Tuesday, 21 January 2020

Session 252 - Rage Against the Flying of the Lights

A session of pure, glorious combat against powerful foes in sci-fi power armour!
They were defeated and the Mod Cons were saved... at the cost of Andromeda's broken ribs and the disbanding of the New Moondin Lost Boys. A pyrrhic victory!


Session 252 - Rage Against the Flying of the Lights

Date:
December. 15 years after the End.

Character List:
- Andromeda, Andromedan Vampire / Kitty
- DJ, Intergalacticist Cleric / Charles
- Red, Duellist Fighter / Timothy
- Zulu Snakebite, Barbarian / Ollie
- Dargo, Inheritor / Russell
- The New Moondin Lost Boys, Extras / George
- Margaret and the Thatchers, Extras / Hagar
- The Coopers, Extras / Nadav

New Characters:
- Margaret and the Thatchers, a group of Extras led by a pun. Big fans of giant hairbrushes.
- The Coopers, another group of Extras who briefly wield incredibly dangerous crowbars.


New Backstory:
- Mydog Smith of the New Moondin Lost Boys was generous during the long savage period of the Poisoned Years, and was instrumental in handing around the flesh of the deceased POWERLAD cult who kept the town fed in those early years. When eating to heal, can grant your healing to someone else instead.


- Beepbox’s defining moment remains the time he accidentally broke his father’s precious Beepbox, the still-working corpse of an angel. He says his dad died of a broken heart. Whenever your weapon or armour breaks, you get a free Action.


Loot:
- 6 Power Suits (3000 exp)
- 4 Foam Guns (400 exp)
- 4 Deployable Forcefields (400 exp)
- 2 Ray Guns (200 exp)
- 2 Radiation Cannons (200 exp)
- 2 crates of Heated Bidet Toilet Seats (5000 exp)
- 1 crate of Microwaves (2500 exp)
- 1 crate of Floating Lightbulbs (2500 exp)
- 20 obols (20 exp)
- 16 dinosaur rations (16 exp)
- Vial of Ultra-Rare Spices adds +5 to one Cooking roll
- 2 staffs and a spear
Total: 14236 exp

Foes:
- Barbara the Barbarian (500 exp)
- 14 “Space Marine” Indomes (700 exp)
Total: 1200 exp

Events:

- Our view pans down from above towards a frenzied battle scene. Inside the impact scar left by a crashed space ship, lasers criss-cross the battlefield. The combatants duck and weave behind storey-tall cubes of stained metal while others blast around on jump-packs built into their futuristic metal suits. “Mod Cons” - sentient modern conveniences like microwaves and bidets - cower in their broken-open shipping containers. An unarmoured woman riding a dinosaur charges into combat, spear held high.
- But rather than zooming down towards the brutal combat, our view is drawn down and to the left, towards a scene much more personal…

--- DJ Disappoints
- Further along the impact scar, behind a ridge, Dustin “DJ” Johnson is persuading an amorous half-naked lady to let him wear her power suit while they get down and dirty. He swears it’ll be hot.
- Alas, he betrays her immediately. The armour closes over him and he immediately jumps away, snatching her foam gun for good measure! She shakes her fist at him as he zooms away, he didn’t even leave her his number!


--- Back to the Battle!
- DJ flies over to the main battle, seeing some space marines behind a low forcefield taking beam rifle fire from Zulu who is trapped in foam. The Lost Boys fire up at a couple of robed wizards on the ridge above. Elsewhere, Dargo manifests an enormous poisonous tendril and snatches the enemy Barbarian from her dinosaur’s back!
- Andromeda and her Void Pet have achieved synchronicity. It feels her thoughts and bends space to warp her across the battlefield… right behind one of the enemy wizards! Blood appropriately rains down around him, side effect of his chaotic spontaneous spellcasting.
- DJ himself is shocked when the bidets mistake him for a foe and squirt him with anti-aircraft water. His attempts to trick the baddies into coming with him but they’re a little busy right now!
- Dargo’s wrestle with the Barbarian goes well up until he starts to run low on Meat Points. She kicks off him and her pachycephalosaurus charges in to help her! Raked with beam-fire from the more distant Zulu and Lost Boys, nevertheless it charges in with a terrifying ram attack! He hardens his flesh with crocodile skin but it’s not enough… until a random guy comes diving out of nowhere to save him! Big Smiles of the Lost Boys is thrown off-screen by the impact, but he helped Dargo survive!
- There is a distant whistle and Zulu’s antelope charges in to help. It dives under the belly of the dinosaur and rears its head, skewering the dinosaur’s underbelly and throwing it down the slope! The Barbarian flies into a rage at the sight, screaming obscenities!
--- Reinforcements!
- Siân the Necromancer arrives on an intelligent razor scooter she found somewhere! She flip-kicks off a container and lands right next to the Lost Boys! Just in time to be blasted by a radiation cannon. She dives behind a container before she can eat another blast, stones from her sling pinging off the marine’s armour.
- Andromeda is thrown down the slope by a wizard, but swiftly warps back up to him with her Void Pet powers! She’s in for a cruel shock when the wizard’s last act is to explode in a cloud of Magic Missiles, but she’s fine! The other wizard looks at her in fear as she turns to look at him, blood trickling from her fangs.


