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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Harry Baldman]

I'd give WoD another shot if I didn't have to vomit hours of plot and meta-plot built into the game to new players before we even do character gen.

The metaplot is kind of shit and irrelevant for the most part, though. The World of Darkness is at its best when it focuses on the small, local and familiar. The further away from that you go the further you get from the juxtaposition of the mundane and fantastical that makes it interesting.

Besides, not like there's any reason for new players to even know any of that if you go with the standard "freshly made" character background.

[Sirus]

Seriously, why don't people here GM WoD games? >_>

They do every now and then. There's two kinds.

First, the play-by-post kind that runs for 1-5 updates and immediately collapses under its own prose.

Second, somewhat rarer actual ones, of which the only one I've personally witnessed is Fniff's rather splendid 19th century Ireland game.

Beyond that you could always start your own. I'd be into more WoD at the very least, and rules-light stuff tends to be relatively simple to GM.

Firstly, I've never GM'd anything. Secondly, I have absolutely no experience with WoD (unless Vampire the Masquerades: Bloodlines counts).

[Harry Baldman]

World of Darkness is a good place to start if you want to try your hand at GMing something. It's freeform enough that you can improvise wildly and still come away with something playable. Maybe look through Genius: The Transgression, that's completely free. It kind of needs a little knowledge of the WoD system to get into, but most of that you can improvise from basic research.

[NullForceOmega]

I agree with Harry, WoD is a great 'starter' game for GMs (storytellers in WoD), it has a stupendous amount of flexibility and is primarily story driven.  I don't know if the current iteration keeps the D10 mechanics or not, but I recall them being very simple and quite easy to use (too simple for my taste.)

[BlackHeartKabal]

Going to be 100% honest and say that if we ran Genius: The Transgression on the forum I wouldn't hesitate to join.

[Neonivek]

Going to be 100% honest and say that if we ran Genius: The Transgression on the forum I wouldn't hesitate to join.

It would probably break down as EVERYONE would want to play Rick.

[BlackHeartKabal]

Going to be 100% honest and say that if we ran Genius: The Transgression on the forum I wouldn't hesitate to join.

It would probably break down as EVERYONE would want to play Rick.

Then they get put into the same bin as the fishmalks.

[Neonivek]

One unusual thing about the Shadowrun series is how the payment system functions.

Basically the tougher a mission is, hypothetically the more it is worth doing (both Karma wise and Money wise) and it works perfectly... at lower levels.

It gets really interesting so lets say your robbing someone's house and they have middling bodyguards without much or any cyberware at all. You can expect about 9000 dollars (nuyen), a little on the low side but your a shadowrunner and can probably meat it out rather easily.

But lets crank it all the way to the other side and have you storm the police headquarters of New York where there will definitely be Cybernetic cops and Magic Cops... It is a near suicidal mission for even extremely experienced and decked out Shadowrunners and even if they survive there is a large chance they will be on America's Most wanted: $24,000 dollars.

Which is honestly nothing and I can't think of any logical shadowrunner who would take high end jobs at the prices they pay out. (though usually High end shadowrunners earn money... in other ways)... And in fact they don't to my knowledge, stories where Shadowrunners take jobs THAT difficult or dangerous tend to be paid a lot more.

[Jimmy]

You're assuming Shadowrunners have a choice. You get a dragon telling you you're going to do a job or else, you damned well do the job and screw the consequences.

[Ghills]

I have a confession to make.

I had to find a new place to live, and somehow I've managed to lose my campaign notes.  My party isn't meeting for 2 more days so I have some more time to find them, and worst comes to worst I think I can reconstruct enough to get through an evening, but I feel like a really crappy GM.  Argh moving.

[TheBiggerFish]

Noooooo!
*hugpats*
It'll be all right.

[GiglameshDespair]

I have a confession to make.

I had to find a new place to live, and somehow I've managed to lose my campaign notes.  My party isn't meeting for 2 more days so I have some more time to find them, and worst comes to worst I think I can reconstruct enough to get through an evening, but I feel like a really crappy GM.  Argh moving.

Tell your group and find out what they remember beforehand.

[Neonivek]

Another thing you can do is a stall plot (disguised as a twist)

[Jimmy]

Yeah, I keep all my notes backed up online, since I often will get some prep work done during my breaks at work.

[Rolan7]

Yeah some sort of random encounter that spirals into a sidequest, maybe.  That sucks though...

Fakedit:  I tried to summarize concisely, and instead wrote a mostly-complete description again.  I'm okay with this.

Last session, our ventrue and my mekhet and my ghoul were captured by a couple of hunters, one of whom was definitely Blade.  We were extraordinarily inebriated and also on some drugs.  It was *supposed* to be a safe party place for vampires, but we did make a bit of a scene.
(The ventrue-malkavian, thinking herself to be an ancient Babylonian named Lilith, wrote those character in blood using 6 people as canvases)

I just can't be concise, can I?
So I'll warn, this session was especially sober and chilling.  I won't even share everything that happened, because some of it was pretty fucked up.  (And while I was sober then, I am not now.)

We surrendered and were taken as hostages in the hunter base.  (Not the one we slaughtered earlier, a different one).  Kayla (psycho gangrel) wasn't with us, which kinda sucked for her player.  Basically sat things out until the later hours.

They tortured us, frankly.  But first they took my ghoul aside, Alex, to... rehabilitate.  She tried to bluff and lie, but she was too new to all this. 

