I think the thread title should be:
Tabletop RPGS in year 43 AD&D
Wow. LIKE!
Ditto. I love UA and would love to know if it’s worth getting the new thing.
You go girl!
If y’all are waiting on me to compare and contrast, I have never read or played previous editions of Unknown Armies, just most of the first book of the new edition. It’s definitely awesome, dunno what the changes are though. Apart from completely new adept schools.
That would be year 40, sir. 43 would mean dropping the ‘A’.
On another note, one of my favorite systems of all time is getting a new edition on Kickstarter:
Tempted to get the cargo box even though it won’t ever get played. Hell I would have considered joining the council if there were spots left.
Anno D&D ;)
One reason why the new Unknown Armies edition is cool:
They’re letting you generate and charge money for your own officially licensed fan content or even updating older edition content they put out. It’s possibly reminiscent of the OGL days of 3rd edition D&D except that they’re including setting material in the license (and the terms are probably different).
Ooh that’s a great idea. Hopefully it means a batch of content for UA. I went a little nuts last weekend and bought a small chunk of every system you guys mentioned, but UA seems the most interesting so far (alongside some of the sci-fi Fate stuff). Would be very nice if some supporting material for UA started to pop up.
Side question: Has anyone dealt with a single remote player? One of my 5e players is moving cross country next week and I’m working on ideas to keep him playing with us over Skype or something similar. Can multiple locals + one remote player work? Not sure how to keep him present and involved other than something extreme like projecting his Skype video onto a wall and having a second camera stream an overview of the table to him.
I have not done it personally but I know a lot of folks have used Roll20 with Skype for this. Basically moving the mechanics maps etc into the software so that the remote player always sees what is going on. Together with a Laptop + cam facing the other players and the GM works well enough.
Having now read the two main rulebooks for Unknown Armies 3rd Edition (the third is a collection of weird occult shit as idea fodder), I am jonesing to run this thing. So if any of you would be interested in doing a once every week or two campaign, voice (probably Discord, since that’s easy) and roll20 being the mediums, as an evening or weekend CST thing, let me know.
I have one possible player so far from a Discord server I’m on, but he’s 16 hours ahead, so he’s not counting on being able to sync up with anyone else. (Basically we’d have to do a weekend evening, CST, to get him in at late morning his time. Which I can do, but we’ll see about others.)
It’s really dependent on the personalities of the people involved, tbh, but it’s a significant technical enterprise to get it going in a quality way. The slight but unmistakable delay of internet voicechat, the difficulties in syncing up view of the table state (either double cameras, no camera for players, or, most intensive of all, projecting Roll20 live in-person while he’s connected via the net), and maintaining interest in general are all tough. The delay, I find, in particular (as well as proper mic’ing of everyone at the table) makes that invaluable table talk so much harder to maintain for the remote person, which tends to induce reduced interest over time as they feel like they miss more and more small, but vital moments between the other players.
Dunno, maybe I am being too down on it. But it’s tough, and takes people really committed to making it work on all sides :)
Sample Unknown Armies ritual:
Breathe Underwater. You need a friend you trust. Really, really trust. You and the friend have to go to a river or large body of water. Moving water. A bathtub won’t do unless you can run water in it and it’s big enough for both of you to be inside it at the same time. Anyway, you get your friend to hold you underwater. They have to hold on and keep you there no matter how you thrash and fight. They have to hold you under until you stop fighting. If the ritual worked, you’ll be able to breathe suddenly, underwater, and stop struggling. If the ritual fails, you’re probably dead.
Effect: If this ritual is successful, you’re able to breathe underwater for a month. If it isn’t successful, well, you won’t need to.
I played in an Unknown Armies game, and I found it really disconcerting - I just wanted to get all the PCs help. Help, and probably therapy.
Heh, that was actually a line from some fluff in the 2e rulebook. About a crazy adept who’s girlfriend realized just how screwed up his head was, and wanted him to see a therapist. His response- “but what if I come out of it a happy, well-rounded person?”. And that’s why I love the setting.
Been getting into Mongoose Traveller and Traveller in general. As I did so I ran into this brilliant designer who made a Solo Traveller add on. It uses Cepheus Engine classic style Traveller but works with Mongoose if you are willing to tweak it, anyway maybe of interest to other solo P&P RPGers.
I don’t think I’ll ever get a live Traveller game going so that’s an insta-buy. See ya later, 10-dollar bill.
Meanwhile, my D&D campaign has been chugging along. The remote player has a big personality so he’s stayed involved and seems to be having fun. We’re about to hit a big sandbox portion of the story which I’m worried about handling, but my plan is to have the party give me an idea where they’d like to head at the end of every session. Hoping that will keep everything I need to know manageable.
Anyone get into OSR games? I bought a few Dungeon Crawl Classics modules to mine for ideas and they’re an awesome mix of gritty, nostalgic and weird. Tons of good ideas that I’ve been sprinkling into my D&D.
Really glad things are working out with the remote person!
I love sandboxy type stuff, though admittedly it’s a lot easier to run in prep-light games like Fate than something like PF/D&D unless you’re really comfy reskinning encounters or plucking monsters out of bestiaries and thinking of interesting combat challenges on the fly.
Unfortunately, I’ve usually had player-groups that strongly prefer pretty heavy railroading/guidance, so my grand sandbox plans never seen to pan out quite how I want them to.
Over in my world, our cooperative 4-GM, 3-table Exalted “Semi Organized Play” campaign is going extremely well with rave review from players and instantaneous fill-ups on the Meetup site we take RSVPs on, to the point that we’ve had to start bumping combat-light tables up to 6 players from 5 in order to accommodate everyone who can make it each week.
We’re getting close to the mid-season finale and have been slowly stripping away the mentor/guidance-type characters, allowing the PCs to begin recruiting their own allies, building their own bases of support, and literally building/ensorceling some really cool shit, including an elemental guardian for their island’s bay, a magiteck communications system, and more. In my last session, they toppled the existing god of the island, a violent, unpredictable volcano spirit, in favor of “The All-Seeing,” a Pattern Spider (weavers of the Loom of Fate) who got delusions of grandeur and was cast out of Heaven in antiquity. He’s a conniving, sly son of a bitch, so they tied him down with an Unbreakable Vow, but I think I managed to leave him an escape valve if the other GMs need to turn him on them ;-)
I’m technically “off” this month as the other 3 GMs are running all sessions in August, but I’ll be back for the final two sessions in September, including one I’m really excited about: in my finale table, the players are tasked with defending their Manse from an incursion of Dragon Blooded troopers come to kill them all for being “Anathema” (in-plot, Solar Exalted like them are feared by the state religion of the major imperial power in the world, run by Dragon Blooded Exalted). They’ve got to hold on long enough to charge up the enormous magitech laser beam embedded in the manse’s heart to blow the armor plates off the island-sized Behemoth that’s about to show up on their shores so another table’s strike team can clamber inside and commandeer its brainstem.
Anyway, during the big fight at my table, all the various NPCs and factions they’ve allied themselves with will join the fray via cutscenes or Battle Groups, and will face all sorts of dangerous that PCs that have come to love them can hopefully swoop in and save them from, cementing their ties forevermore. . . or leave them be and fight their own battles. I expect a pretty high body count, which is super weird for one of my tables in any game. Moreover, they’ll get to activate all the crazy magitech defenses they’re setting up around their Manse via Crafting and Sorcery in a sort of hyper-violent anime-styled Home Alone scenario. I am super, super excited to run it.
Finally, GenCon is next week! I’m running two Fate Core sessions I wrote, The Final Performance of the Hellknights of the Underdark (Feat Deathrone Ascendancy, a heavy-metal themed fantasy rock opera adventure, and Minor League Evil, a game of third-string “super”-villains having to take up the slack when the big bads disappear. @Vesper and his brother are joining my table for the latter, which I’m super pumped about.
In addition to the games I’m running, I’m also playing in sessions of Luchador: Way of the Mask, 13th Age, Savage Worlds, Dungeon Crawl Classics (which I’m super pumped to finally get to play, @fenris, after winning the rulebook in a raffle years ago and never managing to get a game together), and Apocalypse World, attending several sessions on RPG design/writing, and we’ve got tickets to the TMBG concert on Thursday night :-D
I’ve been trying to get Unknown Armies together but one person had to drop out due to unexpected increase in demand on their time, another joined us briefly but wasn’t able to get into the premise after all, and we haven’t been able to get a quorum together for the opening phase. So if anyone else would be interested and could do Saturdays at 7 or so CST (this isn’t mandatory as the ongoing time anymore since the first person dropped out, but it seems like a reasonable slot for now), let me know.