- Battlecries erupt and a small army of Extras charges into battle! One group is led by Margaret of the Thatchers, the other is made up of Coopers led by ---!
- In an auspicious start, the Coopers charge into combat to assist the beleaguered Dargo and… their weapons shatter! Shards of crowbar scythe out across the combat, hurting Dargo, the Barbarian, and themselves!
- Margaret and the Thatchers charge a shipping crate, scramble up the side with the climbing skill honed through years of climbing roofs, and attack the marine standing atop it!
- DJ tries to persuade some marines that he’s their friend, and they tell him to get out while he still can! He foams them up instead, showing his allegiance.

--- Red Arrives!
- The Barbarian charges towards Dargo, but Red is there! She leaps at the Barbarian and tackles her down the slope into the impact scar, giving Dargo time to… collapse into ooze over the dinosaur and begin to digest it. Yum.
- Andromeda advances towards the last wizard and he tries to ward her off with another blast of magic… but the spell goes awry! He’s lifted into the air, screaming, as his limbs separate from his body and his torso is consumed from within as if a great mouth is devouring him from the inside out! Gore rains down on Andromeda, who tries to catch some in her open mouth.
- Down in the impact scar, Red faces down the charging Barbarian, confidently standing in her favoured duelling pose. Alas, she eats spear! As she recovers, a passing marine sprays foam in her direction, slowing her!
- Across the battlefield, Zulu has called her blood-drenched antelope to her and charges the group of marines that DJ just foamed up. Margaret and the Thatchers turn their leggets into a long hairbrush-pole and flail at one of the marines, while the Coopers try to catch another in a barrel.
- Elsewhere, the Lost Boys take a hit too far from a Radiation Cannon. The rest of the Extras are dead… it’s just the Named Characters left. They look up to see another Radiation Cannon aiming in their direction. Big Smiles, still hurt from saving Dargo from the charging dinosaur, keels over dead in the wave of cancerous energy. The Extras are Extras no more… now they’re just a bunch of loyal chumps under the command of Flowers Penurious.

--- Barbarian Rage!
- Andromeda looks across the battlefield from her vantage on the ridge and sees that Red has been foamed up! She warps across with her Void Pet’s space-compression powers and… eats an elbow to the jaw! The Barbarian was pulling her arm back for a thrust at just the wrong time!
- The Barbarian turns to Andromeda, frothing from the mouth, while Red taunts impotently from the sidelines. In her rage the Barbarian chucks her spear at Andromeda’s head, but she moves aside with vampiric speed and the spear skewers the nearby marine in the skull!
- Andromeda staggers back and Red can only watch in horror as the Barbarian’s followup blow crunches straight through Andromeda’s sternum, cracking through ribs and out of her back!  The Barbarian pulls her fist free and kicks Andromeda backwards like a rag doll. The blow would kill any living being, but Andromeda spasms weakly, coughing up blood.


- There is another warcry, the Coopers charge down the slope and pile onto the Barbarian in a mass of bodies! DJ jumps behind Red and grabs her under the armpits and boosts her towards the scrum, letting her fall rapier-first onto the Barbarian! Red gets her in the hip, blood spraying from the wound.
- Red takes the dagger from her belt and stabs again and again while the Coopers hold her down, finally driving the blade into the roof of the Barbarian’s mouth. With the last of her strength she bites down hard on the dagger, shattering it with a last hateful cronch as she dies. Red rips out her spine in vengeance.