They brought her to a room full of other ghouls, all bound to gurneys.  Damn them, they were actually saving ghouls.  Understand that the hunters are largely psychopathic killers, but they were spending a *lot* of resources on this.  Probably recruiting most survivors, but still.  Everyone is grey in WoD.

Ghouls are addicted to vampire blood like a supernatural drug.  And as thralls, they are supernaturally in love with their "regnants".  Two of the ghouls were straining against their bindings, desperate to find their "love".  The rest were writhing in the throes of serious detox.

Once the orderlies left, one of the ghouls... got free of his restraints.  It wasn't pretty.  At the time I assumed he was just jonesying for blood, but I'm not sure.  His (gangrel?) regnant had died, he had felt it deeply.  He freed Alex so she could lead him to, well, us.  He wanted vampire blood, sure, but I think mostly he just wanted blood.  And gore.
Particularly considering what he did to- no, I'm going to skip ahead.

...
Alex was a clubgoing labtech, she had no idea how to use a shiv.  Or a gun.  And yet she had to...  Terrified and in shock, all she knew was she had to find Jake.  Particularly once her ghoul "friend" collapsed in gore, whispering a final curse to the last hunter guard.  Who also fell, bleeding profusely, but still alive.  Begging Alex to reconsider, offering a way out of this nightmare.  Crawling towards her, grabbing her.
The gun kept going "click click click".

Uh, right.  Sorry, it was just... yeah.

Anyway, Alex rescued Ventrue Amanda - currently "Frankie", a mafia hitman.  _{seven humanity}
Frankie had been under interrogation with a red-hot poker...  Well, at first.  When Alex arrived he/she was staring into space, describing hot dogs and girls and icy cold days, as the interrogator lay whimpering on a ball on the floor.
~malkavians~
(the player did an awesome job at monologuing, at considerable length, a seemingly innocuous description of Frankie's supposed life)

Together they rescued Jake, who...
Jake was alone in his cell, staring at a revolver with a single bullet.  Large crispy holes in his torso and arm, but no blood in the room.
I could say more, but not just now.

Things proceeded quickly from there.  Jake gave Alex some blood to heal her bruises and anemia (I skipped over some of what the bastards did to "rehabilitate" her).  Since it was still morning (Jake was only awake through force of will) we needed to enlist the other ghouls.  Alex lead the way.

Except, first, we checked out the other two cells.  One had a mute vampire who signaled a willingness to help.  The other...  A sound of crashing, growling, and banging was all we could make out.
So IC we had to assume it was Kayla lol, our gangrel

Still, we were very aware that a frenzying vampire will kill friends.  So Alex lead Amanda and the vampire down the hall, back to the ghouls.  Jake stayed behind, caaarefully opened the final of THREE maglocks, and fled into the shadows at a dead run.
"Do you look behind you? It'll-" "NO" "It'll uh, take an action..." "No I keep running".

It wasn't Kayla
If you know WoD, you can guess what it was.
And it's not like fucking Twilight.

We reached the ghoul rehabilitation room as alarm klaxons resounded through the base.  And screams, and gunfire, and primal roaring. 
We freed the ghouls and fed them (they were so hungry).  Jake gave an inspiring speech, promising them blood and a return to their loved ones (IE their vampires).  "There will be blood!"  This was met with a roar.  ... From outside the room (I was actually confused for a moment, heh). 

But no, it had seen Jake's "tear in reality".  Which was tiny, Jake still only has 1 blood potency and is mostly humane, but the RNGoddess was grinning.

The ghouls shoved gurneys against the door as Jake and Amanda desperately searched for anything useful.  Mostly looking for silver, or drugs, or anything...  The RNG gave Jake an extraordinary success.  With his trained auspex-senses, he found a way out.  A hole in the floor hidden behind some things.

But how deep was it?  We weren't sure.  So, uh
Amanda found a ghoul, a teenager who claimed his girlfriend's powers let him survive things.  She fed him a generous amount of blood and, uh, he jumped into the hole.
...
...
......crunch

~~7 humanity~~
and yes she made the morality roll again (helped that he volunteered, ghoul-insanity aside)

So we tied sheets together and made a rope.
The ghouls made it down fine, us vampires fell lol.  We're both unathletic as all hell.
Which actually knocked Amanda into torpor.  Jake *barely* held on.  The ghouls picked Amanda up and together we hurried down the tunnel...  The gunshots had stopped, and there was grinding and howling from up above.

Turns out the teen-ghoul survived, he was just barely conscious.  We took him with us, escaping into... ugh, the sewers.  Turns out the Nosferatu (who fancy Mekhet Jake kinda despises, but tries to play nice with) had been monitoring this hunter base for a while via tunnel.

They knew about the ghouls, but didn't care.  They even knew some vampires were stupid enough to get caught, and didn't care.
But to be fair, they did let Jake finally sleep the day away (in their maggot-ridden trash pile).
And helpfully hinted that Jake should kill the "extra" ghouls, as demanded by Camarilla law.
yeah...

But yeah, we escaped the hunter base.  Yaaaay~

Then Kayla did some freaky shit that I can't even begin to describe properly.  She already *did* the hornet thing, this went even farther.  It was getting early in the morning in real time, too.  Basically... well, there was a bit of a standoff at our haven afterwards, and it sorta looked like this:
TL;DR http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/03/19/episode-1107-heartfelt-reunion/
except instead of her sire Juan (the pirate) being there, Jake's high-humanity sire was.  So Jake and his sire kinda just left, along with ghoul-Alex and Amanda's unconscious body.

After cleaning up a trail of sewage, that is.