the_gneech: (Obi-Wan Not Good)
Last night we played the second half of a Star Wars adventure that I started way back in April of last year. (10 months between sessions is probably a new record for us ... usually by that point we just chuck it.) However, we did barrel through Red Hand of Doom during that interval, so we at least have a reason.

The other record we broke last night was "Worst Dice Rolling EVAR." Everybody sucked at random number generating — in a nail-biting moment when the players were trying to prevent a stormtrooper from setting off a huge explosive charge that would kill them all, every one of them spent a Force Point to add to their attack and then promptly rolled a 2 on the d20, making their Force Point benefit negligible. But the badguys weren't doing much better! At one point an Imperial officer blasted [livejournal.com profile] jamesbarrett's hotshot pilot at point-blank range, rolling 3d6+2 for damage and coming up with a total of 7. Yup. He rolled two 2's and a 1. [livejournal.com profile] jamesbarrett shrugged, said "Ouch," and kept on doing what he was doing.

The basic thrust of the plot was that the characters were flying escort on a delivery of payment from the Alliance to the Squibs in exchange for a salvaged Clone Wars-era Venator-class battleship (an Old Republic precursor to the Star Destroyer). After some unplanned detours to a backwater world for repairs from an Imperial ambush (and an encounter with a local cargo cult of sentient crabs), they finally met with the Squibs, who informed them that an Imperial Star Destroyer had found the Venator and was guarding it. The Squibs distracted the Star Destroyer with their Momship, enabling the heroes to make an assault on the Imperial troops on board the Venator.

The heroes lost one of their NPC companions in the assault on the landing bay, but managed to get onto the Venator. (Nonheroic 3 makes for a good pilot but not much of a tank. The NPC only had 10 hit points.) Taking up one of the stormtrooper's comlinks, the heroes listened in on the Imperial chatter and found out that there were saboteurs in the engine room setting explosives that would disable the hyperdrive, so they rushed down to engineering to prevent said catastrophe.

Much lobbing of grenades, some horrible dice rolls on both sides, and another lost NPC companion later, the sabotage attempt was thwarted and the ship secured. Having completed their transaction with the Squibs and not wanting to wait for the Star Destroyer to come back, the Venator flew off into the sunset jumped into hyperspace.

[livejournal.com profile] lythandra commented after the game that she was enjoying the campaign, even if it was going super-slow. I had been trying to decide if I would continue it or not, but I figure that's a pretty compelling reason to keep going with it. :) So for now I'm going to stick with Star Wars and start up Uncanny Midnight Tales as my two primary games, while I work out the details of what I want to do with a fantasy game.

-The Gneech

*Post title courtesy of [livejournal.com profile] sirfox.
the_gneech: (Rastan Kill Monsters)
The one problem with having a unified "condition track" mechanic is that after a while, every monster more or less just ends up spamming that. Every monster with poison or disease, and all those monsters that used to have annoying stat drain or level drain attacks, now have "move the target down the condition track" attacks instead, and there are a lot of them.

Now that I've finished my first draft of all the monsters I intend to put into my "Monster Conversion Document" I need to go back and see if I can't find some more interesting ways to vary them. Dex drain might become slowed for instance, while diseases might inflict some more unusual effects like blind or possibly confused (to represent delirium).

This, presumably, is one reason the monsters in 4E all have seemingly-random tactical effects like "shifts five feet when attacked" or "teleports six squares when rolls a 20" or whatever, to give them some kind of interesting wrinkle without adding math to the fight (which is what all those poisons, diseases, miss chances, stat drains, and so on used to do). While I applaud the sentiment, I can't help but feel that too much of this takes you solidly into the realm of lasersharking, a term which I just recently encountered but which describes 4E precisely.

The key is to find balance. There's no reason to give Joe Goblin a funky power; he's a just a goblin fer cryin' out loud. But those creatures that do have an unusual ability, need to do something besides just "moves you down the condition track" over and over. Besides the fact that it can end a fight much more quickly than desired (by sending the PCs into a death spiral), it's just dull.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Conan Civilization Sucks)
I can't believe how many mistakes I've made with the XP Budget thing. It should have been quite simple, actually, but instead I got just about every major part of it wrong. Normally game mechanics and I get along much better than this.

Le sigh.