--- Close-Fought Victory
- Andromeda, lying in the dirt, see DJ descend from above. He lands next to her and gently lifts her up. Cleric healing won’t work on her Undead form, so he medevacs her over to the blood rain that still falls where the wizard died.
- Drinking down the blood-rain, her superficial wounds begin to close. DJ offers her his blood and she gratefully slurps it down. Her fractured ribs will take time to heal, or possibly lots of blood. Who knows?
- The remaining space marines fall back and jump back towards the crashed spaceship. One of them picks up DJ’s abandoned almost-lover on the way, and distant obscenities can be heard as she’s carried off.
- DJ discovers that there’s a downside to this cool power armour - radiation damage. He feels short of breath, and when he takes off the armour his skin is covered in a flaky red rash. Nasty stuff.
- While everyone catches their breath and starts looting the corpses, a horrible monster arises from the dirt… Dargo! Reforming back into his hulking, scaly, squid-faced form he now sports a crown of horns. Truly a terrifying demon king!

Total: 6000 exp

Team Bonus:
- AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa bonus
- Aggressive Negotiations bonus
- Balls to the Wall bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Brutal Kill bonus
- Coitus boners
- Classic Charles bonus
- Dramatic Battle bonus
- Dramatic Rescue bonus
- Fame bonus
- Freudian bonus
- I Immediately Regret This Decision bonus
- Ludicrous Gore bonus
- Monster Infighting bonus
- Noblebright bonus
- Pitched Battle bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- Pyrrhic Victory bonus
- Schindler’s bonus
- Tentacle Molestation bonus
- WWE bonus
Total: 1050 exp

Individual Bonus:
- Chronicler (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (George / Lost Boys - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (George / Lost Boys - 100 exp)
- Paymaster (Charles / DJ - 100 exp)
- Quartermaster (Ollie / Zulu - 100 exp)
- Vanguard (Russell / Dargo - 100 exp)
- Chef (Ollie / Zulu - 100 exp)
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Kitty, Charles - 500 exp ea.)
- Near Death Experience bonus (Andromeda, Lost Boys - 100 exp ea.)

Injuries:
- The Lost Boys are no more, now merely a gang of 0-level mooks who follow Flowers Penurious.
- Andromeda’s ribs are fractured after an insanely powerful punch from an enraged Barbarian.

Exp Totals:
- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 101369 (Level up at 144000)
- Charles / Dustin Johnson, Level 7 Intergalacticist Cleric: 100972 (Level up at 112000)
- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 70469 (Level up at 128000)
- Ollie / Zulu Snakebite, Level 7 Barbarian: 68118 (Level up at 128000)
- Russell / Dargo, Level 6 Inheritor: 64423 (Level up at 72000)
- George / Flowers Penurious, Level 5 Fighter: 27111 (Level up at 32000)
Extras Disbanded!
- Hagar / Margaret and the Thatchers, Level 2 Extras: 2811 (Level up at 3000)
Level Up: +1d12 HP! +Named Character! +Backstory!
- Nadav / Coopers, Level 2 Extras: 2811 (Level up at 3000)
Level Up: +1d12 HP! +Named Character! +Backstory!

Tuesday, 14 January 2020

Session 251 - Attack of the Drones

We're back baby! d2020, Year of the Double Crit!

After Andromeda's elephant goes on a rampage and she fills up on its blood, we're straight into the action with a Styx running from a hunting party and a cliffhanger ending mid-battle with enemies who want nothing more than to destroy the Modern Conveniences delivered by DJ's deity.

On with the show!




Session 251 - Attack of the Drones

Date:
December. 15 years after the End.

Character List:
- Andromeda, Laddite Cleric / Kitty
- DJ, Intergalacticist Cleric / Charles
- Granite “Grumpy” Ironjaw, Warden Dwarf / Carter
- Red, Duellist Fighter / Timothy
- Zulu Snakebite, Barbarian / Ollie
- Dargo, Inheritor / Russell
- The New Moondin Lost Boys, Extras / George
- Ratman, Ratman / Izzy

New Backstory:
- Ratman bricked up windows to make his job as a window tapper easier, to the chagrin of the residents who were bricked in. Once per session, prevent something from breaking a barrier or fortification.


