need a fake World War for this' but maybe you do need a fake World War for this, even if just for a handful of holdout nuclear powers that will be like 'no, we won't surrender this advantage'... But really if it came to it, I'd probably say 'if we have no other option, just invade and use orbital superiority here please' rather than the risks of what we would need to do to each-other in order to actually be scared enough to implement a world government.

That said, before giving up and going military, I guess you could try to have it emerge organically from a whole mess of treaties and alliances and debts and obligations but the thing is, when the chips are down, countries would just break treaties and default on debts and so on if it looks like its in their best interests to do so.

Maybe the path via norms could work here as well, though its a bit tricky... What I might guess is that if something like intercontinental teleportation technology became available and was very hard to funnel through specific ports of entry or exit, the general pattern towards more border controls and more separation between countries might be reversible. If people are used to just stopping in Tokyo for some ramen then taking a telestall over to Italy for cappuchino after lunch, then returning home for the night, maybe that creates a pressure to create uniform international law the way that trade treaties create pressure to make things like internationally uniform copyright and patent laws. Regardless, this step I think is the one that absolutely can't be hurried - we've had the internet for a few decades, and laws surrounding the internet certainly have not become uniform internationally (even the opposite, in a lot of cases).

Telok

2023-05-30, 03:05 PM

There was an anime sort of about this, called 'Kado: The Right Answer' or something like that?

No clue about the anime, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Part of what this whole exercise has been for, to me personally, is isn't so much "can a character from game X win" as exploring if the usual sorts of characters are able to meaningfully participate in most of the scenarios and if a game can produce an omni-competent character. Now most of us picked casters or jack-of-all-trades type characters (I'm totally putting self inserts in the joat category) so I'm not surprised by the wide spread engagement. But I also picked two characters that were set up to fail, Paranoia Bob & the DtD40k7e gun whore Bob.

Now for PB and GWB there have been several scenarios they just can't really contribute to, and I think it's telling that nobody even seemed to consider any D&D style non-magic users. But for the most part it looks like most of these characer+system combos can handle just about anything we throw at them in a reasonable gameable manner. At least as long as you're not trying to build a character that's just a dumb beat stick. Actually, now I'm curious how a 9th level AD&D fighter from a real game with accurately randomized loot would do versus the later D&D edition fighters, again as they come from campaigns that were really played and not just theory crafted. I may try to dig out some old pcs... except I don't think I've ever played a WotC era fighter... had a warblade, maybe I can find that sheet.

NichG

2023-05-30, 03:52 PM

No clue about the anime, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Part of what this whole exercise has been for, to me personally, is isn't so much "can a character from game X win" as exploring if the usual sorts of characters are able to meaningfully participate in most of the scenarios and if a game can produce an omni-competent character. Now most of us picked casters or jack-of-all-trades type characters (I'm totally putting self inserts in the joat category) so I'm not surprised by the wide spread engagement. But I also picked two characters that were set up to fail, Paranoia Bob & the DtD40k7e gun whore Bob.

Now for PB and GWB there have been several scenarios they just can't really contribute to, and I think it's telling that nobody even seemed to consider any D&D style non-magic users. But for the most part it looks like most of these characer+system combos can handle just about anything we throw at them in a reasonable gameable manner. At least as long as you're not trying to build a character that's just a dumb beat stick. Actually, now I'm curious how a 9th level AD&D fighter from a real game with accurately randomized loot would do versus the later D&D edition fighters, again as they come from campaigns that were really played and not just theory crafted. I may try to dig out some old pcs... except I don't think I've ever played a WotC era fighter... had a warblade, maybe I can find that sheet.

The contrast I've found in playing the self-insert character is basically two layers. One is, anything that involves fighting in some form, there is just a huge gap. Mechanics give concrete power here that a SI/no-mechanics character won't have and there's not much to be done about that.

The other though is bigger, and its the mindset gap - game characters are basically chomping at the bit to 'solve first and ask questions later'; psychologically, if they're present and something is going on, there's much more of a 'this is my job! I will intervene!' attitude than if I'm trying to reason about my own reactions. Like in the bodysnatcher scenario, I found it hard to justify myself being confident about the situation to actually directly intervene - attacking someone, accusing someone directly, etc. But I don't think I'd have that barrier at all even if I were just playing 'AD&D Fighter 1' - there's obviously something going on, obviously you stab it and see what happens, etc.

On the other hand something like 'take over the Earth' actually is easier for me to see how a regular human 'could do it' than, say, defeating Godzilla or even just a Krynn dragon. Sure having wizard spells gives you a few more options, but to a large extent they're shortcuts that don't change the need to work out the overall logic of 'what would it take for there to exist a stable, unified government'.

A Limit Break character or a Nobilis character on the other hand, well, 'I find the egregore that represents human tribal tendencies and kill it, now people are incapable of recognizing us vs them distinctions at all, done'

Quertus

2023-05-31, 02:49 PM

Responses to Talky

On the meta level, with me as GM, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't feel good about trying to take on this quest, regardless of the character, as I've never had a player who was able to engage long-term with my version of politics. So, based on my history, I'd be looking for something where I could manage a 1-shot win that was "good enough", while avoiding engaging any long-term political minigames.

A lot of worlds, there is no concept of "election" of the highest officials. However, given the clause, "/advanced to a sufficiently high place of power for the good of everyone", these worlds actually become the easiest in which to succeed. Thus...

Arma has had success manipulating the political landscape before (granted, I wasn't GM... well, OK, I was, but only because this is a copy-paste character, you know what I mean, right?), but that won't matter. She could just throw her political weight around as the "High" Priestess to get the benevolent alien into a position as advisor to the feckless-at-best, detrimental-at-worst leader of what remains of the world. Granted, she'd likely bring the alien's homeworld to the attention of the murderhobos in the process, so there's a good chance that their diary reads "Day 1: met Arma. Day 2: have the ear of the world leader. Day 3: Urgent reports from home. Day 4: Homeworld destroyed." They should be very invested in their new homeworld now, right?

As a summoned hero and Guildmaster of the Adventurer's Guild, Isekai'd John Faseman of Marvel has significant political influence. As he moves to the global market, he could offer to provide "foreign advisors" in various kingdoms. Marvel wasn't exactly designed for these actions, but I imagine something in the gamut of "just roleplay" and a Popularity check could be used to resolve such attempts. And that's without inventing a device to just "Mindrape" the entire world into believing that the aliens have always been the supreme rulers of the planet, if winning were the only goal.

Unsurprisingly, my Telepathic Vampire could not only vet the alien, but use social or telepathic skills to install them in most any government. A public election, OTOH, would prove very tricky, as he has no real political skills or experience. And while he could best Xavier telepathically in a 1-on-1 duel, he lacks the ability to manipulate multiple minds (let alone entire nations) easily. So the best he could do (other than helping as a speech writer and voice coach or something, to make the alien at least sound good) would be to use his mental powers to cause the alien's opponent(s) to mess up embarrassingly, bungling their lines, saying "a mind is a terrible thing", falling off stage or wandering into walls, or otherwise looking like complete duncewaffle doofs. Push comes to shove, he could even stage embarrassing photos or cause them to commit crimes (or, more in character, to publicly or "accidentally" admit to crimes they had already committed / scan their minds and anonymously lead investigators to uncover their existing crimes). Or just get them to commit suicide.

Let me get this straight: You want an invisible, inaudible, odorless flying death machine of a Troll to help you with your political campaign? If that's any indication of your judgement, there's a "fool who follows the fool" saying we should introduce you to. Regardless... about the only contribution said Troll could make would be to try to arrange for a political debate to burn to the ground, and hope that the alien was more likely to survive. If not, hopefully they paid in advance.

My self-insert has only slightly less political acumen, and a strong "a campaign built on lies of omission isn't likely to succeed" attitude. But also a "if you can fake being human, why not let someone else win, and just replace them?" mindset. Really, I'd spend more time debating and doubting them than actually helping them.

In the grimdark of being a Daemon, Mr. T is the pollution the aliens want to clean up. I don't think anyone could possibly fail worse than that. Depending on the edition and version of Warhammer in question, all Warhammer mages and psychics would either be limited to minor effects they can manage with a single Magic die (if bad things trigger on doubles), or outlawed altogether (if bad things happen on Tzeentch's number). The former doesn't really hurt Priests of Shallya much (their effects were shockingly low DC to begin with), but everyone else reliant upon magic would likely strongly oppose this change.