Oh well, I think (and sure as heck hope) that it's all fixed now, and hope I haven't permanently destroyed my reputation with anybody who's tried it out. And on the good side, it's given me some interesting insights on how Saga Edition works and cleared up a lot of the confusion I had about the existing encounter guidelines — not to mention giving me the actual utility to use. So it's not a total loss!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Me Barbarian)
The Saga Edition Encounter Budget system is fixed again! This time it includes separate figures for Saga Edition vs. D&D/d20, to give closer results to the SWSE experience chart. Thanks to Owen Stephens "StephenO" from the WotC boards and Rodney Thompson for their input!

-The Gneech

Gah! Bugs!

Sep. 24th, 2008 08:16 pm
the_gneech: (Obi-Wan Not Good)
There are some important bugs in my Encounter Budget system for SWSE — you can find discussion here:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1089003&page=2

I'll post when we get them ironed out!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Obi-Wan Not Good)
I've been waiting for the Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide to appear at Barnes & Noble for a month now. They finally get some new SWSE in, and what is it? Force friggin' Unleashed.

Bah!

FWIW, I looked through it since it was there and so was I; other than the new species options, the book wasn't all that interesting. Not as full of dumb as the video game, thank goodness, but nothing to write home about either. Some Clone Wars-era source material, if that's your bag.

Oh well, looks like it's off to Game Parlor for me!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Rastan Kill Monsters)
I've made some fairly hefty revisions to the Saga Edition encounter budget system, particularly the starship encounters section (bringing into line with the Starships of the Galaxy guidelines). I highly recommend you replace your current version with the new one.

http://www.gneech.com/swordandsorcery/index.html#encounterbudget

Thanks, all!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Rastan Kill Monsters)
One of the few places where 4E is actually superior to Saga Edition is in the encounter-building system. As in, it actually as one. However, since the "XP Budget" system of 4E is not directly translatable to Saga Edition, I've written up a conversion!

This system makes determining appropriate encounters in Saga Edition a breeze, instead of the enormous headache it was before; as an added bonus, it also works for Dungeons and Dragons 3.x. Can't figure out the difference between CR and EL? Trying to figure out if that encounter built for four 3rd level characters will be too tough or too easy for your actual party of six 2nd level characters? Does the idea of trying to figure out the appropriate XP award for 4 ogres, 2 bugbears, and 10 orcs give you the shakes? Then fear not! Using the "Encounter Building by XP Budget," you can answer all of those questions quickly while you actually build the encounter, making it easy to customize on the fly.

(For the record, an encounter built for four 3rd level characters [1,840 XP] will be slightly tough for your party of six 2nd level characters [1,380 XP], but not tough enough to make it an EL+1 encounter [2,070 XP]. Also, the XP award for 4 ogres, 2 bugbears, and 10 orcs should be 3,915 for each member of a 4 character party, or 2,610 for each member of a 6 character party. Math-illiterate that I am, I just calculated all that in about 45 seconds with no spreadsheet of any kind.)

It's pretty spiffy! Check it out and let me know what you think. :)

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (NIMH Scariest Icon)
Okay, Himura, even YOU would be scared of this one!

Kaijura (CL OMG / campaign-ending XP)


Hugemongous. Radioactive. Stomps cities. You get the picture. Just don't apply the "solo" template or we're all screwed.

Colossal Beast (aberration, unique) 40
Sanity Loss 1d10/2d10
Init +22; Senses Perception +27, Darkvision, Low-light Vision
DR 25, radiation/electricity 50; Immune mind-influencing effects; Resistance spells +20


Defenses Ref 53 (flat-footed 51), Fort 38, Will 24
hp 959; Threshold 93


Speed 12 squares, swim 30 squares
Melee slam +49 (4d6+39) and tail slap +47 (3d6+37) plus stomp
Ranged breath ray +38 (13d6+20) area effect: line 2 squares x 2 squares x 60 squares
Fighting Space 6 squares x 6 squares; Reach 4 squares
Base Atk +30; Grp +67


Abilities Str 45/+17, Dex 14/+2, Con 47/+18, Int 6/-2, Wis 15/+2, Cha 30/+10
Feats Extra Second Wind, Improved Damage Threshold, Indomitable, Mighty Swing, Power Attack, Shake It Off, Skill Training (Climb), Skill Training (Endurance), Skill Training (Jump), Surefooted, Toughness, Trip, Weapon Focus (slam), Weapon Specialization (slam), Weapon Familiarity (Natural Weapons)
Skills Climb +42, Endurance +43, Jump +42, Perception +27, Swim +42


