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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[heydude6]

I posted this in gaming block already but due to a lack of replies (they probably thought it was an interest check), I'll post it here.

I was working on an RtD for a while before I scrapped it, realizing that it was just an inferior version Shadowrun (though a bit simpler). With this in mind I was thinking: maybe I should run a Shadowrun game on this forum?

Now I'm not posting here to gauge interest (I'd find that out after posting the OP), I'm just here to ask seasoned players if that is a terrible idea or not. This would be my first time GMing Shadowrun and I've only had a little experience actually playing the game. I'd probably just use the core rulebook at first, but then allow splatbooks as the campaign progressed to minimize initial complexity.

[NullForceOmega]

...How much do you like overhead?  I'm not joking when I say that preparing a single 'run' could take most of a week.

[kilakan]

I don't really think it's a particularly great idea to attempt to GM a game that you have little to no experience with.  It'll just ruin your own sanity very quickly trying to keep up and learn everything.  That, and shadowrun with just the core book is actually pretty lackluster.

[Draignean]

Shadowrun is a very mixed bag of systems, with a balance that can be... schizophrenic to say this least. (Granted, I'm remember this from some old books, so newer editions probably fix many issues.)

Personally, I'd tell you to run a fairly standard rules-lite RTD basis, then tear of Shadowrun's skin and wear it as your own. You get to steal all the good bits of lore and argot without muddling it terribly with its... interesting take of mechanics.

[heydude6]

Thanks for all of the helpful advice, I'll just keep working on my original rtd then.

[Neonivek]

Shadowrun is a very mixed bag of systems, with a balance that can be... schizophrenic to say this least. (Granted, I'm remember this from some old books, so newer editions probably fix many issues.)

The WEIRDEST thing about Shadowrun is it very much has a "Long term vs. Short term characters"

You really could decide to become super duper powered right from the start.

And there are DEFINATELY character builds that are so overwhelmingly Late Game that they usually never pay off.

[Mephisto]

According to a Shadowrun campaign I follow, the English 5e books are kind of crap. The German version was laid out by a different company and is much better. Their running joke is running the German version through Google Translate would result in a more pleasant gaming experience.

[BlackFlyme]

I've not read it in great detail, but I do remember that it does not mention the carrying capacities of the vehicles, but does have rules for what happens if a vehicle is overloaded, and how much weight each seat can hold if storage space has run out.

[Neonivek]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164017.0

Well I started my Play by Post.

[Rolan7]

After 70 years of mostly menial service, and a disastrous clusterfuck of a first mission, I was judged worthy of commanding a squad (by dint of selfless loyalty and, barely, surviving) (also, the local Invictus are clearly getting desperate).  A WW2 medic, a Southern Belle, and a blind kung-fu mistress walk into knock politely at the door of a hunter conspiracy.  "Is this some kind of a joke?"  [snip]
It turned out that that region was overrun because my ancient sire never plugged in his phone, so he failed to keep in touch with his nemesis (the Mekhet primogen).  This was all a failure to communicate.  Still, risking the lives of neonates over trivial nonsense is kinda how neonates advance...  Beats 70 years of maid-work.
Eating rats is fine, though.  Eleanor likes being a cat.

Eleanor's sire went off (taking the car) presumably to duel his kismesis.  But not before giving her orders to attack an identified hunter stronghold and, specifically, kill them all.
We avoided humanity loss last session by attempting diplomacy with the vampire hunters...  But it's so obviously total war, that that won't work again

We tried to prepare without seeing the building, which was a mistake.  To be fair, though, we were all embraced before 1930.  We can barely use phones, much less Google.  Still, we did adopt a couple of ghouls...  a disturbing process, even with certain parts skimmed over.
That did involve a nice long social scene in a weird poetry club, though.  Eleanor sat down at an occupied table and stared patiently until acknowledged.  Then offered her poetry for criticism:

Spoiler: Object d'art (click to show/hide)

Cats are wonderful creatures. They are graceful, beautiful, and better than people in every way. Sometimes I dream I am a cat, and there are rats everywhere. Some of the best things about cats are [rest of the page is a bulleted list]
[Other side is the rest of the list] Dogs are awful.

Having long lost the ability to read social cues, she assumed they liked it so much they had to leave.  Then sit down at another table.  She continued observing them, hoping to learn more.
Our nosferatu wore a burka, and- actually nevermind, less said about that, the better.  Or about our belle acquiring her ghoul.


The rest of the session (took a break writing this post) was an incredibly vicious battle.  The original point of this post, in fact.  I'm not going into detail, but just saying...  It was incredibly rough.  It was basically a suicide mission.  One of the players really wanted to just leave, and I would have too, except that my character had sworn a vitae-oath to never fail her sire again.