Although Alex Knight could attempt to build up the political influence to manipulate the world of politics, WoD Mages would similarly oppose the "no magick with side effects" platform of their new evil overlords, given how Paradox is kinda inherent in their abilities. In fact, in WoD, it might be an unachievable goal, as whatever the "new norm" is will likely end up with new side effects. Maybe? Heck, belief might even give the aliens problems. It's not quite as bad as the Warp in WH40k feeding on everyone's sense of hopelessness to ensure the grimdark of the setting, but that bit of world physics is not without risk to the new overlords.

-----

I haven't really done a good job talking about mechanics, leaving it to people to infer / guess / ask what's going on in the background. Given the number of challenges thus far, let me take a moment to begin explaining some of the mechanics, and how they (and the 75% rule) affected my decisions / the outcome of these challenges. So here's a few example systems.

Marvel FASERIP has 7 main stats: Fighting (ability to hit stuff in melee; number of attacks), Agility (ability to hit stuff at range, active dodge), Strength (damage, carrying capacity), Endurance (chance to resist things, like poison or death), Reason (good for Talents and building things), Intuition (odds of saying "it's a trap!", initiative), Psyche (ability to resist mental attacks, cast spells). It also has somewhat secondary stats of Popularity (better thought of as "Influence"), Resources (abstract wealth), the derived Health (HP, sum of 4 physical stats) and Karma (XP and "fate points", starts at sum of mental stats). Then characters get Talents (generally provide a "+1 column shift" (amounts to about a +5% chance of success) - so if your Reason gives you a 40% chance of performing brain surgery, having Medical skill means you have a 45% chance of success), Contacts (people they know, who might provide aid), and Powers.

Everything is rolled randomly at character creation, including your "type", which could be anything from a normal human to a mutant to an alien. There's even the possibility of rolling that you're more than one type, like an undead plant god, or a centaur robot energy being. Don't ask me how to successfully mix "normal human" with anything else. John Faseman rolled "Random Mutant" (which means "stuff happened, he mutated", as opposed to Breed Mutant (his parents were mutants) or, uh, Engineered Mutant maybe (he was mutated intentionally in a lab)). This affects what tables they rolls on for stats, which in turn affects max stats. Normal humans, for example, cap out at Excellent, while the best tables cap out at Monstrous (see below).

The FASERIP, Resources, and Popularity stats, as well as Powers, all have both a word and numeric value, and then that word corresponds to a set percent chance on a table. The names for the ranks vary by edition, in that not all editions seem to have the full table, but they are, from weakest to strongest, Shift-Zero, Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly, Shift-X, Shift-Y, Shift-Z, Class 1000, Class 3000, Class 5000, Beyond. The corresponding numbers are generally a range, with starting characters starting at the lowest point in that range, and existing characters being given a more average value for that range. The numbers determine how much Karma it takes to advance the stat (you have to buy every single number, at a cost of 10 x number to get a +1 stat), how much damage attacks do or armor soaks (with the caveat "same rank always yields at least 1 damage"), and a few other things (how many ounces of life can be created with Lifeform Creation), but is generally useless in most contexts. They scale almost exponentially, with the "average stat" going from 0, 2, 4, 6, 10, 20, 30, 40 50, 75, 100, 150, 250, 500, 1000, 3000, 5000, infinite.

The important part is the chart. Depending on edition, it has 4 or 5 colored bands: Blue (Fumble, not present in some editions), White (Fail), Green (Success), Yellow (Better), Red (Best). The chart is organized such that you have about a 5% better chance of success per "column shift" (ie, Good is 5% better than Average), and you hit a 75% chance of success at Amazing (which also has a 40% chance of getting a Yellow success, a 10% chance of getting a Red success, and a 3% chance of fumble, for reference).

However, for just about any roll that involves your character (including, IIRC, things like attacks by enemies against your character), you can "Spend Karma". This is declared before the roll, and costs a minimum of 10 Karma. Once the dice are rolled, determine the result you want, and the difference between what your rolled and what you want is the number of Karma you spend to get that result. So, if you needed a Yellow Success (say, to resist an effect of equal strength), and rolled a 42 vs your Amazing stat needing a 61+ to get a Yellow success, you have to spend 19 Karma.

Heroes and Villains interact with Karma differently. For Heroes (presumably including the PCs), Karma is earned by defeating villains (karma equal to their highest stat/power), thwarting crimes (about 5-25 karma per crime), and doing certain other deeds (like visiting your relatives, or helping Aunt May cross the street). Karma is lost for things like damaging the scenery (cost is per "area", where an area is "about half a city block") or committing crimes (ranging from maybe 10 for theft to ALL OF IT for killing someone). Modules often give various other karma rewards and penalties, like for thinking to talk to an expert, or for not walking the dog.

Interestingly, Karma awards are not universal - not only between Heroes vs Villains, but even among Heroes. For example, Wolverine does not suffer Karma loss for killing people (!). This (plus a few other things) have made me come to the conclusion that Marvel FASERIP is much like Call of Cthulhu, in that you are forced to roleplay one particular personality trait - in CoC's case, that trait is "unable to handle the concept that we are not alone"; in Marvel FASERIP's case, it's an assumed underlying moral code, and "Karma" is best thought of as Pride/Shame/Guilt. Thus, I may HOUSERULE certain changes from the Karma awards based on the characters' actual beliefs.

Like most systems, Marvel FASERIP has a detailed round-by-round combat simulator, but resolves most other actions with a single atomic roll. This means that "spending Karma" is much more effective / efficient in most of these challenges, where that single roll can have great impact on the challenge. It should be obvious that if I HOUSERULED the system to involve more complex, tactical minigames for other actions, this karmic imbalance would be less pronounced. That said, afaict, the system provides little guidance for most actions one would take, beyond things like the being able to infer from the Medical talent giving +1 CS to Reason rolls to diagnose injuries or disease that such diagnosis must involve a Reason roll.

As a random point of reference, "Immunity" is considered to be at Class 1000 rank. So defeating someone with Immunity to Fire is worth 1,000 Karma (or more, if they have a higher stat), and buying Immunity to Fire costs 3000 (base) + 40,000 (40 x rank) = 43,000 Karma.

On a side note, the way Talents work, with +1 CS to a Good stat meaning to treat it as Excellent? Those of us used to d20 systems doubtless are thinking, "so, since each column is about 5% better, that's the equivalent of a single skill point a +1 on the d20 roll? That's it? You can only buy 1 skill point?". This may not seam realistic, but it is verisamilitudinal: stats are more important than training. If a supposedly normal doctor diagnoses something Reed Richards cannot, it's a good reason to be suspicious of the doctor. By buying into the mechanics of the system, by buying into the world physics, you buy into the tropes. In that regard, the system is well-designed.

In that regard, in the context of this thread, John Faseman is nothing special. I mean, sure, he's peak human in some stats, and beyond that in others, and he can accomplish tasks about 50x faster than anyone else thanks to Hyper-Speed. But he's still better off asking an expert for most things (the exception being Invention, thanks to Hyper-Invention, and thanks to having taken a few Invention-related Talents (one of which lets him pretend he has materials he can't afford)), especially given the Karma cost imposed in hitting the "75%" rule.

This means he's highly incentivized to play to his strengths, and to outsource problems, or to attempt to solve them through Inventing something. And many problems (especially ones requiring making lots of rolls) end up more costly for him than the Karma he earns on the mission. Also, as I am both player and GM, I am deincentivized from having John attempt things that aren't covered under the rules... which really strongly pigeonholes him into fighting, inventing, and being a Guildmaster (not that that last one has FASERIP rules).

Someone who wasn't set up as an Adventurer's Guild Guildmaster would have struggled harder on these challenges (or at least spent more Karma on them), as calling in favors from Contacts requires a Popularity (?) roll, costing Karma to hit 75% success rates. And most characters couldn't have Invented their way past challenges, so that was a huge boon to John's success. OTOH, someone with an Amazing or higher Reason would have found it easy to analyze all aspects of these challenges, and thereby easily understood and solved most things without needing to spend Karma in the process.

I'm just gonna go from memory, so I could be wrong, but...

Shadowrun characters have base stats ("Attributes"?), which, at character creation, generally have a 6-point range, and cap at 6 for humans, and at 4-11 for non-human PC races. After character creation, the Attributes cap at half-again that (costing more Karma (XP) the higher the stat, and with a multiplier for going over the normal limit).

