Cool way to begin a night of tabletop (D&D-like)?

Everything else
21

Great ideas, Sarkus. I’m hoping to keep it open enough to allow for many playstyles, so we’ll just play it by ear tonight. The great thing about the Savage Worlds system is that every character is created with Edges and Hindrances, which are basically personality quirks. Hindrances come in the Major variety (blindness, madness, lame, etc) and Minor variety (fear of dogs, ugly, compelled to swear often, etc.), and choosing among them lets you earn points that you then use to buy your Edges, which are specialties like Dual Wield, Leadership, Diplomacy, Magic Use, etc. So from the beginning players are forced to think of their characters as people with personalities, histories, and quirks, not just a collection of stats. The last time I played it with a new group, wonderful character-based things happened from the first moment. I wrote it up here.

Here’s my ideas for this Orphanage plot thread:

So the Director of the orphanage (called the Cradle, of course) got in over his head. He got greedy, and when he asked for too much Ghostrock, he was cut off. So he began making inquiries into other sources of it, forcing the arsonist’s hand. It was either sneak into the Cradle and steal back the Ghostrock or watch as the Director unleashed a Terror, or worse, in his unsuspecting greed. But the arsonist fucked up, and burned up half the orphanage, causing the deaths of 20 children.

Now it’s several days since the fire, the Director is after the arsonist, trying to track him down through his web of criminal connections, when the PCs show up. They’re here to solve the mystery of the increased levels of hauntings at the orphanage. Now the Director wants the arsonist dead, so he sics the PCs on him, telling them the arsonist is raving mad, paranoid, evil, and hates the Director. The Director tells the PCs that the arsonist has to be killed on sight.

Now a number of things can happen. If the PCs believe the Director, they can try to track the arsonist down. If they find him, they can kill him, or he can try to escape. They can chase him back to the Orphanage, where he could be torn apart by the ghosts of the children he killed. Or he could convince the PCs to help him sneak in and destroy the Ghostrock of the Director, sparing the remaining children. If the PCs DON’T believe the Director, they could spy on him and find the Ghostrock, or force him to divulge his secrets and tell about the Ghostrock and his connections to the underworld, which could then lead them to the arsonist, or deeper into the plot about the group who employs the arsonist, the smugglers who deal in Ghostrock.

Or they could go straight to the smugglers warehouse and sneak aboard the airship to foil the smuggling plot. Or, in order to figure out who the smugglers are they could figure out who is BUYING the Ghostrock from the smugglers, persuade him to let them aboard his airship to determine who the smugglers even ARE, and try to sneak aboard THEIR airship to follow the Ghostrock back to its source, or just try to take out the leaders of the smuggling ring right then and there.

22

Sounds good to me. Rather than creating a script you’ve created a toy box for your players to play in. I like the personality details a lot, they help me understand and role play the characters. The directors obsession with cats is beautiful and should definitly be played with.

You will want to fill out the arsonists personality as well. It may be that the party never talks to him. But if they do having some details will really make your world feel deep. How professional is he? How competant is he (burning down an orphanage would suggest that hes not)? How did he get into ghost rock? Breaking into the orphanage to steal the ghost rock back suggests that he might have had a bad experience with it that he is trying to prevent. Maybe when he was younger he gave up a child to the orphanage and he was breaking in to protect his kid, and the others. But by his own actions hes now caused that childs death.

That puts a nice little dark twist on the arsonists confession if it comes to that. And dumps the players right in the middle of a morale dilema. The director didnt burn down the orphange but was going into dangerous territory. The arsonist, though obviously a criminal, was trying to prevent ba things when he burned down the orphanage. Either way the director or the arsonist could be particuarly tormented if they die and come back to haunt the area.

23

It turned out really well, too! We ran for about 3 hours last night, and a bunch of good stuff happened. I introduced them to the world, we rolled up characters, then I brought them into the offices of the Border Patrol and told them the latest rumors. Problems at dockside warehouses, a haunted orphanage, and a church with services that’d gotten disrupted (I bailed on the bank b/c I forgot it). I basically gave them the choice of what they wanted to pursue.

But, because they didn’t know what any given thing entailed, they asked the NPC (the detachment secretary, Tad) to recommend where to go. He said the orphanage, of course, and off we go.

