This is the gameplay thread for the New York by Night (V20) chronicle.
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Recently I've been reading through some old lore books and watching Youtube videos and remembered how much I like this setting and ruleset, so I figured I'd see if anyone on here wants to play in a New York by Night chronicle. There are some elements of V5 that I like- namely, the Anarchs/Unbound as the default vampire society and the Camarilla as a more exclusive group of elitists and the idea that the government has done a lot to identify and monitor vampires with technology (though not to the full extent of the Second Inquisition). Most vamps would be considered an Anarch unless they're plucked out of the rabble to join the Ivory Tower or they get radicalized into the Sabbat. For the most part, though, I would stick with the base setting in the V20 book- the Sabbat and Camarilla are at war, the Gangrel and Brujah are still in the Cam (or at least a large number of them are and the clans have seats on the Inner Circle), London and Vienna have not fallen. The setting would be modern day NYC, using the 2001 New York by Night book as a base even though it's pretty out of date when it comes to describing the city. NYC was a longtime Sabbat stronghold but the Camarilla took it back (we'll move it back by about a decade) in 2012. We'll say Calebros agreed to be interim Prince for 10 years to stabilize the city and recently stepped down and the Camarilla generally controls the best domains in Manhattan and Brooklyn but more interspersed domains in Queens and the Bronx and most Cam vampires wouldn't be caught dead in Staten Island. I would like the PCs to be an existing coterie of experienced but not elder vampires. It would be cool if one or more of the PCs was a member of the Camarilla- if everybody wants to submit a Cam concept I'd be willing to give everybody a free dot in Status, but if not I can live with a mixed coterie where one or two PCs has been selected for membership but the others haven't. We'll use V20 rules, make the PC as a neonate and then add 35 XP to put them right on the cusp of ancilla-equivalent level. For now, though, I'm just trying to see if anyone is interested and discuss concepts so we can get connected characters. So with all that said, does anyone want to play?
This is the discussion thread for Fell Kingdom, a modified Pathfinder 1st Edition Kingmaker campaign.
This game is set in the duchy of Veteris, starting after the events of Kingmaker adventure 1 Stolen Land. Kingdom roles are filled with NPCs and the PC party will not interact with the kingdom building mechanics; those decisions will happen off-screen. The PCs will take on the role of problem solvers for the existing NPC decision makers. This setting is influenced by 2 prior campaigns, in which the kingdom was established and pivotal events happened. In addition to the events of Stolen Land, the previous parties adventured through: Into the Haunted Forest, parts of Tales of the Old Margreve, Flight of the Red Raven, and Carnival of Tears. This party will likely also face the challenges of adventures outside the Kingmaker adventure path.
The Keelhauled Dwarf wasn't one of Throneport's nicer taverns. In fact, from an amenities standpoint it was probably in the bottom twenty percent of the city's bars. Cleanliness did not rank among the Keelhauled Dwarf's list of attributes. Nor did variety of available drinks. Or quality of food. It didn't even have a dedicated fighting pit, like the Monster Pit not too far away. What it did have was that it was safe. As long as one wasn't on the outs with House Tarkanan, anyway. Even the Brelish Peacekeepers had quickly come to an understanding with the Keelhauled Dwarf's proprietors. Nobody would dare do anything stupid on their turf, even if they were willing to face the bouncers- each one bigger and tougher than the last. The tavern was neutral ground, a good place to meet at. And being in a cavernous cellar underneath a working warehouse made it a place with lots of dark corners to skulk around in. You could get in, do your business, and get out, with everybody minding their own business and leaving each other alone. Usually. Tonight, things had gotten out of hand. A fist fight at a table that would otherwise have been contained quickly got out of hand when someone started throwing around clouds of smoke that made some people go into a berserk rage and others flee in confused terror. Things got so bad that the Peacekeepers even called in the City Watch to haul away the dozens of folk who had been involved, carted off to the Civil Palace's jail cells because there were far too many of them to be kept in the neighborhood watchpost. Even the Palace's cells were overcrowded by the sheer number of rioters. The night magistrates were overwhelmed, and it looked like it would be hours before anyone in the cell would have a chance to plead their case. A half-elf, a ratfolk, a shifter, a warforged, and were all crowded into a 10x10 cell with Goggh. Everyone knew Goggh. It was impossible to go to the Keelhauled Dwarf and not at least know the minotaur bouncer by sight, just like it was impossible to not know Kyaruun the ogre or Brick Wall the warforged. They were lucky. There were only six of them in there. In the cell next to them, nearly a dozen people- mostly humans, with one elaborately bearded and moustachioed man passed out in a corner- were crowded in, while on their other side a pair of gnolls were yipping and laughing at a trio of shifters doing their best to not look like prey.