Skills have a character creation cap of the Attribute, and Karma can be spent to raise them to twice the attribute, with increasing cost as the stat raises, and a cost multiplier for exceeding the stat, and for exceeding stat-and-a-half.

When rolling a stat or skill, you get a dice pool (a number of d6) equal to the stat or skill. By default, in most cases, a 4 or higher is a success (well, in a lot of cases, you're targeting someone else's stat, so 4 is still maybe average, even if 3 is "average human"). Modifiers can raise or lower this target number, and DCs above 6 are possible - dice individually "explode" on a 6, so a 6 to a 6 to a 3 is a 15. Perhaps the most common, and certainly the most relevant, modifier is "Defaulting" - as a made-up example, if you don't have the "Surgery" skill, you could have "Surgery" default to your "Medical" skill, raising the target number, or even have it default to your Intelligence, raising the target number even further. Different editions have had different rules for what can default to what, and which defaults cost more than usual, but most defaulting adds +2 or +4 to the target number. In some editions, if you followed the complex flow chart far enough, you could theoretically have anything default to anything, although you'd be after target numbers around 20 or so by that point, if you want to default your brain surgery roll to your boot knife skill.

There are also "pools", like a Combat Pool and a Magic Pool, which refresh every round, and can be used to add dice to specific related rolls (like attacks, dodges, casting spells or resisting drain) in that round.

Having played characters not entirely unlike this before, I didn't bother statting out the Troll. A Magic 6 starting character is "good enough" to cast their dwoemers (if their Sustaining Foci aren't making that unnecessary), and an Endurance 10 Troll is "good enough" at soaking Drain not to worry about it for most spells. Heavy Weapons skill boosted to 5 (darn trolls not being agile) is "good enough" to hit most any target while invisible (and dice can always be added from the Combat Pool, if necessary), and damage of "you're dead, soak on an 18+" is "good enough" to kill almost anything (Dragons need to be shot in their open mouth, to avoid their armored hide reducing that to something possible). But most any roll that needs to be defaulted, even if it only raises the difficulty by 2, and even if it's defaulting to a 6 die pool, isn't going to hit a 75% success rate. So, unsurprisingly, Shadowrun characters are strongly pigeonholed into the things they're good at - which, for this character, was "killing things" and "casting spells" (which "inventing new spells to cast" came up much less than I expected, even in the longer timeframe of these challenges).

This character very much epitomizes, "if you can't solve your problem with violence, you aren't using enough of it". A different Shadowrun character could have been built with different skills; still, it would have required a much more experienced character than the one I brought in order to have enough skills at high enough ranks to solve problems that weren't all DC 4. I guess a really bizarre, "2 ranks in each skill" build, human (to maximize rerolls) might have fared better at collecting low-hanging fruit on these challenges, accomplishing anything you can believe "average Joe" / "guy at the gym" can do? It's about as bizarre as playing 3e and splitting your skill ranks evenly among all skills (cross-class or otherwise), but it might have been the optimal choice for this challenge.

The short answer is, these systems (as I suspect most might) push the characters towards their strengths, and towards Combat as War's "if you have to roll the dice, you've already failed" mindset, especially given the "75%" rule.

@NichG - does that do anything to help you achieve your goals for this thread?

Telok

2023-06-03, 04:36 PM

Ok, last one in the queue. You're free of my derangements after this.

MAYHEM

1. A new star appears in the sky. Itty bitty and a bit reddish.
2. A month later and... Whoops, it's actually a planet and heading inwards.
3. Another two weeks later and... Uh oh. The eye opened and everyone & everything sentient* in the area of vision (the entire planet you started on and about 30% of the rest of the solar system if there is one) has a brain meltdown and goes permanently murderously unhinged.
4. It all ends very badly.

Your task: I assume you're narrative savvy enough to figure out the overall plot already.

* Please note that I'm pedantic about the difference between sentient and sapient. Sapient is "it thinks like a person". Sentient is "it is conscious and senses things". Mushrooms are not sentient, frogs are sentient but not sapient, humans are sapient.

I completely stole this from an old Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green scenario. If you're read that scenario any time in the last 20 or 25 years you probably know what to do. If you haven't, well this plot isn't exactly unusual. If there's a massive 'space navy' type thing in your game then try to assume this happens somewhere they aren't.

There's a cult. It's run by nasty creatures from another dimension (mi-go if you need stats) but only the dozen or so mind controlled top leaders know that and they think they're angels anyways. The cults is a harmless little peace & light meditation thing. Except there's these crystals (heart size, 2 pounds/1 kilo, generic quartz looking) that soak up spare good-vibes psychic energy. The cult swaps them out, shipping old ones to a central point and new ones to the meditation places. At the base they're processed to reverse the polarity to bad-vibes and then shoved into a dimensional portal. The other end of the portal is in a bunch of bio-tech space stations orbiting the evil eye planet (hereafter "Bad Planet"). The station has a bunch of super-science/magi-tech stuff that focuses the bad-vibes energy at the planet and makes it seek & destroy the source. There's more portals to in each station to the other 11 stations in orbit around Bad Planet (details below).

The cult's been going on for about five or seven years now. The home base compound is large, maybe 700 people, with lots of innocent people doing peace & light meditation stuff. There are... lets call them organic robots... that look and mostly act human doing the actual crystal processing, about 30 of these. The cult leaders are mind controlled, but it's more a light touch memory edited and selective "sees/hears on what they're supposed to" sort of mind control. They truly believe in the peace & light stuff and that everyone here is normal. There's noting illegal or weird except that the crystals are apparently all unsourced and just constantly reallocated among the chapters. There's a nice big fountain with a soothing light display in the middle of the compound. The aliens are all about a kilometer underground is what we'll call a bunker. There's no tunnel, they just redirect a dimensional portal when they need to go to the warehouse or the satellites around Bad Planet. There are links, up to the fountain and under some of the buildings, but they're a sort of fungus root-like thing about an inch across. The organic robots are about four times stronger & tougher than a human soldier, roughly as smart, training and armament (hidden in the warehouse) like they are elite soldiers, feel no pain, immune to drugs, cannot go unconscious, and have no fear. On being killed they will dissolve into a soup of assorted biological waste products in five minutes. They have no DNA, if it matters. They can also understand and communicate by colors, personally by changing eye color rapidly (and smart enough to not do that around normal people) or that light display in the fountain is visible from almost anywhere in the compound.

Just in case there, is something explody beneath about half of the buildings in the compound. Explosives in Earth-like games or a magic boom boom in other games, whatever is appropriate. If it's appropriate there are also video recording devices that live feed through the fungus root-like things to the underground alien lab. It looks weird to have a small root growing up through a crack in the floor into the video system, but you'd need to move the racks or open the cases to find it. Any ways, if there's an attack on the compound several of the buildings will blow up and super extremely well faked evidence that the attackers are horrible murders will show up in public within an hour or two if the underground alien bunker isn't taken out. Part of the quality of the evidence faking is that as little as possible is faked. If possible one or more of the organic robots will change clothes to look like an attacker or kill & swap gear with an attacker to act like they're planting/creating the explosions while shooting innocent cultists. Loss of the cult's leaders won't do anything. Some other true believers will just get promoted and mind zapped into replacing them. It is highly unlikely that most organized assaults will get a second chance at the compound if the first try doesn't take it out completely.

Since it's about 6 weeks from Bad Planet's appearance to doomsday you'll need to destroy or turn off several of the 12 satellites around Bad Planet for each week that's passed. Otherwise Bad Planet is too close and will make it the rest of the way on it's own. Simply shutting down the cult is effective if done early enough, they still need 2 weeks of regular crystal replacement to get enough crystals into the satellites to get Bad Planet into position. After two weeks you need to destroy/turn off the following numbers of satellites: week 3 =3, week 4 =5, week 5 =7, day t-6 =8, day t-5 =9, day t-4 =10, day t-3 =11, and on the last two days all 12 have to be destroyed. The stations aren't big, maybe 50 feet across with four chambers (no gravity), two chambers with dimensional portals to the next and previous stations, one with arrays of crystals around a focusing device and a window, one connecting chamber in the middle. The outer shell is about as resilient as cast iron and around 4 inches/10 cm thick, the windows are 150% as thick but half as tough. There are usually two to four aliens replacing crystals in one of the satellites at any time. Obviously any interference or investigation of the satellites will warrant a response, probably initially 10 to 40 of the organic robots in paramilitary gear & small arms (the exact number likely to be about 150% to twice the number of investigators/intruders that were spotted). Insertion will be through one of the dimensional portals that will be accurately targeted by using the dimensional portal machines in a slightly different mode for information gathering.