Playing as the director was fun, and we had an almost 30 minute conversation as they attempted to get information from him and he danced around. They were great at pinning him down in character, so I didn’t have them do a single Persuasion or Intimidation check at all.

I realized I had failed to connect them with the arsonist, though the Director had mentioned a security guard who was on duty the night of the fire. They went off to investigate his apartment. I was trying to figure out how to introduce the arsonist, and wouldn’t you know it, he happened to break into the apartment just as they were searching it! This led to a crazy chase through back alleys and a crowded market, culminating in an attempt at commandeering a buggy by one character (but he failed his Fighting roll and got pushed off by the driver) and the other character using pumpkins creatively to stop the fleeing arsonist.

After interrogating him, they got the whole story, including the Director’s obsession with his cats, his continued and ill-advised purchases of Ghostrock, and the arsonist’s plea to set the spirits of the children free by bringing them the toys he’d been accumulating since the fire. As the PCs approached the gutted orphanage with a bag full of toys, intending to free the tortured souls of accidentally murdered children, the dusky air of evening was filled with the screaming of ghosts.

End of night.

It was fun, and though there wasn’t enough combat, we’re well established with characters to go anywhere and do anything at this point. Thanks for the help, guys.

24

So you couldn’t overrule the guide? That’s some serious devotion to WoTC…

25

The way that we started one of the campaigns I am in now (The one with the AAR) was by accidentally causing our group to set into motion events that will end the world.

I am not looking forward to going back to my character’s hometown. I have a feeling there will be little left from the destruction.

26

Not true. From the 3.5 FAQ:

How far does a character fall in a single round?
This ends up being both a rules and a physics question. The
short answer is, “In a single round, you fall far enough to hit
the ground in the vast majority circumstances that come up in
the game.”

Your characters fall about 500 feet (576ft) in the first round (6 seconds). They hit terminal velocity of 120mph (1200 feet per round) in the 1st second of the 2nd round (7 seconds)

So by end up the second round, your guys fall nearly 2000 ft, and another 1,200 feet per round thereafter.

Note, though, that there is no way to end this free fall short of flying, or a feather fall spell. If you teleport, your momentum still carries through, slamming you into the ground.

27

Yeah, I used to play a lot of Tabletop games when I was a kid (Space Hulk was my favorite) and we used to modify the rules to suite us all the time. Often times we would use the basics to create whole new types of games.

28

If your character had a really beefy spell spell power, could you teleport to your antipode on the other side of the world, so that the vector of your momentum would be carrying you up into sky? If so, you could wait until gravity cancelled your original momentum out and then teleport again, to the ground. Because, uh, that would be cool.

29

If you’re on a round world with gravity, yeah. You’d have to use Greater Teleport, because it is without error.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/Teleportgreater.htm

On other planes of existence… who knows? There’s one place that is a 6-sided iron cube. Is weird.

30

You could cast water breathing on yourself and teleport underwater. That would cause your momentum to slow gradually.

31

According to d20 rules, if you fall from 20 feet into water, you take no damage. If you fall 40 feet into water, you take 2d3 non-lethal damage.

If your fall height is greater than 40 feet, falling into water would give you the 2d3 non-lethal damage, and then 1d6 lethal damage for every 10ft beyond 40 ft that you’ve fallen.

In any case, falling damage maxes out at 20d6. Some characters can shrug that off (as long as they make their DC15 fortitude save for taking more than 50points of damage from a single source). :-)

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/environment.htm#falling

32

Or you could make it fun and say that as long as you perform a sweet dive, you’re fine.

Above land, I’d pull an “end of Crank” move and let the players fall for as long as necessary to complete whatever action they were doing, be it leaving a phone message for their girlfriends, killing dudes with swords, making passionate love with each other, or whatever. Then they’d have to quickly figure out what to do.

Awning landings are always awesome.

33

This make me think that long-distance teleports must somehow correct your momentum relative to the ground at your destination. Otherwise, any long-distance teleport from rest would leave you with significant velocity relative to the ground at your arrival point, due to the planet’s rotation.

34

It’s sort of handwaved in 4.0 by having the character actually travel through another dimension (the Feywild) for an instant before they reappear in our world.

