Post by thorley on Sept 9, 2010 22:57:08 GMT -5
The adventure I was planning on running should be more or less ready to go when I return from vacation on the 22nd. This is also incidently why I will not be posting for Bellephoebe in Harriers despite her just being introduced (I let the GM know a while ago).
For those who are interested, the game is going to be set in South America in the vicinity of The Southern Federation from South America 2. A loose alliance of a city of mages, a city of people relocated from Wormwood, and a city of superbeings (HU powers).
Given the location characters from there, New Babylon, the SRR, Empire Of the Sun, etc.. are all appropriate. The transdimensional nature of The Megaversal Legion which is also in the area also means that just about anything can show up.
It should be noted that this is an adventure, not an ongoing campaign. Thus long term planning/development isn't going to be a part of this in of itself, though if I do run another adventure down the road I am likely to welcome the use of the same characters. Just a note since this is planned out, for the most part I am not ad libbing and there is a definate objective/end point to this.
The basic scenario calls for the PCs to be wandering adventurers. Mercenaries, and champions of good. No real evil characters for this paticular game. By the same token having definate roots to any given area is probably not going to work.
Specifically the characters will be there to investigate a number of outlying towns being wiped out. The culprits seem to be a whole bunch of stiched together undead abominations that are VERY difficult to bring down, and also don't seem to be affected by any of the usual magical solutions (turn dead, anti-vampire methods, wards, etc...).
The game will pick up with the party who will already have been travelling together having just discovered what they think is the origin point.
While there is some room for social activity, I will be frank in saying that I both intend to keep the game moving at a decent clip (online games that lag too much tend to die), and also this paticular adventure is going to be pretty hack and slash in nature. I do run other kinds of games (especially horror nowadays) that are far less combat oriented, but this one was designed specifically for battle since the player who hit me up to run this wanted something where he could cut loose with a Robotech Hovertank. I'm not a huge mecha fan, but it will work here, but keep that in mind since that character was created as I was working on the game, even though the story does not revolve around it in paticular.
As a GM I tend to handle all the die rolls from my end and simply post results.
By the same token, I am extremely liberal with character generation. This game will be aiming towards the higher (but non-munchkin) power level of the setting. A good mix of abillities would be helpful and I'd like to see 4-6 players.
In making your character feel free to pretty much set your attributes anywhere you want, don't bother to sell me on your luck with the dice or whatever, I'll review characters as themselves rather than worrying about the specific attributes. If you've had a character you've been itching to play that has no attributes below 25 for example I'll consider allowing it if it's a decent character overall.
Levels for characters should be from 3 to 6. As experienced adventurers I will leave equipment to your discrestion as above. I'm of course going to veto anything poorly conceived or outright ridiculous (for example super abillities make sense for this campaign given the existance of a city full of those guys, and I know RIFTS characters can have a ton of powers by the conversion book, but some combinations I'm not going to allow. For example your not going to play APS: Sand, Adapt To Any Enviroment, Energy Absorbsion, Immune to Magic, and Immune to psionics... and effectively be impossible to kill. I'm being liberal here, not ridiculous, and while not as up to date on the entire game as I have been in the past I have seen a LOT of tricks over the years).
I'll go over character sheets when I get back from vacation, however don't expect any messages from me for a while. I might have some tough desicians if I wind up getting a lot of people who are interested, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Oh yes, and while this is going to be a very combat oriented game, some of the PCs being social (high MA and PB) and reasonably smart (high IQ, some tech skills, etc...) is going to help with your options. An entire party of Incredible Hulk types for example might have an easy time with some things, but I will warn you that there is going to be some problem solving involved.
Also one final note: I do not want to give away spoilers, but there will be some varient mechanics used to handle specific things. Your opposition is not from the regular Palladium rules and has some stuff you probably haven't seen before. It's statted out and consistant however once you figure it out though. I mention this specifically because there is no need to rules lawyer if things seem to not work the way you'd expect when running into some things. It's intentional. An example of this is those aforementioned undead terrors, I am using a variation of the Dead Reign rules for damaging Zombies. These things however have no heads in some cases, and no obvious weak spots, you literally have to dismember them or blow them to pieces. I am however using regular rules for called shots (as opposed to the nasty ones from Dead Reign) which will make dismembering things a bit easier for you heroic types.
For those who are interested, the game is going to be set in South America in the vicinity of The Southern Federation from South America 2. A loose alliance of a city of mages, a city of people relocated from Wormwood, and a city of superbeings (HU powers).
Given the location characters from there, New Babylon, the SRR, Empire Of the Sun, etc.. are all appropriate. The transdimensional nature of The Megaversal Legion which is also in the area also means that just about anything can show up.
It should be noted that this is an adventure, not an ongoing campaign. Thus long term planning/development isn't going to be a part of this in of itself, though if I do run another adventure down the road I am likely to welcome the use of the same characters. Just a note since this is planned out, for the most part I am not ad libbing and there is a definate objective/end point to this.
The basic scenario calls for the PCs to be wandering adventurers. Mercenaries, and champions of good. No real evil characters for this paticular game. By the same token having definate roots to any given area is probably not going to work.
Specifically the characters will be there to investigate a number of outlying towns being wiped out. The culprits seem to be a whole bunch of stiched together undead abominations that are VERY difficult to bring down, and also don't seem to be affected by any of the usual magical solutions (turn dead, anti-vampire methods, wards, etc...).
The game will pick up with the party who will already have been travelling together having just discovered what they think is the origin point.
While there is some room for social activity, I will be frank in saying that I both intend to keep the game moving at a decent clip (online games that lag too much tend to die), and also this paticular adventure is going to be pretty hack and slash in nature. I do run other kinds of games (especially horror nowadays) that are far less combat oriented, but this one was designed specifically for battle since the player who hit me up to run this wanted something where he could cut loose with a Robotech Hovertank. I'm not a huge mecha fan, but it will work here, but keep that in mind since that character was created as I was working on the game, even though the story does not revolve around it in paticular.
As a GM I tend to handle all the die rolls from my end and simply post results.
By the same token, I am extremely liberal with character generation. This game will be aiming towards the higher (but non-munchkin) power level of the setting. A good mix of abillities would be helpful and I'd like to see 4-6 players.
In making your character feel free to pretty much set your attributes anywhere you want, don't bother to sell me on your luck with the dice or whatever, I'll review characters as themselves rather than worrying about the specific attributes. If you've had a character you've been itching to play that has no attributes below 25 for example I'll consider allowing it if it's a decent character overall.
Levels for characters should be from 3 to 6. As experienced adventurers I will leave equipment to your discrestion as above. I'm of course going to veto anything poorly conceived or outright ridiculous (for example super abillities make sense for this campaign given the existance of a city full of those guys, and I know RIFTS characters can have a ton of powers by the conversion book, but some combinations I'm not going to allow. For example your not going to play APS: Sand, Adapt To Any Enviroment, Energy Absorbsion, Immune to Magic, and Immune to psionics... and effectively be impossible to kill. I'm being liberal here, not ridiculous, and while not as up to date on the entire game as I have been in the past I have seen a LOT of tricks over the years).
I'll go over character sheets when I get back from vacation, however don't expect any messages from me for a while. I might have some tough desicians if I wind up getting a lot of people who are interested, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Oh yes, and while this is going to be a very combat oriented game, some of the PCs being social (high MA and PB) and reasonably smart (high IQ, some tech skills, etc...) is going to help with your options. An entire party of Incredible Hulk types for example might have an easy time with some things, but I will warn you that there is going to be some problem solving involved.
Also one final note: I do not want to give away spoilers, but there will be some varient mechanics used to handle specific things. Your opposition is not from the regular Palladium rules and has some stuff you probably haven't seen before. It's statted out and consistant however once you figure it out though. I mention this specifically because there is no need to rules lawyer if things seem to not work the way you'd expect when running into some things. It's intentional. An example of this is those aforementioned undead terrors, I am using a variation of the Dead Reign rules for damaging Zombies. These things however have no heads in some cases, and no obvious weak spots, you literally have to dismember them or blow them to pieces. I am however using regular rules for called shots (as opposed to the nasty ones from Dead Reign) which will make dismembering things a bit easier for you heroic types.