The underground alien bunker is a kilometer/half mile down with only the fungus-root sensor links to the surface. Population is about 10 aliens (again, mi-go if you need stats, they've been ported into most major game systems) and 20 organic robots. There's a big open central area with three dimensional portal machines, a week worth of powered up bad-vibe crystals, an equal amount of empty crystals (that look just the same as the others unless you can detect psi/magic), and some alien biotech equipment of uncertain function. Side rooms include; cloning/regeneration vats for the organic robots, whatever the mind editing & control device used on cult leaders is, more alien biotech equipment of uncertain function, a couple empty rooms, a pile of regular paramilitary gear/weapons/ammo, an alien version of a control room for the fountain & explosives & and sensors in the compound (uses color & sound controls instead of physical switches except for one lever-like thing that's a self destruct everything in the bunker with no countdown), and what's functionally an extradimensional power generator for all the equipment (beamed power, no cables, no controls, no exterior access points in this dimension). The dimensional portal machines have one tuned to a locked room at the back of the crystals warehouse in the compound above, one tuned always to a satellite around Bad Planet, and the last is usually off but there's a small chance it'll be tuned to a... place... that's (probably) instant death if you aren't a 7-dimensional fungus-bug alien (or capable of faking it convincingly) and certainly isn't healthy for 3 dimensional & linear time people to look at for too long. The aliens and organic robots can make the required sounds to turn any of the machines on or off. Only the aliens (probably) can do the glowy head light show & sounds & poke the 5th dimensional buttons in it to make the dimensional portal machines change destinations. There is no evidence of food, toilets, sleeping, or leisure activities.

In case it matters Bad Planet is basically a planet sized eyeball that's also a major god, just lazy/sleepy and uncaring. In Call of Cthulhu it's a Great Old One and thus functionally a part of physics that happens to be unhealthy & sentient & mobile. In something like classic Greek mythology it would be like one of the original titans that it would take Zeus to fight and the combined might of all the gods to kill (which because its mythology might be temporary and/or not actually destroy/stop it). It can't be reasoned with. Doesn't communicate. Causes minds, souls, psi/magic fields, and social constructs to break down and disintegrate in a couple minutes. If nothing bothers it then it'll go back to whatever corner of the universe it typically naps in. Once it fully awakens it wanders through galaxies at high speed eradicating multiple solar systems of sapient life with a glance because that's what you do to annoying flies, swat them. The aliens are planning on leaving about 3-6 hours before Bad Planet opens it's eye, as soon as the warning signs appear (eyelid twitching, massive earthquakes on it visible from orbit, etc.). Information on this thing is extremely scarce. It's one of those "once in a billion years it depopulates a few galaxies/dimensions then goes away" things that doesn't exactly leave a lot of evidence behind. They may be a few old prophecies (and/or moldy tomes that were penned) by drug addled seers who went insane and died. Generally anything that get's close or divines Bad Planet causes it to almost wake up a bit and be unpleasant to the nuisance.

The Bobs see red.

Diplomat Bob: Gets interrupted trying to open up a new market. Now there is no new market. Fail.

At phase two orders a scan of the new planet. The astro-navigator reports bad Warp **** and unfavorable auguries. Research is done at 6k5 forbidden lore to... 42% chance of getting 35(near impossible)+... call it a no. DB informs the locals and leaves a long distance radio while we toddle off to a safe distance of "half way across the sphere". The planet gets fragged and possibly DB too if stealth mode or running away doesn't work.

Gun Whore Bob: Makes the terrible decision to Gate visit this new planet. It ends very badly.

Traveling Bob: Could win if we can win some tough fights.

Weirdness at a frontier planet, the scientist goes to check it out. Which means that we'd get close enough and scan enough to notice the satellites. Earth to Jupiter about 650 million km, 1g shortest time trip, about 6 days. OK, arrive at week three. Sats have no doors/hatches but a window/ That eventually lets us encounter the mi-go who are hostile. If we survive the encounter we crack a satellite to examine a machine & crystal. Partially disassemble & take a dimensional portal machine with us, no question about that. Back on the lab ship break orbit to get away from the satellites, put everyone on high alert & always armed (because dimensional portals of unknown capability), start investigating the crystals & devices... I'm not sure, as alien bio-tech it's hard to figure, but psi is a known thing in Traveller with detectors as gear, and TB has all the right training to deal with the psi focusing & crystals stuff. TB probably won't figure out the dimensional portal stuff so there'll be another attack on the ship via portal at some point. Ten or fifteen of the organic robots with real weapons would wipe us out, but the anti-mutiny/anti-piracy routines in the system and some judicious venting of sealed might... OK, good, they do need to breathe. Call it a 50/50 that we win that one.

Call the planet and tell them about the psychic crystals, aliens, satellites, and being attacked. The local government can find and deal with the cult. That's a PR disaster with dead kids, blown up buildings, and video of government soldiers gunning people down. Plus it won't turn up the bunker. On the other hand a system defense boat (armed non-warp/jump capable local defense patrol spaceships) can ferry some scientists and troops out to the planet in about another six days, probably arriving at about the same time the disastrous raid on the cult compound happens. If there's been another attack on TB's ship it would have been with mi-go themselves and venting atmosphere wouldn't have worked. Otherwise it's been more investigation and a decision to turn off the psi transmitters. Since there's still... counting... sometime late in week 4 it looks like, maybe early week 5. Breaking stuff is easy, there's another fight on the satellites but we can hopefully let the real soldiers deal with it or just have the pinnace or SDB turn it's fusion thrusters on the satellite at point blank range while TB & crew flees.

So we can engage with the scenario. If and only if we win a couple of very hard (for this character & small crew) fights everything will work out. But I don't think they'll win those fights.

Paranoid Bob: Ring around the nuke plant, pockets full of fuel rods, carnage, carnage, we all blow up!

Alpha Complex doesn't do astronomy.

Briefing: A new commie mutant traitor threat has arisen! Find this new secret society and take them down! Look for these signs; pamphlets, twitch talk, unapproved non-medicated happiness, clandestine meetings, odd behaviors, excessive bathroom breaks! (yes that pretty much describes almost everyone in Alpha Complex)

Commissary: Real armor and a whole lotta explosives. I guess the Computer's serious about this one. (Let's set some boom aside for "personal use")

R&D: Magnetic shrinking boots (they pinch the toes but magnets are always fun), vibration rope (really? a bungee cord? did you 'develop' this or just find it in a trash bin?), a smoke cannon (yay for new guns!), voice operated x-ray device (yay a useful thing!), and a waterproof pen (you clones are just cleaning out your junk drawers aren't you?).

Action!: Ok, first we start by asking our secret society if anyone knows anything, that fails. Next going in on computer data searches and analysis, try following patterns of odd money donations and shifts in spending habits. After a few dead ends of hauling in people for buying new shoes and such we get a hit. Efforts to follow the person or talk to them are doomed to failure so we just cosh them, shrinking mag-boot them to the ceiling, and toss their rooms looking for incriminating stuff. Find pamphlets and a meeting schedule, leave behind some explosives on a timer (to go off during the meeting) and the mag-boots. Attend the meeting, do some meditation, use bootlicking skills if questioned, accidentally leave behind an explosive under our chair. Walk back in a couple minutes later to survey the wreckage and find a good hiding spot (one of our few decent skills). Ambush the poor clone who comes in to retrieve the crystal, tie them up with the bungee cord, find the location of the base, leave that commie mutant traitor with another explosive on a timer (15 minutes).

Rustle up some green IntSec (internal security) goons with tales of explosive wielding mutants, a whole base of traitors to round up, and more gratuitous violence than their little corrupt hearts could desire. Share some explosives if it helps. This being IntSec and we're offering them violence & glory there isn't even a roll involved. During the base assault we hang back, rig a few IntSec APCs with explosives, and shoot the smoke cannon a bit. Be somewhat surprised that buildings are blowing up and we aren't responsible, but we gave the goons some explosives (I think PB is running low now) so that's probably all it is. Oh, uber-clones that melt into goo when killed, that's interesting. And the carnage isn't an issue because everyone in Alpha Complex has clone backups and what did you expect from IntSec anyways? Lose a clone when we forget which APCs we rigged with explosives and ride back in the wrong one.

Debriefing: Success and promotions all around! Plus PB now has a personal stash of explosives and a waterproof pen.