35

Sounds like a good time was had by all, congrats!

I always worried about “itchy dice syndrome”. With my group it wasnt as much about fighting as much as having a chance to throw some dice. And I typically kept a handful of encounters nearby that I could throw at the party if they were getting restless for some action. Sometimes a goblin thief tried to take off with one of their horses, sometimes ravenous birds descended from the clouds, sometimes a traveling vagabond offered them the chance to gamble away a little personal wealth. Anything to start rolling dice.

Though at the end of the day I still think a pack of ravenous birds descending from the clouds is probably the best cure. Especially if they are also grabbing items and goodies.

36

I was actually suggesting teleporting to a location underwater, thus not ever hitting the surface, the water would slow you down, and you could swim to the surface.

37

Well played!

A couple of thoughts:

  1. Completely doing roleplaying in-character is great. I have been lucky and had groups like this, but some RPGers hate roleplaying (go figure). One thing to watch is the have the NPC react appropriately to both the character and the player, ie even if a player is diplomatic/persuasive, if his character is socially inept the NPC should react accordingly. Same thing for the socially challenged people running persuasive characters. As the GM I make sure i have a general understanding of each characters social skills (so I do not have to interupt a good roleplay) and the will make rolls myself behind the screen to see how the NPC is reacting as the conversation progresses. How the player roleplays is a strong modifier to the roll, but the PC’s skill and any NPC skills also contribute. I also give bennies here and there to people who try to roleplay relative to thier PC, ie playing up both thier positive attributes but also thier weaknesses. Many RPGs have systems like this.

  2. A combat-free game is a fine thing, in balance with other types of adventures. My group seemed to like 25% action-heavy, 25% roleplay-heavy, and 50% balanced. YMMV. Another people mentioned having an encounter or two to liven things up. I did that as well, as long as it fit the story and specifically the motivation of the opposition.

38

If you’re going to continue with the ghostrock, you should flesh it out some more for us. For instance what substance would cancel the effects, what devices are used to manipulate or alter it, and what are the innocuous daytime signs of excessive ghostrock presence?

Also, for what five purposes would someone use it, how can I make the characters and players have different opinions about the substance, and what other organizations might have an opinion on ghostrock?

39

What is it/why it works is always a big question for me when I ran games. Even if the players were never privy to the information, having logical reasons (within the scope of the created world) always helped me answer questions about what exactly would happen in particular situations.

For example:

  1. Maybe ghostrock is from the afterworld itself. There are a few sites around the world that allow people to enter the afterworld. Though once sources of mystism and legend they are now rigidly controlled by a powerful government/company. Ghostrock are pieces snuck out through this control or from before the control was exerted.

or

  1. Everything we feel leaves ripples on the world around us. Pain, suffering, death all scar the world. If enough people die in an area, especially tramadic deaths, the ground will absorb that pain. Those souls, or haunted reflections of them, will remain. At the highest levels this earth goes beyond any single tragedy and can trap and magnify any nearby souls to the level that they can be witnessed by men. In this case ghostrock can be manufactured in cruel laboratories where men are tormented and killed upon it until the rock changes. It may also “naturally” occur in places of great suffering.

or

  1. There is a veil between this world and the other and this particular material pulls the two together like a magnet. In this case I would suggest that, much as in the first example, the afterworld is made from this material. But unlike in the first where we went into the afterworld to get it, in this the rock has protruded into our world. It so only in very rare and small pieces, tiny hooks into our reality, and never in large amounts. They are markers made to allow the dead to find their way into the afterworld. When it is gathered it both disrupts the deads ability to pass on, in the area it was taken from, and when to much of it is together the connection is so strong that it can reverse the intended effect and cause things form the afterworld to cross over into ours.

of

  1. One source. I use this bucket for a wide range of conditions that could have occured at one time and left the ghostrock behind. Maybe chernoble’s meltdown left this rock behind. Maybe a meteor made of the ghostrock struck so its origin is completely alien to earth. Maybe they unearthed the massive tomb of a chinese emporer and it was filled with ghostrock, and spirits went about the tomb exactly if it was an ancient chinese city.

Hopefully some of those ideas will work for you, or you can put your together form the parts you like.