- Zulu Snakebite was forced into begging when she first came through the portal into this world. +1 Charisma
- Pepper Handsome of the Lost Boys was laughed at during a party, he drank more to get through the night. Double exp from carousing if you fail vs the consequences.


- Dargo came to a marvellous feast “dressed” as the guest of honour and indulged himself mightily. +2 to reaction rolls at large social events.


- Red was saved from a pit by one of her spider-brothers. You may grant people next to you a reroll to prevent falling.

Overland Exploration:
- Explored a couple of hexes (100 exp)
- First party to behold the site of the Crashed Spaceship (500 exp)
Total: 600 exp

Loot:
- A foam gun
- A sackful of microwaves (1000 exp)
Total: 1000 exp

Foes:
- A proto-elephant (750 exp)
- A flock of drones (375 exp)
- A space marine (50 exp)
Total: 1175 exp

Events:

--- A Rude Awakening
- A great trumpeting sound! Waking quickly from strange dreams of crabs and trucks, the party tumble out of their tents and into a combat against a great beast - Andromeda’s proto-elephant “friend” who has broken free of her vampiric mind control!
- Battle is joined, the great beast attacks Andromeda with its great tusks! She’s thrown back and suddenly Dustin Johnson is there, stumbling out of his tent hung with hotboxed meat and breathing out a great cloud of chiiiiill.
- In the ensuing calm, the party notices that Ratman the Ratman has returned with an army of rats. He calmly crawls onto the elephant’s back and puts gentle paws over its eyes. They toss some friendly ropes over the elephant to lash a friendly blanket to its friendly back. The resulting wrestle is completely unfriendly and ineffective!


- Grumpy charges, headbutts, and is knocked the fuck out. Zulu charges, headbutts, and knocks the elephant the fuck out! 
- The beast collapses, defeated, and Andromeda immediately feasts upon its unconscious body. Her body swells up horrifically like a massive mosquito. The others dump unneeded gear at the camp and prepare to move off towards the crashed spaceship to the east. Dargo and Ratman plot evil science.
- Near the edge of the jungle Grumpy suddenly awakes! He looks around and suddenly runs back to camp to grab his gear! Thank goodness nobody touched it!

--- The Hunters
- When he returns the others are looking out over the tall swaying grasses of the savannah. To the south they can see several figures walking. To the north something scurries through the grass. Andromeda directs the party north to see what the creature is.
- Zulu realises that she’s gaining Santa powers - implying it’s December outside the Dino-Dome - and detects that the creature to the north is mostly Nice but occasionally flicks over to Naughty.
- They reach the running figure and discover it’s a Styx! He wears a battered top hat and a raggedy once-fancy suit and he’s on the run from some vampires. Recent events have made him unable to re-upload to the Styxmind, so he’s rapidly having to come to terms with his mortality.
- Andromeda spots a bat flapping in the air some way away, so turns into a bat herself to talk! After some difficult free-fall conversation, they land below and Andromeda meets the three vampires who tell her they plan to turn Styx into a vampire and control him. She bursts their bubble by telling them goblins can’t be turned - they’re technically vegetables so don’t have blood.
- Gar’rath, the original bat, flies up again to see if the Styx has gone far and is suddenly pierced by a beam from a beam rifle! The other vampires reveal they’re being hunted themselves! Andromeda gets out of there, staying low through the grass in wolf form, and rejoins the others. By the time she gets back the Styx is gone, and Dargo is complaining about how it would have been nice to eat him.
--- War!
- The party head towards the sparkling plume of red smoke of the crash site, sticking to a stand of scrubby trees to avoid getting targeted by whatever’s shooting up the vampires, and find themselves at the edge of a war zone!
- Zulu’s Naughty/Nice vision picks up a group of Naughty entities moving closer, followed by another group designated Nice. It’s a group of “Space Marines” with jump packs, followed by a cloud of whirring quad-copter drones! What’s going on?
- Zulu exits cover and flags down the space marines, and is told by one mustachio’d man that there’s a war on. Humans versus Mod Cons! The drones are Mod Con enemies! The space marines jump onwards to attack the Mod Con rear, leaving the party to deal with the drones!
- Most of the drones peel off to attack the party and DJ uses the last of his Faith to chill them out! While the drones chill, Andromeda and others look to see where the space marines went. They look down into the scar left by the crashed ship and smashed open containers and living machines scattered about! The space marines are leaping about, blasting hardening foam at the living Mod Cons to keep them down.
- Around the drones, Red steps to the fore next to Ratman with his horde of rats. With a great sweep of her hand Red chucks a whole load of them onto the drones! The vermin nibble at the drones’ plastic carapaces even as they swoop down to slash past her with their whirring rotors.


