GM Burglar's 5-06: You Have What You Hold (Inactive)

Game Master mechaedd

Classic...just finishing III now. How was IV?

Assassin's Creed is a blindspot in my geek life, but I have been told that the main guy's name is Desmond - which in my mind doesn't make sense, as the games seem to span different time periods - ancient Jerusalem to the Americas. Oh well, I couldn't make sense out of most of the Metal Gear games either.

GM, I got the Small Boat Sailing merit badge when I was in Boy Scouts 20 years ago. I remember that it's important to tack, though I would have to look up what that word actually means in the context of sailing.

Aha, looked it up - Tacking at least. Also, looked up information on Assassin's Creed - interesting, studying ancestral memories or something? So, the modern-day guy is named Desmond, right?

Yes indeedy!

@Varg: I'll stand by the statement that II was best. Fluid enough combat, and lots of hidey-hole stuff to find, my type of game. Same reason I loved Crackdown. Didn't play the not-numbered ones with Ezio, since I didn't know the 3-pack disc existed (plus I borrowed II from Sethious, spurring this whole endeavor.) If I had, I'd have an opinion on them. Though Ubisoft keeps changing core components to their combat system, and it's drives me mad for a few hours. Most notably, when they changed the counter system in the II to III transition, I was 100% lost. When they changed the from a "4-button combat" system in I & II to a "2 button combat" system in III, then BACK to a 4-button combat system in IV, I was simply baffled. Why no consistency? Though IV has some cool bits I can't even really talk about, since you didn't finish III yet. Let's just say "Just like every game that was II and after, the modern day stuff is STILL more engrossing than the historical missions." III was definitely my least favourite.

I was in my second favourite historical era and region, losing only to Cold War era stuff. Particularly Russia/Soviet Union stuff. II was the best, all things considered. III had only a few cool characters, all of which weren't prominent enough. Ship combat seemed tacked on. IV is... a different beast. It's still Assassin's Creed gameplay, but a far different take. VERY sandbox-y.

@Des: Correct. Magical Science-themed Sci-Fi, is the best way to put it without spoiling anything.

The kids leave me with little time for gaming. I try to avoid violent stuff when they're awake. I'll play Lego Star Wars with my 3-yr-old every once in a while. Currently I'm playing Dark Souls - when I get the chance.

Dark Souls

In before Sethious' dissertation about how great that series is.

I haven't played the first one - Dead Souls, I think?

And now I see they're coming out with Dark Souls II. Oh boy.

I need to put another rank in Linguistics. I don't understand Video Game Speak.

I always feel out of touch when people talk about video games. I've played a handful of computer games regularly over the years but the only game system we had growing up was a PS 2 that I never touched.

@Desmond: Demon's Souls. And the following line about DS2 cracked me up.

The game world is going to be roughly twice the size of Dark Souls[10] with the beginning of the game made more accessible to newcomers.[11] Tanimura also confirmed that the game will retain the challenging gameplay known to the series, "We do not plan on having an Easy Mode since we are creating this game with a thought that challenge and difficulty are core elements of the game.”[12]

Knowing the game, that feels contradictory to its core unless they mean they're just padding space with easy stuff in the front to actually teach the controls. Amusing, to say the least.

@Sure: My proficiency stems from the fact that I had a Super Nintendo Entertainment System with Super Mario World and Mega Man X at age 4. Best "Bad" Life Event Ever. I have no idea what I'd be doing now without the call of the circuit boards; probably weed or something. I'm pretty self-centered and love to chill and eat gratuitous amounts of food; the target demographic.

Before my two young ones, I was an avid videogamer, but now, I am pretty much relegated to the LEGO stuff too, which, BTW, are pretty awesome. I am getting them the the new marvel one for XMas. Not a bad parent, but I do let my 5 year old play Assassin's Creed III when there is no combat or blood. He loves freerunning through the trees and Leaps of Faith!

Heh, I never played many video games, though all my friends did. I could never master first person shooters. (I was the guy whose character was stuck running into a corner.) We own a Wii, but never play it. At least you guys have boys, the last game I played on the Wii was Disney Princesses!

Yeah, you really don't want to get me started on the soul's series. Loads of fun, and I always tend to steer towards the "hard mode" games. I think I ran two full playthroughs on that one in particular, and made 3 characters specifically for PVP fun.

Heh, I never played many video games, though all my friends did. I could never master first person shooters. (I was the guy whose character was stuck running into a corner.) We own a Wii, but never play it. At least you guys have boys, the last game I played on the Wii was Disney Princesses!