Damage Reduction Kaijura gains DR 50 against radiation or electricity.
Frightful Presence As a free action, Kaijura gets an attack at +30 vs. the Will defense of any creature of large size or smaller within 20 squares. A successful attack indicates that the target has -2 to all ability checks, skill checks, attacks, and defenses against Kaijura for 10 rounds.
Natural Armor Kaijura's thick, scaly hide gives it +30 natural armor and provides DR 25.
Natural Swimmer Kaijura gets training in the Swim skill for free. It may take 10 on any Swim check, even if rushed or distracted.
Spell Resistance Kaijura gets +20 to all its defense scores against spells.
Stomp By moving through the space of any creature or object of size huge or smaller, Kaijura gets an attack at +37 vs. the Ref defense of that creature as a free action. A successful attack does 3d6+20 damage to the target as Kaijura stomps on them.
Unique As a unique creature, Kaijura adds ½ its level to its defense scores and gets 3x its maximum hit die at 1st level as if it were a heroic character.


They don't get much scarier short of rising up from R'lyeh.

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Kimba determined)
You asked for it! :D

Griffon (CL 6 / 6,460 XP)


May or may not be named "Merv."

Large Magical Beast 7
Sanity Loss 0/1d6
Init +5; Senses Perception +14, Darkvision, Low-light Vision, Scent
Defenses Ref 20 (flat-footed 18), Fort 16, Will 12
hp 59; Threshold 21
Speed 6 squares, fly 16 squares
Melee bite +9 (1d8+7) and 2 claws +9 (d6+7)
Fighting Space 2 squares x 2 squares; Reach 1 square
Base Atk +5; Grp +14
Abilities Str 18/+4, Dex 15/+2, Con 18/+4, Int 5/-3, Wis 13/+1, Cha 8/-1
Feats Improved Defenses, Skill Focus (Perception), Weapon Familiarity (Natural Weapons), Weapon Focus (bite)
Skills Perception +14
Pounce A griffon may charge and make a full attack as a full-round action. It may not make its rake attacks, as it does not have improved grab.
Rake If a griffon begins its turn grappling a target, it may perform two claw attacks against that target as a swift action.


-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Rastan Kill Monsters)
How about this guy?

Dragon (CL 20 / 64,920 XP)


This stat block is for the classical "giant, flying, fire-breathing brute," rather than for sophisticated riddle-telling tea-drinkers. To make a sophisticated riddle-telling tea-drinker, increase the Int to 18, giving the dragon five additional trained skills (presumably in the Knowledge or Perform arenas, or Spellcraft if you want it to cast spells). You can also give your dragon levels in Scholar or other appropriate classes.

Huge Beast (dragon) 20
Sanity Loss 1/1d10
Init +15; Senses Perception +19, Low-Light Vision, Darkvision, Scent
DR 10/magic; Immune fire; Resistance Spells +15


Defenses Ref 20 (flat-footed 20), Fort 17, Will 14
hp 210; Threshold 27


Speed 8 squares, fly 30 squares
Melee bite +26 (2d6+21) and 2 claws +26 (1d8+21) and tail slap +26 (1d8+21) plus snatch or
Melee crush +21 (1d10+21) area effect: 3 squares x 3 squares
Ranged flame breath +17 (6d6+10) area effect: 10 square cone or 20 square line plus catch fire
Fighting Space 3 squares x 3 squares; Reach 2 squares
Base Atk +15; Grp +36 (+10 size)


Abilities Str 33/+11, Dex 10/+0, Con 23/+6, Int 2/-4, Wis 19/+4, Cha 18/+4
Feats Cleave, Improved Defenses, Power Attack, Skill Focus (Perception), Skill Training (Acrobatics), Skill Training (Initiative), Weapon Familiarity (Natural Weapons), Weapon Focus (breath weapon)
Skills Acrobatics +15, Initiative +15, Perception +19, Survival (tracking) +19


Crush A dragon may attempt to land (or jump) upon its foes, crushing them under its body. Moving into its foes' space provokes an attack of opportunity. If the crush attack is successful, the targets take the crush damage immediately, are considered pinned, and begin to suffocate. They continue to take the crush damage every round until the dragon moves, at which point they are left prone in the square they occupied when they were attacked. Any foe that is not hit by the crush attack is immediately moved out of the crush-effect square to the nearest unoccupied square.
Flame Breath A dragon's flame breath may be spread in a 10-square cone or a 20-square line, automatically attacking everything within the area of effect. Any creature that takes damage from the dragon's breath catches on fire and begins to take normal fire damage on the next round (see the normal fire rules). The dragon may not use its flame breath again until 1d4 rounds have passed.
Natural Armor A dragon's thick scales give it +10 natural armor and DR 10 (bypassed by magic weapons).
Snatch A dragon that hits with a bite or claw attack may immediately attempt a grapple check against that target as a free action. If successful, the target is considered to be carried by the dragon, taking damage automatically until it escapes. The dragon is not considered grappled; a common tactic is to fly to a great height and drop the target.
Spell Resistance A dragon's inherently magical nature gives it +15 to all defense scores against the effects of spells. The dragon may choose to suppress this ability.
Tail Slap A dragon that successfully hits with its tail slap moves the target 1 square any direction as with a bull rush. The target cannot be moved into a solid object or another creature's fighting space.


Rar. ;)

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (NIMH Scariest Icon)

Dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus Rex (CL 15 / 36,920 XP)


Huge Beast 18
Sanity Loss 1/1d10
Init +10; Senses Perception +16, Darkvision, Scent


DR 5
Defenses Ref 16 (flat-footed 15), Fort 16, Will 12
hp 189; Threshold 26


Speed 8 squares
Melee bite +23 (2d6+18) plus grab or
Melee charging bite +27 (2d6+27) plus grab, -2 Ref defense
Fighting Space 2 squares x 2 squares; Reach 1 square
Base Atk +13; Grp +32 (+10 size)


Abilities Str 28/+9, Dex 13/+1, Con 21/+5, Int 2/-4, Wis 15/+2, Cha 10/+0
Feats Dodge, Improved Charge, Mobility, Powerful Charge, Weapon Familiarity (Natural Weapons), Weapon Focus (bite), Weapon Specialization (bite), Toughness
Skills Perception +16, Survival (tracking) +16


Improved Grab A t-rex that successfully hits with its bite attack may attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity.
Natural Armor A t-rex's thick hide gives it +5 natural armor and DR 5.
Swallow Whole A t-rex that begins its turn grappling a target of size large or smaller may swallow that target whole as a standard action by making a successful grapple check. Once the target is swallowed, it is still considered to be grappled, although the t-rex is now free to act normally. The target takes 2d6+18 damage from being swallowed, then automatically takes that damage damage each additional round from muscle constriction, stomach acid, and so forth, and begins to suffocate. Targets with acid resistance or DR vs. bludgeoning do not apply the resistance, but only take half damage. The swallowed creature may attempt to cut their way out with a light slashing or piercing weapon. The Ref defense required to effectively cut through is 12, and the target must do 20 hp to cut through the gullet. This immediately moves the t-rex -2 steps down the condition track. Once the hole is made, any additional creatures still in the gullet may attempt to escape by making Acrobatics checks against DC 16, or by doing 10 hp total. Alternatively, a swallowed target may make a Climb check or Grapple check (whichever is higher) vs. the t-rex's Grapple check to climb back up into the mouth, where it may be bitten or swallowed again. A t-rex can hold 1 large or 2 medium or 4 small creatures in its gullet, and will not swallow another creature whole if it has been cut open.

All that and it only came out to be CL 15. Can you believe it?

In other news, congrats to the Star Wars Saga Edition team on your Ennie awards! They're well deserved!

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Boromir battle)
Came this close to my first TPK tonight in Red Hand of Doom. The party went up against a fairly pedestrian encounter against some ettins and goblins, that was easy. Then they fought against an immature purple worm (a home-baked encounter I put in to replace some rather ho-hum wandering monsters in that particular part of the module), and finally a fiendish behir that nearly tore them to shreds.

Against both the purple worm and the behir, [livejournal.com profile] jamesbarrett's bard/barbarian/ranger guy (just call him "Mr. Multiclass") got swallowed hole. Against the immature purple worm, that wasn't such a problem, but against the half-fiend behir, it was huge. The behir opened the battle with its breath weapon, hitting everyone hard, then swallowed two party members ([livejournal.com profile] jamesbarrett plus an NPC ally) whole in the first round, doing vicious amounts of damage to them automatically each round, then pounding on [livejournal.com profile] sirfox's cleric with a "smite good" and once he was down getting ready to do the same to [livejournal.com profile] lythandra's sorcerer.

The NPC died; [livejournal.com profile] jamesbarrett was taken to -9 hp, and [livejournal.com profile] sirfox was taken to something like -4 or -5 IIRC. If it wasn't for [livejournal.com profile] hantamouse forsaking his attacks to get a cure moderate wounds into the cleric in time, the bard/barbarian/ranger guy would have been lost and probably the sorcerer would have quickly gone next.

It's not like they weren't hurting the behir — they were — just not as much as she was hurting them, which is of course the key to winning. ;) So … quite the session! I must say, the party did very well to survive that.

For those who are interested, have an immature purple worm! )

I did screw up the "swallow whole" mechanics a bit by having the swallow whole take place on the same round as the grapple, but as it is unlikely the characters would have escaped, it didn't make that much of a difference. I also made a mistake in the players' favor by forgetting to apply the behir's acid damage to the swallowed foes while they were being constricted by its gullet, so I imagine the players will forgive me. ;)

In other news...

[livejournal.com profile] sirfox, [livejournal.com profile] lythandra, and I all went to see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor today, and we all enjoyed it tremendously. Terrific fantasy/adventure flick. The yetis were awesome, and it had Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh. What more could one ask? ;D I highly recommend it to pulp fans. :)

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Rastan Kill Monsters)
Specifically, I voted in the Ennies.

I don't generally do industry awards, usually because I don't feel like I've got enough information to give a fair assessment. I mean, how can I say The Complete Book of Monster Killin' is a better product than Pretensiousness: The Obscurity when I've never even seen a copy of The Complete Book of Monster Killin'?

This time, however, I felt compelled to, because Star Wars Saga Edition was up for several categories, including "Game of the Year." As you've probably guessed by now, I loves me some Star Wars Saga Edition. As big an improvement 3E was over, well, every other version of D&D, SWSE is an improvement over 3E. All of that stuff the 4E marketing team went on about being "broken" in 3E is nicely fixed by SWSE — without any of the "WoW on paper" / "classes are random collections of powers" / "you are your role in combat" / "every rule is an exception" annoyances of 4E.

SWSE has a few wrinkles, but on the whole it's very fast, very flexible, and extremely easy to work with. The fact that I've easily kitbashed it into two completely different genres (Sword & Sorcery and Mystery/Horror) is a testament to that. I never even attempted to do that kind of thing with D&D and quickly got frustrated by my attempts to do it with d20 Modern without E-Tools by my side. 3.X needs a utility like E-Tools to be workable; for SWSE, something like E-Tools is completely superfluous!

So there you have it. Finally a game good enough to make me get off my duff and vote to give it an award — and considering how pissed I still am at WotC for their despicable actions of 2007, that's pretty impressive!

Go vote for SWSE today! :D

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Obi-Wan Not Good)
My Star Wars Saga Edition Gamemaster Screen came today — very nice! I don't think I've ever seen a GM screen made of this heavy cardstock before.

Got Threats of the Galaxy when it came out, too. It's good, but not quite as big a deal given how many "lists of character types" resources there are on the net for SWSE. Nevertheless, I'm very impressed with the SWSE line overall.

I wonder how it would fuse with Cthulhu d20...

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Obi-Wan Not Good)
Actually, the party splitting up and only half of them going into the Knobby White Spider encounter turns out to have been a good thing (or at least have a silver lining), because it made me re-evaluate the KWS stat block. I built the critter using the miniatures game stats as a baseline, which was easy enough, but SWSE has absolutely no guidelines for estimating custom creature or NPC challenge level. You just have to wing it.

So I wrote up the KWS and winged it, coming up with CL 5. But then this morning I compared the KWS stats to the Acklay stats in the book ... and had quite a shock. The KWS, which I put at CL 5, could easily wipe the floor with the Acklay, which the designers put at CL 10.

Aheheheheh. So perhaps the KWS as I wrote it should be, oh, CL 12. <.< >.>

So, yeah, lemme do some revising, I think. ^.^'

-The Gneech
the_gneech: (Obi-Wan Not Good)
Ran Star Wars tonight; the session went well, I think (or at least, I certainly enjoyed it). It basically consisted of one of those starship battles where "victory" is defined as "running away before being killed" (which the players did successfully), followed by some investigation of a scout waystation where they were hoping to pick up repair parts for the damaged ship they were escorting and figuring out the mystery of what happened there.

It ended with a cliffhanger, with [livejournal.com profile] sirfox's scout/soldier and [livejournal.com profile] lythandra's Jedi confronted by a big horrible monstrosity out on the planet's surface, with the rest of the party still poking around the waystation some distance away.

They didn't listen to those words of sage advice. This ... could be bad. We'll see next time!

The reason I mention a railroad in the title of this post, however, is because with the exception of the splitting-up at the end, this session went almost exactly as I figured it would, right down to the status of the ship they were escorting. Some of that was because I knew the stats of both the ship they were escorting and the ships attacking and what the probable outcome of the fight would be, and the rest of the adventure flowed pretty smoothly from that knowledge. I did also do some "GM fiat" on the state of the ship being escorted, i.e., deciding what specific systems were damaged and what would need to be done to fix them.

However, at no point during the game did I force the players' hands -- I simply set up the situation and made fairly accurate guesses about what they would do given the circs. Thus, even though it was a completely linear game setup, it wasn't really railroading because the players could have wandered off at any time if they'd really wanted to. ("Well, we blew that. Let's go to Nar Shadaa and join a Hutt's gang!" "Wait, what?") I woulda had to scramble to deal with it, but they did have the option. :)

The next session, is going to be harder, tho. Given the situation they've put themselves into by splitting up, there are a lot of ways it could go, and I'm going to have to try to accommodate the most likely possibilities. Ah well! I knew the job was dangerous when I took it. ;)

-The Gneech

PS -- For my players: the Star Wars campaign page has been updated with the Siravan databank file (in color!), as well as illustrations of the lovely Knobby White Spider (in case you really want to see it again), and what the scouts' shuttle looked like before the pirates blasted it out of the sky.
the_gneech: (Obi-Wan Not Good)
In my Richmond gaming days of yore, I developed a reputation for my adventure intros, which are little narrative blurbs usually 2-10 pages long, handed out at the beginning of the game session, featuring scenes with NPC developments, background information, and setup for the upcoming session's expected action. I'm not sure exactly where I picked up the habit. I remember reading about "recap sheets" in RPG books for years, and WEG's original Star Wars Roleplaying Game had "scripts" that you'd handout at the beginning of the session to "prime the pump" so to speak and help emphasize the cinematic nature of the game.

The original SWRPG also impressed a concept on me which has stuck with me ever since, of starting a game session in medias res. Instead of mucking around in the mission briefing room or gathering at the tavern (depending on the campaign), you take all of that stuff as read and instead throw the players head-first into an existing situation that demands their immediate attention. It's fairly standard game design philosophy now -- but in 1987, beginning the game session with "Roll for initiative!" (or its equivalent) was revolutionary.

So I combined these two concepts, the recap/session opener handout and starting in medias res, and from them was born what [livejournal.com profile] lythandra called the "Oh Sh!t" intro. This is a game intro text that doesn't just throw them into the thick of things, but sends them out of the frying pan and into the fire. The pirates attack! A monster bursts out of the ground! The dark wizard and his army teleport into the castle! etc.

I think the most extreme "Oh Sh!t" intro I ever presented my poor players with had the Richmond group's ship's hull breached by TIE fighter blasts, leaving them plummeting powerless towards the planet surface below, with their beloved NPC team member (and [livejournal.com profile] lythandra's love interest) having been sucked out the hole without a parachute. [1] Although the time my NoVA Star Hero group had to defuse a bomb that would destabilize the moon and send it spiraling into the Earth was quite the nail-biter too IIRC. (Mind you, both of those incidents were pretty late in their respective campaigns. I don't throw that kind of crazy stuff at low-level characters, a} to avoid campaign power inflation, and b} 'cause they just can't handle it.)

Every gamemaster has their signature shticks, I suppose, and the "Oh Sh!t" intro is one of mine. :)

Speaking of which, [livejournal.com profile] jamesbarrett, [livejournal.com profile] lythandra, [livejournal.com profile] hantamouse, and [livejournal.com profile] sirfox ... there's a new intro at the bottom of my Star Wars Campaign Page, just for you. ;)

-The Gneech

[1] There are times when a range of "Line of Sight" is a wonderful thing. [livejournal.com profile] lythandra: "Can I see Derek?" [livejournal.com profile] the_gneech: "Yes, he's that rapidly-dwindling green dot." [livejournal.com profile] lythandra: "Telekinesis! Telekinesis!" Meanwhile, [livejournal.com profile] satyrblade managed to bring that creaky old YT-1300 down in a maneuver that made Anakin's landing of the Invisible Hand look positively sloppy. It was impressive.
the_gneech: (Cramer Crap)
When I was in college, I wrote a little article for submission into Adventurers' Club [1] called "Easy-to-Swallow CHAMPIONS: Street-Level Superheroes." As its title suggests, this was about how to run a Champions campaign that was a bit more realistic [2] than the four-color superhero standard. Instead of Superman and the Fantastic Four, say, this was about a world predominantly populated by Batman and Daredevil types, highly-skilled mortals rather than strange beings with godlike powers.

If I remember correctly, Aaron Allston was the editor of AC at the time, and he wrote back that while it was a good philosophical piece, it needed some game mechanics in it, and more details generally. I was sorta stymied by that, partially because of the space limitations, and partially because after I'd poured out my thoughts on the matter, I really couldn't think of anything else to say. So the article floundered. I was highly amused, however, when a year later they published Dark Champions by Steve Long, which was basically an entire campaign supplement founded on almost the exact same premise. "Had I known you wanted a book about it, a woulda written a book instead!" Oh well.

Dark Champions and my little article both were the vanguard of a certain "back to the roots" philosophy that was showing up in a lot of geek culture at the time. The early seasons of Batman: The Animated Series, Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, etc. were all flying around at about this period. I suspect that to some extent we were all reacting to the camp of the late '60s, '70s, and early '80s that we'd grown up on [3]. Nerds that we all were, we wanted our beloved superheroes and starfighter jockeys to be played straight for a change.

Which was all well and good ... except as always, it wasn't long before people swung too far in the other direction. Adventure got replaced with noir. Drama got replaced with wangst. Instead of having fandom where nothing was taken seriously, we got fandom where everything was about how life sucked and everything you did was pointless. By somewhere in the late '90s, people were rapidly becoming sick of it. They wanted to get back to fun and excitement ... but swung too far again. So now, well, basically we're back to camp.

Le sigh.

My evidence for this comes from three basic sources: first is The Force Unleashed, LucasArts' new "TURN IT UP TO 11!!!!ONE" Star Wars tie-in game, which takes the over-the-top Force powers of Clone Wars and amps it up even further. When the iconic moment of the game is your "hero" pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky, then igniting his lightsaber with the implied intent of wiping out everyone aboard, I gotta think something's seriously gone awry. Oh, and did I mention "lightsaber tonfas," which has gotta be the dumbest idea for a weapon ever? And when did Shaak Ti exchange her Jedi robes for a leather bikini? Oy.

The second item is, well, D&D 4E, which has as one of its clear design goals to give first level characters Kewl Powers, presumably because it's believed that everybody wants to "skip to the good stuff" (about which I've ranted elsewhere). I've heard derisive comments that even a low-level quickie encounter in 4E comes off like the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. I don't doubt that's a reductio ad absurdum, but on the other hand, I can see where it's coming from.

The third is this year's crop of movie trailers. Now I won't prevaricate here -- I am very eager to see both Speed Racer and Indy IV. But they're both pretty over-the-top. I mean, check out near the end of the Indy IV trailer where Indiana Jones is doing whip-swing-fu on some goon and kicking him through a window. Even for a guy who rides along under the bottom of a truck and doesn't get torn up doing it, that's some pretty whacked-out stuff. And as somebody who still regularly watches the original Speed Racer cartoon, I can tell you that at it's most frenetic it didn't have the Mach 5 doing half the crazy stuff that appears in the movie trailer.

Oy. Can we have at least a little bit of middle ground here, people??? Sure, I was one of the fifteen people on the planet who enjoyed Van Helsing, I freely admit that. But I don't want every friggin' movie to be Van Helsing!

The other night, [livejournal.com profile] lythandra was watching Live Free or Die Hard, and I would periodically come in, watch it for a while, and then leave again. I was never able to simply relax and watch the thing, because every time I'd start to enjoy it, they'd do something ridiculous that screamed "You're watching a dorky action movie!" at me ... and this is the same problem I keep having with all the other things coming out now. It particularly annoys me in the case of Star Wars and D&D because I already have expectations connected to both of those franchises, and "Dorky action movie!" is not among them.

Yes, Virginia, it is possible. "Geeky entertainment: you're doing it wrong."

-The Gneech

[1] I.C.E.'s HERO System magazine, long long out of print now.

[2] "Realistic" is a tricky term to use in this context, I realize.

[3] See also Roger Moore-era James Bond compared to Sean Connery-era James Bond.

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