- The others resolve to save the Mod Cons! There’s a container of microwaves and another of floating light bulbs, plus two containers piled high with heated bidet toilet seats. Zulu tosses her expandable Santa sack to Andromeda so she can save the microwaves, while DJ goes to defend the bidets!



- The space marines jump around easily with their jump packs, foaming up appliances and party members with impunity. Getting hit with a foam weapon slows you, if not binding you up entirely! 
- Zulu uses her grapnel gun to zip towards one of them and defeats him in glorious combat atop a container, seizing his weapon but also noticing that his skin below the neck is covered in cancerous growths.
- DJ, out of faith, uses the toilet seats to assist him in jumping up to attack passing space marines until he actually manages to grab one! The sticky foam binds them together! He triggers the enemy’s jump pack as they struggle and they zip off out of the combat, where DJ discovers that his enemy is both attractive and amorous...
- Andromeda sees that Red has fallen on the rise, assaulted by countless waves of drones. She leaves the microwaves in the sack for now, ignoring their scared dinging, and bolts up the slope to save Red with a powerful lightning Sacrifice attack!
- Dargo grabs the newly enervated Red from the ground and wields her like a club in his massive mutant hand! The drones attack and Dargo breaks his shield defending them, then counterattacks with his human weapon. Red laughs as she strikes through the damaged drones in a single swishing arc, unsure to this day which one of them was truly doing the cleaving.
- Amongst the Mod Cons, more space marines arrive from the opposite side of the crash scar. One of them rides a pachycephalosaurus and bears a passing resemblance to the deceased Lulu Spiderbite. Her marines wield different weapons to the others, strange and silvery.
- The Lost Boys move into a defensive position against this new force, protecting their flanks between two large containers… until one of them begins floating into the air! Grumpy has persuaded the floating lightbulbs to float, lifting the huge box nearly 10’ off the ground!
- The risen container tricks the dino-rider, who charges under the container in her pursuit of Grumpy! He stands atop the container, glaive glowing with superheated runes, ready to strike.
- Another marine blasts the Lost Boys with a wide-barrelled device that bathes them in warm green light, many Extras keel over covered in raw red radiation burns.
- Up the rise, two people wielding strange staves unleash a magical assault. Mages! They both release Chaos Bursts as they cast, heedless of the risks!
- We pause for the night in the middle of combat. Find out the exciting conclusion next week in D&D!!!

Total: 3000 exp

Team Bonus:
- Aggressive Negotiations bonus
- Balls to the Wall bonus
- Best of Intentions bonus
- Better Part of Valour bonus
- Brutal Kill bonus
- Coitus boners
- Classic Charles bonus
- Diplomancy bonus
- Dramatic Battle bonus
- Dramatic Rescue bonus
- Monster Infighting bonus
- Noblebright bonus
- Pundemonium bonus
- Schindler’s bonus
- Split the Party bonus
- WWE bonus
Total: 800 exp

Individual Bonus:
- Chronicler (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Expedition Leader (Kitty / Andromeda - 100 exp)
- Cartographer (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Paymaster (Charles / DJ - 100 exp)
- Quartermaster (Ollie / Zulu - 100 exp)
- Vanguard (Russell / Dargo - 100 exp)
- Triage (Carter / Grumpy - 100 exp)
- Chef (George / Lost Boys - 100 exp)
- JÜGBRINGYR bonus (Kitty, Charles, Izzy, Timothy - 500 exp ea.)
- Khorne Kernel bonus (Izzy - 200 exp)
- Art Attack bonus (Ollie, Charles - 100 exp ea.)

Exp Totals:
- Kitty / Andromeda, Level 7 Andromedan Vampire: 97858 (Level up at 144000)
- Charles / Dustin Johnson, Level 7 Intergalacticist Cleric: 97561 (Level up at 112000)
- Carter / Granite "Grumpy" Ironjaw, Level 7 Warden Dwarf: 85632 (Level up at 140800)
- Tim / Red, Level 7 Duellist Fighter: 67658 (Level up at 128000)
- Ollie / Zulu Snakebite, Level 7 Barbarian: 65107 (Level up at 128000)
- Russell / Dargo, Level 6 Inheritor: 61612 (Level up at 72000)
- George / The New Moondin Lost Boys, Level 6 Extras: 43010 (Level up at 48000)
- Izzy / Ratman, Level 6 Ratman: 33145 (Level up at 48000)

Friday, 10 January 2020

Retrospective 25 - Enter the Dino-Dome!