We'll start with a virtual Session 0. I'd like the PCs to know each other going into the first scene. We have: Arma, a changeling independent cat burglar from Sharn
I'm not asking PCs to be best friends or anything, but the first scene will be the group going a meet with a contact and they should at least be familiar with each other and more or less what everyone can do. I also have some other house rules I'd like to float but let's do this first.
This is an adaptation of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist to Pathfinder rules and the Eberron setting, set in the largely un-detailed city of Throneport, site of Thronehold. I've expanded it significantly to support this game, which is a city-wide treasure hunt in an urban backdrop. A few things to know about the setting:
I'd be surprised if you clicked on this and aren't familiar with Eberron, but if not there are some differences from stock D&D, with different common races and new magic. Being a member of or working for a Dragonmarked House isn't required, especially at the beginning, but the Dragonmarked Houses and other organizations loom extremely large in my version of Eberron, particularly since the PCs will be looking for backing from different factions in the game. If you've gotten through this and are still interested, let's talk about concept first and crunch later. I'd like to have the PCs be a team going into the first scene, so we'll do a Session 0 before writing up sheets to make sure we're all on the same page.
Hello. Please cancel my Adventure Path subscription. Thanks.
We can talk about non-character creation issues here.
I recently rediscovered my Aberrant books in a box and remembered how much I loved the system and world building. I figured since I'm already in a oWoD game on the boards I'd see if anybody is interested in playing a PbP Aberrant game. Now, I could run a straightforward Project Utopia or young Novas in training or XWF league or Elites game- I've been in all of those games before. But my favorite thing about Aberrant is that they acknowledged that not everybody with superpowers would want to be a superhero. Some people would want to be inventors and entrepreneurs, some would want to be actors, some would want to be pastors or stock traders or political strategists or spies or deep-sea exploring oceanographers. Instead of 'everybody puts on a cape and punches bad guys' it's 'people all have different goals and motivations and would use their new abilities to further them.' So I was thinking about doing an open-world sort of game. I've co-modded a couple of freeform sort of superhero games before and they worked out pretty well. If you want to be a Utopian, I can do that. If you want to rob banks, I can do that. If you want play a game inspired by Empire or Psych or Hannibal or House of Lies, I can try to do that, too. The important part is that I want to do a more character driven than story driven game, where the character's motivations and story take center stage. This would be a heavy lift for me if I had to come up with all the NPCs and environment myself, though, so I would expect any players to be willing and able to write the world around their character along with me. I like it when players come up with interesting NPCs or locations or other background elements, and that would be necessary for this kind of game. We would need to work together to keep the game moving and interesting for everybody involved. That's the first part- character driven game with ST/player cooperation to keep the game moving. The second part is that I want to shift the date of N-day from 1999 to 2002 and dump most of the political and economic history White Wolf came up with. The real world has had its own recession and recovery, its own terrorist attacks and political instability since the books were written. I'd like to stick with our real-world political leaders, particularly in the US and Russia (Bush/Obama and Yelstin/Putin, respectively), and generally stick to the way things have shaken out in the past decade. Novas would have come into the world post 9/11 and have had to deal with the the surveillance state and militarization of America's police forces and a worldwide recession and slow recovery and China in the South China Sea and ISIS (though I'd like to think Project Utopia would have nipped that in the bud). This doesn't invalidate the concept of elites or Project Utopia, just means they would have come about in different places and done different things. If you think Jony Ive or Elon Musk or Malala Yousafzai or Taylor Swift or Neil DeGrasse Tyson should be Novas in the world of Aberrant, in our game they could be. Maybe Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field" really was a reality distortion field. Maybe Glenn Beck has a mesmerizing voice that carries over radio and tv. Maybe Edward Snowden can mentally control computers. I'd like to keep some people off limits, primarily real world political leaders in western-style democracies, but for the most part I'd be open to pretty much any famous person being a Nova. So if you're at all interested in playing Aberrant, please post so I can get a feel for what people want to play. We can talk it out and see what people want to do. If most people want to play a more traditional sort of Project Utopia or Elites or New Mutants-type game in the world of the published 2008, I'm willing to do that. Thanks. I hope there are some other people on these boards who love Aberrant.
With the recent influx of foreign technologies and therefore foreign influence, King Aodhan ordered the formation of a new government agency to protect the traditional identity of the Risuri homeland. Within a decade this mission had morphed into investigating significant threats to the nation, particularly those involving technology. Today the Royal Homeland Constabulary (sometimes called the Risuri Homeland Constabulary, especially by foreigners) uses a combination of investigators, spies, and warriors to root out, undermine, capture, and if necessary kill any groups who endanger Risur. Though most activity occurs in Flint, officially the Constabulary’s central chamber is based out of Slate and headed by Lord Viscount Inspector Nigel Price-Hill, who was a commander in the Fourth Yerasol War. His Lordship’s greatest success as director was presiding over the apprehension of a group of Drakr necromancers attempting to animate undead dragons in the Anthras Mountains. Regardless of where they are based, agents of the Royal Homeland Constabulary have broad jurisdiction throughout the nation, and enjoy mild immunity while overseas when acting in an official, acknowledged capacity. The Flint directorate stays busy thwarting arms smuggling, industrial espionage, and the sorts of magical and monstrous threats once handled by plucky self-motivated “adventurers.” These are their stories.
Thanks for joining up. Here are the basics. Character Creation: 25 point buy, don't dump stats, no stat above 18 before racial modifiers. I'm open to pretty much any class, but I'll be honest and tell you that I'm not very familiar with the ACG classes or psionics.
I prefer core races. Tieflings and aasimars have special places in the setting, so those will also be acceptable. I'm willing to talk about other races if you really want to play something different. Full HP at level 1, then 3/4 of max HP at level 2, half at level 3, 3/4 at level 4, and start the cycle over again at level 5. Max starting gold. No traits. PCs all get 2 Feats, one as normal and one Theme Feat from the Zeitgeist Player's Guide. Humans get their normal bonus feat. The big wrinkle is that I want to use Backgrounds from 13th Age instead of Skills. It's easy to grasp- instead of discrete skills, use a descriptive phrase related to your PC's background and give it a point value. Skills related to the character's background will use this value, the related attribute, and the character's level as a modifier to skill checks. For example, a Background could be Blacksmith +3. You could apply it to Appraise, Craft: Metalwork, Profession: Merchant, or even Strength checks. It wouldn't apply to Knowledge: Nature, Stealth, or Survival checks. However, "Blacksmith" isn't a great Background. "Apprentice blacksmith until his master kicked him out for spending too much time at the pub with his friends" is a better Background. That Background would apply to the first three skills, but could also apply to Diplomacy or Bluff or Knowledge: Local checks. If you can make a good argument why a Background should apply to a check, it will probably apply. You would probably never get either of those Blacksmith Backgrounds above to apply to Knowledge: Planes or Spellcraft, but you might be able to make an argument for applying it to Knowledge: Religion (the master was a religious zealot of the god of battles) or Disable Device (he regularly made and played blacksmith puzzles in his free time) checks. There's a good discussion of the Background system here. PCs get 8 points to distribute to Backgrounds, with no Background over +5. Skill-boosting feats (Magical Aptitude, Skill Focus, etc.) are disallowed. Any race with a skill boost as a racial ability should replace it with an alternate racial trait.
I've got a player in my Kingmaker campaign (btw, Jos or K, if you're reading this, please stop here) whose backstory and stated goals involve possibly overthrowing Afrnefax and reinstating the Triune families to power. Can anyone think of a module that I could use to approximate Lambreth? A straight-up 'defeat the evil baron' kind of mod would work, but I'd also love to see anything with shadow monsters like we've got in Arnefax's backstory or anything I could reskin as the Catspaw Marauders. I really like Avinash's writeup and would like to use it in a game; making it the real villain in Lambreth could be interesting. Any suggestions? |