Several weeks later everyone goes a little more insane and gets a little more violent. The mi-go are mildly confused and the Bad Planet is mildly annoyed. It opens it's eye a bit more so everyone goes all the way off the deep end and dies in a orgy of mindless violence.

NichG

2023-06-03, 06:13 PM

@NichG - does that do anything to help you achieve your goals for this thread?

It might confirm some of my biases in certain ways... But while mechanics contribute to feel and its useful to understand that connection, I guess at this point I'm more interested in what sort of surprises there are in how it can feel to play a given character.

MAYHEM

I probably just go murderously unhinged and die.

Again this seems to be hitting the difference between characters who are hooked into The Plot by a GM, and someone who happens to exist in a setting where it happens that something is going down. Unless it just so happened there was a chapter in my neck of the woods, I'd have no reason to even know about the existence of the cult at any point during the scenario. 'Rogue planet is on a collision course with Earth' also doesn't provide much in the way of actions that can increase your chances of survival. So I'm either involved with a team trying to communicate with it (once its seen that it accelerates/decelerates, its a given that there's an intelligence behind it), or I'm taking a trip to the tropics to spend my last moments on a beach drinking maitais, or I'm ensconced at home.

If it weren't an instantaneous KO for the mechanism of the eye but rather something that built over time, there would be much more I could do, even if it wouldn't probably solve the scenario. The thing that would have me very curious is whether this murder toggle operated on artificial intelligences as well, and even more interesting if it operates on some but not others. That's research material! And practical since if low-grade AIs are immune then you basically send those out to interact with the rest of the world for you, and otherwise isolate yourself from every other living mind. Furthermore, if AIs count, and there's enough time to actually do experiments on the phenomenon, then a few weeks of tinkering (or maybe months if there's a massive loss of internet infrastructure, etc) means I can churn out as many 'good vibes' or 'bad vibes' engines as I might want to and have the computational resources for. So, maybe enough to ultimately lure the thing away from Earth? But since the effect is instant, I don't get to play mad scientist in this one.

Quertus

2023-06-04, 05:17 PM

Mayhem Response

So... first it's a star, then it's a planet, then it's an eye? Or does an eye open on the planet-sized being? I'm so confused.

Oh, wait, there's more details... Oh.

Offhand, this looks like "who has Divinations", as, unless The Plot puts the PCs in just the right place, I don't see anyone happening to stumble upon the correct answer / the information necessary to even start to know how to resolve this. Maybe that's just me, but I don't tend to look up in the sky, see a new planet, and think "we should investigate a local cult". Give or take the whole "Generally anything that... divines Bad Planet causes it to almost wake up a bit and be unpleasant to the nuisance" bit - which in and of itself could be a clue for some societies.

About the only one of my characters that I foresee being able to resolve this scenario going in blind is Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named. Now, let's ignore all the ways that this couldn't happen / that Quertus wouldn't have to lift a finger if something kinda like this tried to happen on Placia / in his homeworld of Placia's solar system. Instead, let's just go with "it happened on one of his allies' homeworld".

In this scenario, Mind Blank provides immunity to the Bad Planet. Time Stop will provide immunity to all the Mayhem. But then... if they're using technological portals, Quertus has no real way to detect or track them. And he's unlikely to notice a few little satellites around an entire huge planet.

So, when it comes to investigation, Quertus only has 2 things going for him: 1) he is immortal, and can keep time stopped forever; 2) Detect Magic / Psionics? Check. That said, his powers are so very specific, he may actually need to invent an entirely new spell, just to specifically detect the specific energy of the Bad Planet / crystals, especially if he's doing so on a planetary scale, based off searching for things like the Mayhem energy streaming from the Bad Planet. Happily, thanks to True Dwoemers, creating such a spell takes about 1 round. Plus the Spanish Inquisition #3) mention of the Mi-Go being "7-dimensional", and their home(?) being a cognitive health hazard for "linear time people to look at for too long".

So, it sounds to me like the Mi-Go might well be "immune" to Quertus' Time shenanigans, and may well track him down. This will make things so much easier for Quertus, as he can (when they presumably shoot first and ask questions never) Dominate Monster, ESP, Mindrape, or just kill and Dead Thought the Mi-Go in order to learn what is going on. Although, despite so completely out-classing the poor Mi-Go, it's actually likely that Quertus will be utterly terrified of dealing with anything capable of acting within his not-a-Time-Stop custom Time Stop effect, and instead, in a display of complete overkill, would flee, gather an army, ward them with Mind Blank (of course), and then return to totally pown the poor Mi-Go in a field of stopped time. At least one of his allies, upon seeing the "threat" the Mi-Go pose, will facepalm, and inform Quertus of just how unnecessary they all were.

Once he uses one of any number of methods available to him to get information from the Mi-Go, Quertus can develop that global spell, look back in time, and combine those two, and thereby get a good picture of exactly what sequence of events caused the current Armageddon scenario (merging this timeline with the one where he went straight to a global detection spell, if the Mi-Go can't or didn't intrude on his personal time).

Anyway, once he knows what's going on, Quertus will most likely warn his allies that he's about to tamper with time (causing most if not all of them to flee, at which point this timeline merges back with the one where he uncharacteristically actually just defeated the Mi-Go himself), then Time Travel back in time, and Delayed Blast _____ (probably Fireball, among other things) the entire base, all 12 satellites, and anywhere else the Mi-Go are known to be involved in this operation, including things like where their records are stored, their families and people who owe them money (if he takes snarky advice from his allies).

Then, given the temporal damage he's caused by manipulating the timeline, he'll attempt to repair the timeline, and hope that the world / universe / whatever he's in projecting into survives his meddling and continues to exist.

And... that's it. That's the only one of my characters I can think of offhand that I expect to be able to be dropped in blind, and still successfully resolve this scenario.

Well, unless you count the MtG Mage casting Exterminatus, I suppose, or even something silly like Run Away Together. :smallamused: Sadly, Mr. T doesn't even get to try to call in a proper Exterminatus, at least as I read the rules of the scenario. :smallfrown:

If my Psychic Vampire decoy clone just happened to have been introduced to the cult / the psychic crystals, then he'd recognize their power, and their potential, at least insofar as using them by themselves. If he also just happened to have his Companion use Divinations about how they'll turn out (since, inverted, they could cause some Mayhem, and this tech in and of itself is, well, powerful), or he just happened to decide to devote the resources to scanning some minds (or some computers, AKA "really easy minds"), he'd have some idea of the scope of the problem. Alternately, when the planet first appeared, if he just happened to try to find "the mind that caused this", or he just happened to try to scan the rogue planet for sentient life, he might get clued in (he might need to prepare a blood drive first, depending on what he tries to scan for, and where the appropriate mind(s) are located) if he isn't driven insane first (it's not the first time he's scanned something this utterly stupid for anyone else to even consider pointing telepathy towards). Regardless, once he investigated their base, it would be game over for any secrets they had (including the color-coded messages, which he could decypher (given time and a computer) even without reading their minds. Most likely, in a bit of karmic justice, he'd just use their own tech and plans against them, mind controlling them to send out totally not fake broadcasts from their facilities, incriminating themselves for everything they've done, before self-destructing their own facilities (and satellites - they seem to have plenty of explosives to handle those, too). In order to have plenty of blood to power his abilities, he'd be best to do all this without actually leaving his offices.

Like most who were blasted by prismatic death satellites, Alex Daeus #5, the M&M Matter Manipulation character who faced that scenario, has learned his lesson about looking for satellites. And Bad Planet has at least 12 artificial ones. If he just happened to have not gotten a refund on his points on his satellite-destroying base, and if he (or, rather, his player) just happened to possess metagame knowledge, *and* just happened to be able to convince his GM that the presence of Mi-Go technology in the universe means that Science! obviously works that way, and he should be able to buy additional extras on his weapons with that tech in mind? Or he just happened to have defeated some Mi-Go in such a way as to have gained access to their tech already? Then, at that point, he could use Portals! to look for and shoot satellites out of the sky on the Bad Planet... if he just happened to have nothing better to do with his time than to accidentally win the game.