2020! A whole new decade!

Crazily enough this marks nine years in the campaign world (considering the first characters to make landfall were in Australia back in December 2011) and almost six years since I started running in the UK (Feb 2014). Where's all that time gone?!
I suppose next year I'll have to do a decade in review. Don't hold me to it!

Anyway, these retrospectives are in 10-session chunks, so let's look back at what's been going on more recently as we come into this fresh new wartorn fire-stricken decade.

This segment of the campaign dealt with one main new area - the Dino-Dome!
A reskinned and retrofitted World of the Lost, this massive dome of diamond keeps the terrible apocalyptic weather off and enables the high-oxygen world inside it to exist!
The whole place is controlled by the quasi-deity Styx, a Goblin and former PC who got uploaded to Fortress-City Fate close to the climax of the End War.

Lore aside, this dome is basically a high-level high-danger area full of dinosaurs and vampires and a suspiciously reasonable God-King who likes to give his subjects complete freedom... up to a point.

One of the most powerful sessions we've had hinged not on danger or dinosaurs, but on the philosophical question of "what is real"...



On a Simulated Reality Inside a Simulated Reality Inside Our Heads

Long story short - after overcoming many dangers, they got to the centre of the Dino-Dome where they got uploaded to the Real World.

There they met Styx who told them in no uncertain terms that their world, the game world we've been playing in since the post-apoc reboot, is a lie.
They've been living in a simulation, the Real World is a paradise! After the world ended everyone in Fate was uploaded to the Matrix and liquefied. A bajillion years later, when the world recovered, Styx re-downloaded everyone into identical clone bodies and set them free into this new paradise. Simple!
Some people enjoy downloading themselves into simulations, like the Poison World sim they'd been living in, and now that they're out won't they please stay?

This sounded far too good to be true, kicking off a whole session that was mostly intense philosophical discussion about the value of living forever in a world without struggle, and whether this alleged "Real World" was itself the simulation, and whether it truly mattered either way.
Which is even more interesting because both "worlds" are equally fake and equally real since they both occur in our collective heads as we make up bullshit around a table with dice.

Great times!

In the end they chose their original world of suffering over the new world of perfection, which is pretty much what happened to the first iteration of the Matrix if I remember right. People just can't bear paradise.
Plus you only get exp through hardship, and what's the point of playing this game if you're not getting exp?




On Untrustworthy NPCs

I only just realised this, but there's been a bit of a theme of powerful NPCs with an agenda fucking things up whenever they're called upon to fix things.
The Lady took control of the Seraphim and marched it on Fate, rather than properly help the party.
Styx is a far-sighted and petty God with unreliable goals, making him an unpredictable nightmare.
Bertha is beset by a living embodiment of her grief which makes her hard to deal with.
And Gifflewim is an arbitrarily powerful Elf, and lo and behold he fucked things up right good instead of solving things properly.

Maybe the lesson is to never trust authority??



On Fighters Being OP

Gambits have gone too far, man!
Our resident Fighter, Red, has thoroughly been rinsing the Gambit rules. With a Fighter's beastly attack stat and the +8 Aim Bonus from aiming a rifle and the armour penetration of said rifle, she's been easily wiping the floor with any enemies by declaring stuff like "I want to shoot them all in the head in one shot".

The trouble is I'm torn. A Fighter is good at fighting! That's the whole point! Plus it's really fun!
But it's getting boring when one person can just one-shot any enemy with a high likelihood of success, especially with the massive array of different options you can get from a Gambit.

The key mechanical trouble is that gambits are based on AC, not HD, which means that a creature with 20 HD and 12 AC is more easily defeated in one blow than a 0-level dude in plate armour.
Not that armour matters when you've got a gun, compounding the issue.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do about it yet, other than maybe just disallow "kill" as a viable gambit attempt and rely on players not taking the piss! Gambits are otherwise pretty much a perfect blend of fun and simple, so I don't want to mess things up with a heavy-handed mechanical change.