Yeah, this sounds like me. That is, the first part about running into walls, not the part about playing Disney Princesses.

My parents have a Wii but the only games they have are Rock Band and Beatles Rock Band, mostly to entertain guests with-by which I mean, at Thanksgiving I was in charge of watching the little kids and helping them play drums on Yellow Submarine seven times in a row. My parents don't know how to work the Wii themselves, they just got that stuff for when they have nephews and nieces over.

I've got nothing against video games. In my whole family I probably play more than anyone-by which I mean I play Civilization V or Lord of the Rings Online for about 2 hours every other week. But when I was growing up (especially in high school) I just simply didn't have time. Jazz band practice every morning at 6:30, then work on the farm after school for a few hours (except senior year when marching band took over), and then I usually only had a couple hours to finish homework before bed. Weekends were generally eaten up by farm work and when I did get a day off my dad and I spent it in the shop working on my '53 pickup that we managed to finish restoring a couple years ago.

If I weren't at work, I'd google up that Disney Princesses game for footage. Honestly, the best LAN party game I ever played was The Bible Game (brought for awful hilarity for a Halo LAN), and it was only because one of my horrible friends got THE WRATH OF GOD literally every round. He ended a Jepordy-type game with 0 points, which is only possible by failing at maximum levels (and a shot in the dark win of pure chance.)

Sure - Civ V is a blast. I play multiplayer online with a few people from my F2F pathfinder group and form the workplace. I actually just finished a miracle come from behind science victory with Babylon from 8th place. It took a lot of political trickery and bribery to pull off though.

Desmond - Honestly, I can't remember if I ever soloed that fight or not. Possibly once with a full tank/mobility/spear + shield build. I usually summoned white phantoms (other players) for some of the tougher bosses, that one included. The goat demon (Carpa Demon) was my first big hang up too. I got stuck on him forever and then wound up skipping him and coming back later with a stronger character. What system do you play on and what soul level are you?

Any purely theoretical knowledge of nautical terms I might have comes from reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin (“Master and Commander”) series of novels set against the backdrop of the 19th century Royal Navy through at least twice. Some of the individual novels I have read many more times than that.

I also enjoyed John Steinbeck’s first novel “Cup of Gold” loosely based on the life of Welsh buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan.

Not much time for video games in our house.

My kids enjoy playing a free Flash-based browser arcade-style game (you can play on-line through your PC without downloading anything) at a site called friv4school.com, called “Fire Boy and Water Girl.”

It’s a simple cooperative, problem-solving type game which still requires a reasonable amount of video-game dexterity in order to succeed. It is surprisingly addictive and I am hounded often to play it with them, which is nice.

Upon brain deliberation, many of the bits scenario is pretty rough (by way of skipping the espionage bits) for Paladins (as any time in the River Kingdoms SHOULD be.) I found it odd, until I thought "Oh, wait; there's a ton of demons to kill in, like, EVERY other s5 scenarios. That pretty much balances out."

Continuing this "GM Burglar derails his own Discussion thread" train, Tektite's mentioning of Disney Princesses has unfortunately got me listening to a gratuitous amount of animated Disney songs again, as I often do. It also reminded me how much I want to play either a Gaston or Pierre le Fou rip-off in a PF game, preferably with someone playing the other half.

-Posted with Wayfinder

Is the consensus to head off directly without rest?

And (regardless of rest decision), are you going by day or night? The boat you took was only expected to be back "by tomorrow-ish, as far as (I) know," so you've got some leeway (and I need to know for super-secret DM purposes.) For reference, it is "roughly past noon," as per scenario description.

Omrax is good with either decision (rest or not, day or night). Not much expended in the last fight, other than his pride.

I have just now clicked Súrë’s last five PRD spoilers.

I cannot believe the results and swear I didn’t click them beforehand …

I’m very frightened now … Endless, you and I must be on the same wavelength!

A super good plan, but it would be SO much easier to actually play in a real-life table, do ho ho.

It’s interesting that you say this …

Endless ran Way of the Kirin **NO SPOILERS** for Baz, Des, Neb and I.

I really enjoyed the ‘unique’ battle mechanic, but all the while I was thinking because it's so open-ended … this would probably be difficult to run on-line for a group of players who don’t 'know' each other or if a couple of players strongly disagree about a certain course of action.

Hey Lu - thanks for the friv4school info. My boys are hooked!

Yeah, Way of the Kirin was tough as a PbP GM too. I mean, those mechanics are cool but it just adds a level of complexity that PbP doesn't seem to handle as well as sitting down and figuring it out in person.

Hey Lu - thanks for the friv4school info. My boys are hooked!

*Parents of little kids United Fist Bump*

No worries!

Yeah, Way of the Kirin was tough as a PbP GM too.

Yahrr! But you did a great job, matey. So ye did.

I really enjoy the tactical planning scenarios … almost as much as the social roleplay ones … and the kick-down-the-door dungeon crawls ... or urban/wilderness exploration … and puzzles (that don’t include the word stele) Hmm …

I don't know; I had a slightly easier time running it online than as a f2f game; I made an excel document that tracked each player and their time-used by 5-minute increments (like an actual Microsoft Outlook schedule). It only hits snags with slower posters, and this was a Red-Feral-Sethious-someone else game, so I was probably slowest or second slowest.

-Posted with Wayfinder

I did a similar thing if I remember (only through posts). When I played it the GM basically had a similar schedule and he filled it out as we told him what we wanted to do. It was just easier to discuss strategy in person.

Also: I thought someone posted under the wrong alias at first until I realized it was Luisila. Lol.

So just to make sure, Baz will be impersonating a new recruit?

Sailors are fun to RP, because they're stereotypically very rude and/or disgusting folk and I can relate super well.

-Posted with Wayfinder

Just let me know when you need another action from me.

Asuna I didn't mean to leave you hanging on the Dark Souls stuff. I thought I replied, but it seems as though I had not. To be honest I haven't even plugged my 360 in for about a month. I couldn't tell you what my soul level is. And I only play offline - no gold membership at this time.

No problems Des. I am on PS3 for that game and wouldn't be able to help unfortunately.

Honestly, this is becoming one of my favourite scenarios, though it may be due to my lack of exposure to the DM side of S5; All these "If your players do A, respond X. If they do B, respond Y. If they manage to pull of C, Z happens." is amazing, so worth the loss of Faction Missions.

Plus, ALL the NPCs in here are fleshed out to the degree needed and not in a "Read the thing before the scenario" kind of deal. I.e. This guy isn't "THIS GUY IS THE CAPTAIN. HERE IS HIS STATBLOCK. YARR." I'm surprised he doesn't have a picture, though.

Sounds like a huge improvement over 0-2. I think I saw maybe a handful of season 3 scenarios and haven't really looked at any other since.

Yeah, I love the season 5 changes. They're trying to make it less railroady and make the NPCs more 3D. Great move. 05-02 is still my favorite.

Luisila moves in further, keeping up with the poorly-disguised "Mack"! Did you mean L5? L6 is in the other room and is only 40 ft away.

“Yarrh! I be good with droppin’ anchor at L5 insteada L6, thankee and apologies Cap’n!”

I will leave it to you to move me and place Sahrek at an appropriate spot, GM.

@GM - it scares me to play in a party with a high DPR fighter with a will save THAT low. Been in more than one game where we barely escaped a TPK when our low-will fighter was easily charmed/dominated.

I keep Unbreakable Heart from ISWG prepared in case Varg or Des start getting a bit out of hand. ;)

I am concerned about my Fighter 2 getting controlled and turning on her party.

I plan on taking Iron Will as her third level feat and have started presenting the party cleric with a scroll of Unbreakable Heart at the beginning of each mission.

Thanks for the well wishes. In fact, today is the Tines B-day and Sun. is the Tiny Tines B-day. After her birth, mine was destined to be forever overshadowed by my middle daughter's. (Which is completely fine as I start the last year of my third decade.)

Your Captain has been sent to the mud.

Please tell me you read Joe Abercrombie, haha.

Voraciously...yes...all of them! Also, the Black Company novels.

Best Served Cold is my favorite so far. I have also read the first law trilogy. I think I have The Heros.....and Red Country, but have not had the opportunity to read those two yet.

You would enjoy the Black Company books. They are authored by Glenn Cook, and they are as violent and dark as Abercrombie.

Had never heard of these until now, but perusing Wikipedia, they look good.

Oh yeah...good stuff, and not for the feint of heart. Varg, and all of my fighters and barbarians were built around the whole genre.

He is easily comparable to George Martin. Lots of morally grey characters with no real guarantee of any of them seeing the end of the novel.

It has been a long time since I read Black Company stuff. I will have to dig it out again. Their journal always reminded me of Pathfinder Chronicles for some reason.