And said sire had specifically ordered the death of all the hunters inside.  My character, the "squad leader", had to do everything possible to accomplish that.  OOC I was quiet, others pushed that player to stick around.
IC, I was ready to whisper to Julia's beast, and induce a rage frenzy.  I never revealed that card until now, heh.

Regardless...  It was very close.  Towards the end we had to "flee" and ambush.  And at the very end, we all frenzied.  Even my character Eleanor for the very first time.  She had eight dice, kinda designed not to frenzy, but RNG chose this moment.  All composure was thrown aside, and we were the monsters they expected.  And skipping over gory details, we did win.

Eleanor did *intentionally* unleash her beast in the aftermath, chasing down a straggler.  Because when you've had nothing but rat blood for ~50 years, and your sire orders you into a suicide mission on pain of death, maybe you treat yourself just a little bit.

a reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely

Her beast is an emaciated creature, an abused pet.  But now it smells blood.  And thanks to her Animalism power, which lets her negotiate with beasts...  It's negotiating with her.
And she, also, sees light at the end of a long tunnel.  a reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely
a reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely

Edit:  Eleanor did lose 1 humanity.  She just barely (2 dice) still feels a wrongness from killing, even in war.  It was very close, though.
Burning their fortress to the ground, destroying everything they own?  She felt nothing, and dropped to 4 humanity (7 is default, where stealing feels wrong)
WoD is interesting that way.  As long as she still feels something "wrong" while killing, she's retains 4 morality/humanity.  That particular line is a rough one to cross.
She did luck out and receive no derangement (insane quirk) for losing all respect for property, though.

[BlackFlyme]

This campaign seems a bit much. We've kind of exhausted our options for liberating the town.

We previously tried to free the work camp, but they just have too many reinforcements.
We went to find allies who were driven out of the town, but they were too injured from summoning gone awry to help us without a few weeks of rest.
We tried to get the aid of those at the dock, who were enemies of the occupation force, but they told us to sod off and called the occupiers for aid.
We responding by killing most of them, lighting the dock on fire, and running away when reinforcements arrive. We lost our Gunslinger in the fight though.
We've started hitting their supply caravans outside of town, which are much more manageable.

Aside from the caravan assault and helping out the loyalists, every other encounter was considered a failure, so we're a bit behind in our adventure. Destroying the dock wasn't enough for it to be considered a success; we had to also defeat the reinforcements. Which included five fourth-level Paladins, a couple of Hound Archons, and a Legion Archon. We're level Five. I'm fairly positive the DM is fucking with encounters.

I've almost got the souls to finish the Devil-Contract at least. Just nine more souls to go. Or one Paladin or two Clerics, as they are worth much more. Coup-de-gracing them with the sacrificial dagger has proven to be a pain in the ass. They keep dying before I get the chance to kill them.

[Neonivek]

Well creating a game sure is easier when you don't place...  like 10 hours of work on yourself (Ignoring that I've been writing for like... 6 hours straight)

Though I definitely can tell I am burning out... but I have to get it done, so I'll pull an all nighter.

And now 3 hours of straight work today, and discovered I made a pretty bad typo.

[Jimmy]

Heh, so here's what happened.

Party was looking to free one player's NPC brother from slavery to tie off their backstory.

So I built the NPC as a Vigilante per Pathfinder class, with his goal to free the slaves he's been trapped with for the last half a year.

The party does his quest, finds out he's the NPC they're looking for, and he gives them a quest to free the slaves of the town where they're staying.

Instead of accepting the quest, the players bash him unconscious and tie him up, then murder the local guard that's looking for him and attempt to flee the town.

So what should I do to reward this unexpected turn of events, hmm?

[Digital Hellhound]

So they bashed a PC's own brother unconscious? What exactly happened there? Did they just leave him there?

I imagine the local authorities will be after them, but the slaves could also turn on them for attacking their champion. If the brother got left behind, he could escape on his own and chase them down (with friends).

[Jimmy]

The town is Lawful Evil and controlled by diabolists who worship Asmodeus. The majority of slaves in the town are halflings, and as part of the previous session the group burnt their temple to the ground and destroyed the record archive of all the town's slaves.

Essentially, the PC that is related to the brother disagreed with submitting to the quest, decided they'd simply 'rescue' their brother by force, and dealt him sufficient nonlethal damage to render him unconscious.

Currently the NPC brother Vigilante is tied up with rope, unconscious, on one of the player's mounts. They're hoping to flee town with their airship. I was figuring a Horned Devil teleporting onto the airship before they can board would be a good spanner in the works of their plan, though I'm certainly open to suggestions. The group is level 11 at the moment.