On PvP

After the frankly exhausting saga of Grumpy and Snels which started fun, got tense, got shit, and basically stayed shit forever since, I've thoroughly been disabused of my previous position that "PvP can be fun and interesting!"

On balance it's been a good thing for me to learn from.
Warning signs. Recognising when it's no longer fun. How supporting ongoing intra-party conflict is a bad fucking look. Why putting a foot down is actually important.
Most importantly, realising when my high-minded "open world means you can do anything!" ideals have slipped into "open world means you can ruin other people's fun!"

Hopefully there won't be a next time, but if there is I hope I'll be better at dealing with it.




On Burnout

I feel like burnout is something you can only recognise in retrospect, like the thing with the frog in the boiling water.
I don't want to recount the whole saga and old wounds again. Suffice to say that this tiresome feud technically started in May, came to a head in early October, and never stopped. Eight fucking months. What was I thinking?
Weird how this lines up with that big content gap at the end of last year on the main blog. Almost like I should have noticed sooner.

On top of this, World of the Lost is cool but needs some love to make it usable. It also needed to be reskinned to fit my world and travel rules. Already getting burnt out on the internecine strife (not to mention Brexit, the UK election, and all that shit) I sort of coasted to a finish at the end of last year.

Coming back fresh in January felt fucking wonderful. So fresh! So vibrant! So prepped! An encouraging optimism for the year ahead!
Pity about the real world, but at least I've got an imaginary one to escape to with my mates.



On Vampires

They've been dealing with vampires a bit lately, considering they're one of the major factions in the Dino-Dome.
And dealing with vampires means dealing with that most menacing of vampire threats - level drain!
Yes, level drain is here in its pure form. At least they get a save.

They know the risks to fighting vampires, and since most vampires seem to be fairly friendly (despite their outrageous and ubiquitous Transylvanian accents) there hasn't been so much need for conflict with these guys.

Spoiler for later blog posts - a made a couple of vampire PC classes!

One intended for those level-drained to death: Vampire Class.
One for the extremely niche case of a Cleric suddenly becoming a Vampire due to a magic mirror: Vampire Cleric Class.

I was considering having a template Vampire that just slots over existing classes, but surely having gimmicky niche vampire types is better... right?

Oh and I also LOVED the ongoing joke that some vampires just have on big central tooth!



On the Thing

Boy has one of my players taken the concept of the Inheritor and absolutely run with it!
Originally intended as a kind of body-horror-themed monster ability stealer, he's taken that lore and become something between the Thing and a Dr Frankenstein.
Currently he has plots to experiment with brain-swapping and rat mutations, and he's already helped create abominable dino-human baby hybrids.

It's one of those classic situations where I'm pulled between "nuh-uh, the mechanics say..." and "fucking hell this is amazing" so I'm sure I'll break soon. Allowing all this mad experimentation means having so many opportunities for things to go so bad in such a fun way!

A Mad Science system with partial successes might be the way forward...


Mini-Reviews

World of the Lost

You know what's cool about a sandbox map where like half the hexes aren't keyed? Me neither. It's like getting halfway through cooking a meal and realising you forgot an ingredient.
Still, thematically it's cool. It's hard to fuck up dinosaurs and robots and slime monsters, and those hexes that are keyed are often interrelated.
I basically just slapped this down on my current campaign map and wiggled it around until it fit.
Also reduced the hexes to 1 mile instead of 6 miles because 6 mile hexes are for losers.

Basically it's got good things in it but treat it as building blocks instead of a finished house.


Gimmick Sessions:

The end of the year always inevitably has a couple of gimmick sessions around Halloween and Christmas.

This time I ran Mothership for Halloween, with the players living through an extremely lightly reskinned Pitch Black. That was a good time! A good mix of exploration and action and mystery solving. Loved the char gen flowchart, absolutely did not utilise the Fear rules as much as I should have. Real good!

On Christmas I ran a real silly gimmick session of a real silly gimmick RPG: Motherfuckin' Crab Truckers. I never wrote it up, but it was a real fun time! Allegedly set a bajillion years in the future where our campaign world is overrun by intelligent crabs, they faced off against cops, traffic jams, and a crab-dragon in their quest to deliver a truckful of toys to needy crab children.

I made kustom kharacter kheets for Crab Truckers and I love them all so please behold them: