Quadrophenia

1 hour ago, Pinnacle-Ferring said:

To be fair, while the background stuff could be pretty whimsical, the main plot was pretty serious and even creepy at times.

Just like our's! So far, in our story, most of the classic Disney heroes are dead, Maleficent rules the world, Jafar broke off from the bad guy faction to start his own Empire, Hades is conspiring to overthrow both, and in the first story arc my Rogue disguises herself as Snow White so she can assassinate the Evil Queen up close and personal.

10 hours ago, Pinnacle-Ferring said:

A while ago with my old RPG group (now sadly defunct) we were playing this system that was based off of conspiracies and secrets. It was extremely flexible about its settings, so we decided to set it in a massive crossover of everything Disney.

We then decided that everyone had to choose an existing character from the Disneycanon.

Specifically a Disney princess.

Keep in mind that we were a bunch of dudes (and one girl) ranging in age from 15 to 26...and everyone was a Disney princess.

I was Merida because SCOTLAND. Unfortunately though, I wasn't able to bust out my Scottish accent because we were playing in Hebrew. We also had a Snow White (complete with a dinky, high-pitched voice and mandatory vegetarianism in her kingdom), Tinkerbell (sassy and with very random and potentially deadly magic. We turned into fish once), Venelope von Schweetz from Wreck it Ralph (hyperactive and insane), Mulan (actually pretty quiet and tame. And the only one actually played by a girl) and Elsa (the mom of the group and perpetually face-palming at our antics. Also a pretty good strategist).

We didn't finish the entire storyline, but it was fun while it lasted.

Edit- I also got poisoned at least two, maybe three, times. I think the GM was trying to tell me something.

Also we met a middle-aged, washed up Peter Pan and the Genie was the innkeeper in the classic tavern scene at the beginning of the game (and we got into a tavern brawl with Captain Hook).

Ha! It's like an absurd comedy version of the campaign my friends and I are running!

I finally read Brandon Sanderson's The Rithmatist! ... And, huh. Sort of the first time I ever found one of his works to be just... "okay." Not great, not a knockout like Elantris or Warbreaker, nor even as pure fun as any of the Mistborn Era 2 books. It's fine, sure, and there's plenty I like about it, but it sort of came off as a subpar ersatz Harry Potter novel to me. The plot doesn't even kick in until you're more than halfway over, and even then it feels like so little happens up until then. In contrast, Philosopher's Stone managed to compress so much in fewer pages, getting across more in terms of character and subplots and actual "kid heroes investigate mystery" shenanigans than The Rithmatist manages to accomplish in a hundred or so pages.

It feels underwhelming, I have to be honest. I love Sanderson's work, so reading a novel that's just... decent is almost worse than reading a book written by any other author that's just plain bad, heh heh. 

In the meantime, I'm currently reading Forrest Leo's debut comedic fantasy novel The Gentleman. 

2 hours ago, Quiver said:

Anastasia is, at best, a mixed film. Saying the history is wrong qualifies as the understatement of the century, nd the way it treats Rasputin and the Russian Revolution is, at best, disingenuous, at worst an insult.

...but damnation if the guy didn't have a great villain song.

 

It's just a damnation shame it's set to a silly sequence where pink dancing bugs provide backing vocals. 

@bleeder He's a GREAT character, and none of his songs are particularly villainous. King George and Jefferson, on the other hand, are clearly the least sympathetic and most antagonistic characters in the play. You'll Be Back is easily a villainous love song (complete with promises of brutal massacres filtered through the lenses of a jilted lover), and Jefferson? Of all the Founding Fathers, he's easily singled out and raked over the coals for, you know, his hypocrisies and slavery and sexual exploitation and aristocratic classism. Any of his songs could easily qualify ("What'd I Miss?" is a delightfully ironic narcissistic send up of his own ego and vices).

@Zathoth @TwiLyghtSansSparkles Hail to the Keith! 

@Nightbird Prince of Egypt is woefully underrated and criminally misidentified as a "late 90's Disney bandwagon chaser."

@Ammanas In a just world, no one would ever have to think about the Russell Crowe version. 

And Stars is perfect. Easily one of the best songs from the musical. 

17 hours ago, Ammanas said:

It's not a song, but more of a tune: Imperial Death March in Star wars. I also really like Be Prepared in the Lion King. For some strange reason I love it when the hyenas are goosestepping in front of Scar.

You can't go wrong with John Williams or Disney when it comes to composing ballin' anthems for the bad guys. 

Name your favourite villain song, but only one per post! Share your favourites!

While everyone and their mother will cite "Hellfire" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame or "When You're Evil" by Voltaire, I'd like to nominate an underrated classic.

As an added bonus, since this is a Brandon Sanderson fansite after all, what badass villain song would best fit the amazing villains of the Cosmere, from the Lord Ruler to Hrathen? Leave your thoughts here!

@Claincy Depends. 

When DM/GM-ing in person, I have my screen and several stacks of corebooks from different games to round it off as one great castle so that the players would "really" have to crane their necks over to see whatever it was I was doing. Generally, there's also a buffet of Indian takeout between all of us (and quite a few beers). 

Via text chats, I have my dice in reality and several tabbed character sheets in one window and a special window devoted to the main story of my game. Which, incidentally, is being rewritten all the time since, well, it's tabletop gaming. The players can't be expected to follow a script 1:1, so hence I must be flexible.

On 2016-11-11 at 9:18 AM, Claincy said:

I wasn't at the top of my game for running D&D tonight, not bad, but I can do better. It went well anyway so I'm not complaining

Where we left off last time they had just distracted the werewolves and started making a run for it (deciding to leave the important crystal thing behind). I had a cool skill challenge prepared for trying to outrun the werewolves, and a fight prepared if they failed but none of that happened. The druid, having just rejoined the party, cast summon animal and summoned horses for them all to ride on and away they went. I did make them roll animal handling checks to stay on the horses backs as they were moving rather fast without saddles (or necessarily that much experience riding) but only the druid failed and he succeeded soon enough to not get caught by the werewolves. So that went rather quicker than I had expected  Excellent use of that spell.

Fortunately I have the zone pretty well prepared so I wasn't caught unprepared or anything. After exploring some more they ended up planting one of the magic beans from the "bag of beans" the druid got a while back. I have very much been looking forward to them doing so. I rolled percentile dice but truthfully I'd already decided what would happen this time. A vine grew into an archway that opened a temporary portal to a small tunnel/hut like thing made from a grove of trees. Inside was a feline humanoid who had the special ability to answer 3 questions about the past, present or future. With the following caveats:

-All 3 questions must be asked before any answers are given

-2 answers will be true, 1 will be false

A couple of party members arrived late just as the others finalised the questions they wanted to ask and so they didn't feel left out I decided, what the heck, they can ask their own set of questions. So everyone enjoyed coming up with questions and then trying to guess which of the cryptic answers was true and which were false.

After that they had an encounter with a group of "wild fey", who are the progenitors of all other elves in my world. They offered to help the PCs to bypass a certain barrier (this wasn't the only way they could pass the barrier) if, in return, one of the PCs agreed to become a wild fey. They hinted at changes that were coming to the world and that the PCs were already involved in them (true) and stated that they wished to have more influence outside of their place in the feywild to ensure that when the world did change, they would still have a place in it (also true). After a number of discussions about the changes that would incur one of the player's decided to take the offer. I think becoming immortal was a fairly strong selling point.

So while the rest of the PCs went to get dinner we had a 15 minute one on one session to rp through the process and deal with all the adjustments to their character. Some of which went onto their character sheet, some of which didn't. Can't have the other players knowing some things until that player chooses to tell them 

The only mental change involved is that the character now considers the wild fey's goal of ensuring their place in the world remains as rather important. The physical changes replace their old racial bonuses, but with significantly more powerful ones. Though they may want to keep the extent of these changes hidden from the other PCs, they might get a little nervous if they realise quite how much she's changed

Across all of this the PCs learned quite a bit about this arc and a bit about the campaign/world as a whole.

We closed off with a combat that achieved one of the objectives they needed and also, being against plant creatures, was an excellent opportunity for some of their PCs to enjoy their fire based magic items and another to enjoy an axe that deals max damage against plant creatures. He got it approaching a year ago and we hadn't fought plant creatures since

By God, your stories are wonderful.

8 hours ago, Nightbird said:

I second the Bartimaeus suggestion! One of my all-time favorite series. The footnotes always crack me up.

Right? Super underrated, too. Tragically so. 

The Bartimaeus books would be lovely, I think. Chances are, they might have grown up with the Harry Potter series. So why not introduce them to Harry Potter's very antithesis? It has a wry sense of humour, it's morally ambiguous, and the characters are genuinely fun and complex. Could be worth a go.

36 minutes ago, AliasSheep said:

Could someone send a new invite for me, that pne has expried.

https://discord.gg/hsHBw

39 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Sounds good!

Almighty GM, just to make sure I'm clear on this - we talk shop publicly, to make sure everyone's on the same boat and that this doesn't wind up being a 3 Doctor party, for instance? (Or are we supposed to discuss that with you in a PM?)

21 minutes ago, Doctor12 said:

Should I set it a discord server for this? It'll be much more convenient to talk there than on the shard. 

 

https://discord.gg/c8Gmk

 

All you have to do is create an account - it's free - and you're good to go. There's a browser client for this, as well as a mobile app. 

Hm. Let's try out Discord. We'll see how that goes.

Doc, set up the server. Call it "Call of Cthulhu: Dinner Party" or "CoC: Dinner Party."

11 hours ago, AliasSheep said:

Should we make characters on our own or are we going to work on them as a group?

7 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Aye, and I'll go study up on the rules, then. Would just like a clarification - does going Discord mean going audio?

6 hours ago, Doctor12 said:

i too, have never played CoC. I'll go read up on the rules myself haha. 

And no, Kas. Discord has a voice function sure, and the voice works much better than skype, in my opinion, but there are also dedicated text channels. 

Someone needs to hold this newbs hand. What do I do?

To make things clear for you guys-

Here's the plan. First, I'm going to lay out the premise for the CoC game in question, set up the plot and setting and all that junk. Second, as such, to fit the setting we're going to talk shop about what sort of character you'd like to play as. Finally, third, when I have all the information I need from each of you I'll personally write up your character sheets and set them up on individual Google docs.

How does that sound, guys?

So, the premise-

"Pitch: It's CLUE, with a Lovecraftian spin. Set in the 20's, the player characters have been invited by a famous and reclusive author to his manor. If they don't, well, he'll release certain articles of blackmail (exposing all sorts of personal and... possibly incriminating secrets to the public). As the guests are seated one by one, each within the palm of this man holding all your darkest secrets...the host reveals that they will soon be playing a game to win back their freedom... starting... now. 

Cue the lights. A second later, they're back on and the host is seemingly dead... and the manor takes on new and seemingly impossible dimensions, as eldritch things seep through the walls... and the host himself, this corpse, disappears and reappears in new shapes and sizes.

Escape is impossible. The only way to save oneself is to brave the horrors of the manor, to find the secret means by which you can leave this accursed place."

So that's the premise. Everyone here needs to come up with an era-appropriate character with a dark secret, something that the aforementioned Host would have over you. 

Traditionally, here are the usual occupations in CoC: Journalist, Professor, Author, Antiquarian, Doctor, Journalist, Private Investigator, Police Detective, Artist, Lawyer, Dilettante, Clergyman, Entertainer, Athlete, Engineer- believe it or not, each of these occupations have special talents and skills and abilities that might help you survive the night. 

http://the-call-of-cthulhu.obsidianportal.com/wikis/sample-occupation-skills

As for points to allocate to what attributes, well, I'll handle that later, after I get back from work.

Just now, Darkness Ascendant said:

Is it alright if I join later? I'm going on holidays soon, and I might not be able to play for maybe 6 weeks.

I'm not sure if it fits the story I'm working with... but there will always be other stories.

1 minute ago, AliasSheep said:

Thanks!

I should probably read some of the Lovecraft I have on hand... The only exposure I have to Call of Cthulu is from reading Old Man Henderson multiple times.

You gotta read Call of Cthulhu, Rats in the Walls, The Dunwich Horror...

And, really, any Edgar Allan Poe also helps.

1 minute ago, AliasSheep said:

Aye!

Also, do you have anything that I could quickly read over to get a grip of the rules?  I haven't played Call of Cthulu before, unfortunately.

Luckily, I have the rules! 

http://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/CHA23131 Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Quick-Start Rules.pdf

All who want to play Call of Cthulhu and have the Discord app, say aye! I'll set up the server and invite you guys-

And don't worry about character sheets, I'll make those myself.

Well, it's decided. High time I download the app myself.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

47 minutes ago, Ammanas said:

I guess so. Harry just gradually recognizes it, Marcone doesn't change just Harry's perception (most notibly in Death Masks)

Or in that one short story from Marcone's point of view.

54 minutes ago, Nightbird said:

I'm not sure if I have a favorite villain, but the most evil villain is definitely Nicodemus.

Hmm... are you sure about that? Nicodemus is a classic criminal mastermind, but there are bad guys in this series that take petty sadism to astronomical lows. The Corpsetaker comes to mind. At least Nicodemus pretends to be civilized.

15 minutes ago, Ammanas said:

What about Marcone? He seems to have a character arc?

Eh... don't get me wrong, I love Marcone. To quote Harry, that guy has balls that drag the ground. But a character arc typically involves a character going through a gradual change. Marcone has, from day one, been the classic noble criminal with a code. That has never changed. The only thing that has changed over the course of the series is the level of power he's been accumulating; from "merely" being a powerful mob boss to being the unofficial Lord of all Chicago to becoming the single most powerful mortal in the supernatural underground of America. That's not the same thing as a character arc, though.

1 minute ago, Ammanas said:

Lasciel of course!

If we're talking about the mental imprint of Lasciel who eventually becomes Lash, an independent spirit in her own right? That right there is an interesting example. Is that the only example of a bad guy in this series with a clear character arc?

Question for everyone here-

Favourite series baddie, go!