If global Adventurer's Guild Guildmaster John Faseman of Marvel just happened to have some reason to go to the cult HQ to talk to the cult leadership (perhaps about purchasing or repurposing those crystals), he couldn't help but notice the out-of-place tech. If, when he inquired about it, said leaders told him that they got it from "angels", he'd be quite intrigued - said angels sound like they might be handy allies against the 666 Daemon Lords who infest this planet. If the "angels" just happened to think that John would make a great puppet, and just happened to botch their light-touch mind control attempt (John Faseman could spend Karma, so this one isn't exactly unlikely to occur), and things just happened to turn violent from there? Well, if the Mi-Go just happened to be disconnected enough to just follow their script, then the Mi-Go will produce TV / photo quality "proof" of John's guilt which will bring them moreso than John under suspicion by the whole world. And unlike many Marvel heroes, John never got the memo to just sit back and take such attempted hits to his Popularity, really drawing attention to their tech and strangeness. Meanwhile, John could make a "Plant what is tapped into the security cameras" scanner to map out the plant and thereby accidentally find their hidden base, and either unleash a violent minigirl on them, or just use Gate to send a team of adventurers to "deal with it".

You'd think, with enough time and bouncy-balls, Cutter could handle anything. Problem is, back when he thought it was a planet? He'd likely think in terms of propulsion to push it away, but realize that time isn't on his side to allow him or anyone else to build or even summon such a device. So (if on Earth) he'd consult NASA and XKDC about the effects of antimatter, and just how much he should use to prevent a collision. Some yelling about the mess he's making with all the bouncy balls later, he'd get an answer, and Cutter would make his first attempt (because backup plans) to spam the "planet" with antimatter. Which, if it's actually made of matter as I believe most of the Great Old Ones are, then, as I understand it, said antimatter would just blow off the eyelid, causing Earth to enter the Mayhem state early, because now Bad Planet is awake and angry, and the AoE is just that big. Oops.

My SI would just go on a brief killing spree, before being killed by someone or something stronger, faster, tougher, better, younger, luckier, or whatever. Although I think my SI would consider this Armageddon state to be a good thing if only it had only affected sapient beings. Ah, well.

And, because it's just her luck, Ambrosia Slughorn probably wouldn't be alone in joining the cult of peace and tranquility in the hopes of making things better through the power of positive thinking and good vibes upon hearing about a planet speeding towards Earth. Sigh.

NichG

2023-06-04, 10:06 PM

For the Mayhem scenario, thinking what the most OP character I've ever played would do.

This character was a former Greater Deity of a pantheon in a universe that was utterly destroyed, went to a Chrono Trigger 'End of Time' type of location with the other PCs with a quest to 'recreate the entire multiverse', and basically eventually became even stronger than he had been as a Greater Deity over the course of the campaign. The campaign was a D&D 3.5 base with so much custom stuff you could barely call it that. At the end, Mardyr had saving throws in the 250-400 range, actual 2e Karsus-like 10th+ level spells that he could cast from his hitpoints rather than slots and could spontaneously quicken/etc, a totally separate magic system where spells could be improvised at will within thematic categories (of which he had basically anything to do with soul creation and manipulation, anything to do with any form of dimensional travel, anything to do with geometry, anything to do with redemption, and also could twist cosmic energy signatures '90 degrees' into related but different cosmic energies, *another* totally separate 'magic' system of literal shonen anime moves that worked via dramatic editing e.g. if you monologue the world waits for you (which among other things had a power to 'take an encounter to a different space' and a power to permanently learn powers he observed others using), *another* magic system that let him burn XP to spontaneously create anything at more or less any scale he could hit the roll for including creatures, souls, cosmic energies, entire cities, etc, *another* magic system by which he could speak words that would warp the relationship between reality and the void at conceptual and physical levels, a custom kind of magic item gem slot system thing that gave a whole wonky set of stat buffs and powers and immunities including stuff like joining the timestops of others, a whole set of cosmic taints with weird effects like being able to avoid anything that would instakill, being given a save even on effects that would normally deny a save, being able to see as a cutscene any important events going on that are relevant to him and his interests, and rolling 1d100 instead of 1d20 on any kind of d20 roll one would normally make, the ability to once per game literally 'cheat' by setting any dice roll to whatever he would like it to be, the ability to once per game ignore an immunity and force someone to make a save or force someone to fail a save against something they're not immune to, etc... His regained godhood was of the Lovecraftian variety as well.

So he'd see the star coming, and probably immediately dimension walk out to meet it, and maybe even get along with the thing and be like 'okay, interesting passtime you've got there, mind if I watch?'. And maybe would just wait for everyone to massacre everyone else and then literally personally True Ressurrect every single individual who lived on that planet one at a time over the course of a few million years in a timeless space, hand-repairing their souls as need be, and carefully depositing back on the planet at the moment the Eye left, and call it a good learning experience for that civilization. As far as the effect itself goes, he has innate immunity to compulsions (not Mind Affecting, funnily enough), additional special resistance to things manipulating his soul (both passive, and the ability to actively oppose such effects at a pretty high level), and the ability to get a save even against things that don't allow it with a couple abilities to automatically succeed on saves from various sources (everything from a Ring of Nine Lives to using that 'cheat to set the dice roll' power to iirc a soulgem - custom gem slot thing - that could let you auto-succeed on one save per game). Unfortunately several pieces of his *gear* are sentient (and sapient for that matter) and would turn on him and try to kill him I suppose, which would just be a wee bit awkward. He does have a 9th level custom spell that creates a 300ft zone totally blocking any sort of powers that work via being carried by vision or perception of any form, so I guess he'd leave, fix his insane gear, and come back under that effect to continue chatting (or at least trying to).

If the thing actually destroyed the souls of people or was otherwise a jerk by e.g. refusing to communicate, he'd be a bit miffed and say 'hey, you can play with my toys but don't wreck them!' and... hm. I'm not actually sure what he'd do against a planet in combat practically speaking. There was literally a soulgem in that campaign 'immune to the attacks of gods' so probably its more like he can't hurt it and vice versa, but...

Putting aside literally trying to fight the thing with hitpoint damage, he has access to plenty of nasty cosmic energies that tend to stick with you regardless of scale or power. A previous version of him would have been able to inject Paradox taint into the thing to get it booted from the true timeline, by virtue of his own radioactivity at the time, but he cleaned that up by end of campaign so its not an option any more. Maybe use a Fury power to draw the thing into an extradimensional battlefield and then just... force it to listen to him monologue? Kind of an annoying way to seal someone away. Hm, maybe the cheesy thing to do would be to forcibly socket the True Circle soulgem into the planet-god - its a thing that 'slowly' (as in instantaneously for characters with normal amounts of HP) permanently erodes your max HP down to 1 if you don't have immunity to its particular form of cosmic energy, in exchange for also burning off nasty cosmic taints you'd rather not have. Mardyr goes around with this thing equipped, so it'd be at hand. It'd probably allow a save versus the socketting attempt, but thats what burning the point of Sheol to make a target autofail a save would be for. Oh, and there's a soulgem that 1/game automatically lets you affect a target (e.g. without save) who has never known love - so we have some options for making the thing stick even given deity immunities. Against a planet-god the gem might not actually harm it until a few million years have passed, but it would eventually actually be a problem for the thing over the sorts of infinities of time that elder gods expect to exist for. And then one more point of that kind of damage would perma-kill it, even if its a force of nature or embodiment of laws of physics (possibly with interesting consequences for that universe, but for Mardyr that's like Tuesday anyhow).

Alternately maybe breach the wall of reality and try to drag it into the void somehow... By end of campaign he was going around with a 184 Strength but that's not quite 'lift a planet' level of things unfortunately - about 13 orders of magnitude too low carry capacity. He might be able to juggle soulgems to get that higher, but for 13 orders of magnitude he'd need +215 Strength. It's probably possible... I can immediately see a source of +92 Strength by switching one soulgem that gives a x1.5 stat mult from Wisdom to Strength. And there's another soulgem that gives you a thing that lets you become a factor of 10x bigger (this gets very complicated because Mardyr's Strength is already benefitting from a Wu Jen 'Giant Size' spell combined with a custom Shrinking effect that explicitly does not change your size category modifiers...). This feels possible but it'd take like 30 minutes of combing through notes and soulgem lists and stuff at the table, but I did theorycraft a 700 Wisdom arrangement at one point taking out all of the stops, so... yeah. Literally chuck the elder god through a portal to the void like a baseball, that's very on point for Mardyr's style of thing I'd say.

As far as dealing with the cult, uh... I guess probably thats what he should actually do, but they're going to be so much less interesting than this thing that he might - embarrassingly - just neglect that solution course entirely, even if he has plenty of divination options to actually figure out that they're what's going on. At which point the scenario becomes more or less trivial - I mean, he can't viably melee a planet and expect to do much, but a couple of dinky satellites relying on dimensional portals? Oomph (quicken-cast with no somatic or verbal components thanks to the alternate casting system) Miracle to emulate Destroy Portal or whatever that Manual of the Planes spell was. Or literally just release the Shrinking effect and start carving through them with a Colossal-sized sword to the tune of probably several thousands or even tens of thousands of damage per round thanks to a really easy AC to hit and Avalanche of Blades letting you keep attacking until you miss, albeit with scaling penalties.

All in all though, surprisingly still a bit interesting to think through for a completely OP character. Mostly through by virtue of 'how to do this with style' rather than any sort of real need. Still, this would actually have been a legitimate game session or two worth of content even at the end of that campaign.

Telok

2023-06-05, 01:25 AM

Hmm. Perhaps more angle on the mayhem would flavor things a bit? Lets see...

A link to someone's play through of the original adventure, just as it's starting to get good https://www.delta-green.com/2012/04/the-new-age-playtest-transcript-11/

Yeah, so, the original adv was designed to dump the characters straight into the cult connection by relying on a more aggressive psi/mana collection pattern using smaller crystals for individual members. That gets screwed up by the intervention of a drug dealer member who discovered he could cut the small crystals in half, under-report member $ donations and skim off psi/mana power at the same time. It ends badly. That link picks up right after the showdown with the psi/magic empowered now-an-übermensch drug dealer cultist, when the PCs are deciding to go after the main cult.

Info on mi-go, because they're weirder and more alien than any d&d critter I've ever met (and that includes most of DarkSun & Planescape): https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/inshaneee/delta-green/#2

A description of how some of the entities involved may be treated (because d&d habituates us to "stat it & kill it" stuff that's inappropriate): The exact entity here is Ghroth, but that really won't help since it's literally a one event critter from a single 1997 adventure. Mind, that describes more than half the Mythos critters in existance if you're just looking at original authors and primary sources. Proper treatment of the Cthulhu Mythos isn't as a unified set of facts, but as a series of observations from unreliable witnesses who could only see or hear part of what's going on. To wit:
passage from Countdown in which Hastur is described:

"It is a primal force of the universe, which assumes an individual role only in response to the entropy caused by human beings - our destruction gives it form, our violence gives it a name, our screams give it a voice. It is no more a deity than gravity is, no matter how many people worship it and ascribe it a personality and an intelligence (many do). However, by envisioning a "deity" with properties that are in sync with the principle of entropy, it is possible for humans to commune with this principle in a direct way that fosters a greater- if insane-understanding than that possessed by most people."

The book also gives a few novel in which Hastur is described this way: Karl Edward Wagner's "The River of Night's Dreanling," Craig Anthony's "Scene: A Room," and Alan Moore's "The Courtyard".

I would also heartily recommend The Magnus Archives podcast
and

FoDG has a little blurb where they do something like you did:

Alhazred also connected the four cosmic gods [Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, and Nyarlathotep] to the four elements (water, air, earth, and fire), more likely as part of an abstruse alchemical code than as a deliberate attempt to reify these unknowable forces. MAJESTIC physicists have, however, reported surprising results from experiments mathematically mapping the four cosmic gods to the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear interactions) so perhaps it is possible that the entire energetic universe is in fact actively composed of malign sapiences.

Again, it's enlightening to see the different takes and assumptions we bring to these brief descriptions of the scenarios we've written. So that's where I was coming from. It's a scenario as I would present it with the mi-go being less blind sided by human error patterns and a touch more patient, plus the entity being less a "statted thinking creature" than just part of the metaversal metaphysics that is possible to interacted with as an "individual creature" for a flawed and imprecise definition of those words.

Quertus

2023-06-05, 05:11 PM

I haven't read the module or much of the playthrough yet, but it feels like "suddenly, planet!" / Bad Planet isn't so much a scenario as a clue or a consequence.

I could probably try to reverse-engineer the module from the playthrough, making up mechanics along the way which might not match the actual mechanics at all. But... hmmm... I guess, if I get really bored / the opposite of bored (interested? invested?), I could write a Friend Computer / Paranoia-esque "all the characters are supernatural, and all are desperate to hide the fact that they are supernatural from Delta Green" for a party of characters (from various base systems) attempting to research events, starting at the "it's not terrorism, it's terror" hook. But that would involve a lot of reading, and I might be too lazy. :smallamused:

On an unrelated note, I'm hoping this thread will see at least a little more action, as I was really looking forward to reading at least how sword-chan (sword-kun? I don't really grok what these endings mean...) would respond to being fought over in that war on... oh, right, spoilers. Being fought over in a war. That sounded like a writing prompt that would produce something fun to read. :smallbiggrin:

Oh, and speaking of fun to read, thank you @Telok for continuing to give your characters' responses, even to your own scenarios. They (especially Paranoid Bob :smallamused:) really are fun to read. :smallbiggrin: And it's good for demonstrating how, as you said, different people approach the problem differently.

Telok

2023-06-06, 01:45 AM

Went ahead an read to the end of the log, it ends session 15, four after my link. Apparently it was from the '93 playtest of a draft version of the adventure for the DB book. Same outline as I gave, just minor details adjusted. DG is CoC is BRP, a simple d100 under skill or under stat x5, crit success/weapon impale is 1/5th of base chance, hit points are (size+con)÷2 effective (5d6+6)÷2 with con checks to stay consious at under half hp, everything else is minor details.

Quertus

2023-06-07, 11:28 PM

Right, so, fair to say I hate reading the Delta Green The New Age playtest transcript.

It's not just because I'm left with too many unanswered questions like "Dreams because _____?", "Rex because _____?", "Doctor was ____?", "Chapter 13 because ____?" to reverse engineer anything even remotely like the original module.

It's not just because of the pacing. 10 chapters before it "gets good", then it ends in 4? Not normally good, might be good for a good mystery.

It's not just because the PCs are idiots. It's kinda expected that the PCs will be idiots, overlooking obvious details and such, but the type and extent of the PC stupidity in the transcript makes my skin crawl. Like "cover is 'status: Missing' + 'being peppered with questions by feds & reporters'." or "heavy flirting with operative + appear on TV as member"? Really? That's the best your brains work?

It's not just because I don't get a sense of real character of the characters, only snippets of their quirks. And the "roleplay" seems heavier on OOC information than personality.

It's not just because, from what little I do know of them, I hate the PCs, although it doesn't hurt that I'd probably rather read a single chapter about their grizzly deaths after the mission that read the mission itself (the deaths they did have were nice).

It's not just because the writing isn't nearly as entertaining as that in this thread, or that their attempts at humor often work against them (for example, I liked "headline", conceptually, but the delivery failed to stick the landing).

It's not just because their SOP doesn't match what I'm used to from RPGs or TV shows, although I suspect my counterpart might cause similar cringe in some.

It's not just because the GM's style really doesn't help with a lot of these problems.

But all of those put together, and perhaps some things I haven't been able to quantify yet, merged together to create a thoroughly unenjoyable and borderline unpleasant reading experience.

But, apparently, I hate myself enough to read it all anyway. :smallamused:

And, wow, those crystals were way more powerful than I expected.

So, if despite a likely completely different entrance, if my "pretending not to be supernatural" team were railroaded into chapter 12 anyway, it might look a little like this:

Premise: a copy of the Telepathic Vampire, Arma, Cutter Fyord, and Hunter were all brought to this world, given cover identities, and trained on things from this world, including the Delta Green they are infiltrating. Their first mission in this world opens with a "terrorist attack", which they investigate for supernatural elements, while trying to conceal their own supernatural natures, even from one another. Most likely, they've done things completely differently, yet incomprehensibly are being railroaded into spending the night in the Tulsa compound. The events up to this point have led to them possessing numerous gadgets, numerous Enolsis crystals, (what they consider to be) insane ordinance (C4, incendiary grenades, explosive rounds, elephant tranquilizer, things like that), comm gear all around (that also doubles as a beacon to help TV to not accidentally touch any of the other agents' minds, as he's been warned that some Delta Green members are Psi-sensitive (which, while true of the actual Delta Green agents, is a clever ruse to keep TV from noticing the sub-dermal skill chips some of the other faux-agents need in order to understand / interact with this world)), blueprints of Enolsis buildings, one new power/mutation (TV has eyes that grant passive Aura Sight), and numerous mundane items including two medkits, multiple (chilled) blood bags, one pair of sunglasses and one tinfoil hat. Their only immediate backup will be TV's Companion, who is pretending to cover them as a Sniper (she's terrible at the job - any of the other 4 would do better).

Unlike the Agents, not a one of these characters is likely to be locked into a room with barred windows, reinforced glass, and a military-grade door without noticing (I blame my own paranoia about such things, although to be fair, some of my other characters wouldn't notice). OTOH, unlike Agent Newcastle, not a one of them would think to stuff the central air with towels. Arma would actually go to sleep, trusting in her Hat of Disguise (a prerequisite for infiltrating Delta Green while being obviously not human) to make it look like she's got a sleeping mask on, so nobody notices if she opens her eyes. TV doesn't sleep, and would (fake a shower, leave it running, cool down to corpse temperature, hide, and) wait up for company, while Hunter and Cutter behave "normally". Well, if "normally" includes sweeping for bugs and (assuming no bugs are found) Cutter finally getting to litter a room with bouncy balls while hiding C4 around the window. Meanwhile (assuming no bugs) Hunter is barricading the room, placing his weapons and ammo in optimal locations, evaluating the structural integrity and weapon potential of every object in the room, and otherwise preparing for attacks from all sides by all types of foes, especially whatever they believe Rex to be (synthetic shapeshifter?). Hunter is probably the only one who realizes that the door is locked, and debates relaying that information on their encrypted channel while in a bug-free room... and decides it isn't worth the risk. [There's something very wrong with the world when Arma comes off as the least paranoid character in the party.]

I'm not sure if NASA's announcement is on TV, as we got here much earlier than the agents in the test run. Even if it is, I'm not convinced anyone will be watching the TV. Anyway, GM Pub just said, "you're being gassed" after the initial "saving throw", so... I guess I'll assume it's obvious enough? Arma goes to double sleep. TV isn't affected. Cutter [Ongoing: Expel foreign toxins] (it's very effective). Also, not trusting that the room will continue to have enough Oxygen, he'll [Summon Oxygen Tank] (and hope it doesn't explode in his face) [Ongoing: Summon Oxygen] (because he has plenty of mana crystals thanks to Enolsis, and this is invisible, unlike potentially having to explain where the oxygen tank came from). Hunter is ashamed he hadn't explicitly accounted for this vector of attack, especially after whatever (maybe) happened previously in the module (where the 4 fake agents discussed "gas" as one possibility to consider, and the fact that we considered and may have gassed a target ourselves), and puts a couch through a wall, and steps out for some fresh air (or, if that isn't realistic for a human to accomplish, he steps out by exploding or even melting the floor).

The lights go out, and Arma gets put to triple-sleep, thanks to a tranq dart. The pair who enter her room presumably try to pick her up... at which point they start making SAN checks, as she doesn't feel like she looks. And she has wings. Invisible wings. Invisible bat wings. Like a Daemon. As beings from a CoC world, they're probably reduced to gibbering madness by the experience, by all the heaping piles of incongruous details about her existence, long before they can move her to wherever they were trying to take her.

TV is hidden, and simply politely (silently, telepathically) "asks" the one in the back to shut the door behind her. Then asks the one up front to start meditating on their crystal. Once they're both Dominated, he'll come out of hiding, drain the one dry (eating all her memories to find out what's going on in the process) while using the cultists' Crystal vulnerability to drain the other's psychic power. He probably doesn't even need a master crystal (although the group has at least 2 by now), as he should be able to channel the power himself. But he doesn't want to waste it as a glowing shield, and just hides the psychic power in a closed fist. Then, his belly full, he begins seeking out minds to Dominate into feeding him more psychic power (and blood, as necessary) - probably starting with the two in Arma's room.

Cutter gets hit by a tranq dart (it's not very effective), and falls off the bed, taking the covers with him. The two intruders struggle to get over to him, as bouncy balls spill out the door. When they do finally reach him, he ambushes them with the pair of swords he pulled out of Hammer Space. *ahem* his luggage. Yes, that's what the official report will read, that he pulled them out of his luggage. Hopefully, they're willing to surrender... although he's likely to drug them into suicide meditation feeding his master crystal if he thinks they're trying to kill him. Unlike TV, he'll take the glowing shield, thank you very much. [Never put something like this into the module, because my characters will use it.]

Hunter just outflanks, ambushes, and slaughters his opponents. He may not contribute much to the rest of the module, but he's [Overwhelming] in a fight against most things. His biggest challenge is not appearing supernatural (or not doing so where anyone can see (and live)).

Cutter will follow standard Guard procedure of gathering more allies, and eventually... awaken Arma with... a shot of adrenaline and psychic power? That's what his report will say, not [Remove Foreign Toxins].

If I'm reading the playtest correctly, and the doors to the building we were sleeping in were going to be hastily rigged to explode? Then I genuinely don't understand why the Mi-Go didn't just remote-detonate the building, in any version of this scenario, *especially* if they have synth robot things that can play our parts for the cameras. I'm guessing the door triggers weren't up when the 8 intruders came to get us, weren't going to be put up if they succeeded, and that the members of the capture squad don't know anything about that plan. But it doesn't matter, because the "bomb setters / door riggers" are likely the closest and thus next ones to become Dominated and head for TV's room. So even if Hunter goes out the front doors instead of breaking through another wall, it still shouldn't be game over for the faux agents.

Cutter and Arma will follow standard Guard procedure of gathering more allies, and attempt to link back up with the others. They'll likely find TV, still in his room, draining mindless zombies who keep coming to him. (He'll know they're coming thanks to the comms, so they won't find him in the compromising position of drinking anyone's blood). Although the zombie nature of people coming to him and his command crystal may be strange (especially since they aren't coming to Cutter and his command crystal - yes, they have multiple, and TV has to at least fake using his while the others are around), they'll probably leave him to it, and attempt to regroup with Hunter.

TV will warn Hunter off the mobs of free food - I mean, cultists TV is working on subverting. So Hunter will likely be the one to encounter the glowing bug thing (and regain 1 SAN from seeing it, as it makes much more sense to him than all this psychic crystal nonsense :smallwink:). And get backup from TV's Companion. And, as much as I hate to admit it, it's really likely that this version of TV's Companion likely gets jibbed by the Mi-Go. And while Hunter could doubtless solo it, he probably won't get the chance, as a vengeful TV likely finally uses some of that psychic power he's been siphoning to explode the Mi-Go. And maybe bothers to use the psychic energy to pull the psychic residue of the Mi-Go to learn from it, or the psychic residue of his Companion, to turn her into a ghost / to possess a new body (and there seem to be some convenient empty bodies later in the module).

Speaking of, the module doesn't really mention the security cameras, let alone the plants growing into them, or the underground control room afaict. But, if he somehow hadn't noticed (or investigated) them before, I think TV will know all about everything once it eats the Mi-Go's psychic residue.

Hunter could solo the rest of the compound (but nobody knows that). TV could solo the rest of the compound if they left him alone, and by this point Arma and Cutter suspect that's probably true. (If necessary, TV has spun it as "maybe this 'zombie mode' was built into the crystals, and he just stumbled on it in his meditations?". But he gets them to back up Hunter, so he can get back to drinking blood to keep up the zombie cycle. And (based on the playtest) I would add, "at least until the Mi-Go blow up his building", but that won't happen now that he's read their minds.

By the time they reach the temple portal, TV has reality-bending reservoirs of psychic power, Cutter has a stronger visible psychic shield (having drained the crystals of those they killed), and Arma and Hunter have struggled to hide their regeneration and martial supremacy, respectively. They've collected even more crystals (all emptied now), the explosives from at least 1 building (more if the Mi-Go decided not to try to make us look like insane terrorists), and left exactly 0 survivors (oops!). Then the Companion's psychic echo is given a The Living Power robot body, because what else would TV do with all that power besides show loyalty to his Companion?

And, assuming they go through the portal (which is a big assumption, and likely involves lots of prep work and testing that ultimately doesn't matter)... I'm not sure what POW is exactly, but I'm guessing Cutter and Hunter pass out. But come to before anything really happens.

That said, with the Mi-Go's stolen knowledge, crystals can be stolen from the 1st satellite, and used to power runs on the other satellites, where crystals are stolen and bombs are planted.

Ultimately, I think that, after they blow up the satellites, stop / delay the son of Azathoth, and deal with any theoretical control room, they clean up the Tulsa mess, and take over the Enolsis magic pyramid scheme. :smallcool: