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Since this got picked up on ENWorld yesterday, maybe there's more general interest than I thought... so check it out!
For over the past year I've been running a series of irregular ("erratic" even) games for members of the Paizo crew. So far we've done Ravenloft's "A Light in the Belfry," a mash-up using the (AMAZING) horror game Dread in the Engel campaign setting, and most recently a Pathfinder game set in the universe of BioWare's Mass Effect. Titled Project Lobotomy, this is the same one-off I ran at Paizocon 2012.
We just wrapped up the game last week--Andrew, Erik, James, Rob, and Sutter's mercenaries-turned-investigators successfully uncovering the madness that claimed the Cerberus station at 2175 Aeia. In the interim I've put together my recap, reaction, and finally, all my notes and copious handouts, and now I've made them available for anyone who wants them!
When it comes to preparing for games, I'm slightly obsessive about the pre-work, which means that now that everything's said and done, what I'm left with is a 80%-90% complete sci-fi adventure, Advance Race Guide write-ups for six sentient species from the Mass Effect universe, tagged and untagged maps, something like a dozen handouts, and several thousand words of field reports advising how to (and not to) put the whole thing together. This is not a complete-complete adventure, but for anyone who wants to run this, a game set in the Mass Effect universe, or something similar, it's the lion's share of the work already handled. There's a few "i"s left to dot and "t"s left to cross, but honestly, you were probably going to do that for your own game anyway.
So check it out! I've posted the whole thing on my Erratic Episodes website (you'll want the first post, but really any post tagged "Episode 2"). I've zipped the whole thing up as a single download (a 348 KB file), with what's included explained in detail on the site.
As for rules, it's Pathfinder with the serial numbers filed off and reskinned--magic becomes biotics, Spellcraft become Tech, Fly becomes Pilot, etc. James also donated his gun rules from his Unspeakable Futures back-pocket game. As this game is meant to be a one-off, reskinning and GM adjudication worked nicely, so don't expect thousands of words on space travel or copious alien bestiaries--it wasn't needed for this.
There's also quite a few candid shots of the Paizo crew included on the site, along with an awesome video of Judy rocking the end of our Dread-Engel game (for those interested in what else we've been getting up to). If folks get a kick out of this, let me know and I'll post when we wrap up future sessions. I'm trying to make these monthly, but we'll see how that works out.
Hope you all enjoy!
Would it be possible to get those gun rules?
Oh no, we'd never want stuff like quarians and krogans, not that!
/sarcasm
Downloaded!
Fantastic! Thanks Wes! I love that you used old Doom maps - seeing the screenshot took me back long years to sharehousing and an old PC playing into the wee hours...
Would it be possible to get those gun rules?
They're not mine to give away, but I promise someday down the road here we'll do rules for lazor gunz and what not and they'll work perfectly for this. And for as much investigation as is in the game, we didn't really need them as much as I expected anyway. For now, though, what's in Ultimate Combat should work decently--try adding iterative attacks if you want to make something feel automatic.
But honestly, it's not guns you should be worrying about. It's explosives. ;)
Fantastic! Thanks Wes! I love that you used old Doom maps - seeing the screenshot took me back long years to sharehousing and an old PC playing into the wee hours...
Ha! Glad you dig it. I started mapping my own station and was like, "Wait a minute..." :)
Hey Wes - I can't seem to download anything from the linked page?!?!?!
Hey Wes - I can't seem to download anything from the linked page?!?!?!
Just checked the link and it worked for me, but maybe it's just being on it's best behavior for its boss.
The link is a little hidden ('cause for the life of me I can't figure out how to make my links change color!!!), but it's about halfway through the post and says "Download: Project Lobotomy.zip (348 KB)".
If you saw that and still couldn't get it, e-mail me at my paizo.com account (wes@paizo.com) and I'll shoot it your way!
Oh, I also just revised the files to use the .doc extension rather than .docx (which some folks were having trouble with).
Dot.
Dotting as well. I absolutely love Mass Effect and while I have other ways to run it im hoping someone soon will publish a rpg book for it using either pf or savage worlds (I have unofficial rules for both now). The other problem is im a painter and theres no official line of mass effect unpainted minis. Although I have found some krogan online, another board game line is relesing a robot that looks exactly like geth and a race that looks like salarians, and im hoping to find something for asari.
Maybe it's a Safari thing...couldn't ever get any link to function on the page once the grey field covered the text. BUT....
I made a Knowledge (computorz) check and using a "View Source" field I perused the aource code. Cut and paste link address from source code into browser and... Voila!
(Though the folder was only 178 kb, not 300+ that it says on the Erratic Episodes page.)
Anyway, checked the adventure out. Very nice. I particularly liked the powered down exoskeleton (Great enhancement, but too big to pass into 2nd level/map.) and the combo zombies. Fantastic!!! Nice work Wes, and again, thanks for making this available.
Fantastic!!! Nice work Wes, and again, thanks for making this available.
My pleasure! Glad you got it working. If anyone else has any insurmountable trouble, feel free to ping me.
Dotting, thank you for releasing this!
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I ran the first half of a Mass Effect adventure tonight using a mix of True20, Mutants & Masterminds, Star Wars SAGA Edition, 3.5, Expanded Psionics Handbook and unearthed arcana (players roll all the dice. Defense scores).
I have to say it was a blast, the best part is that a total RPG rookie really took to it quickly (since everything is resolved via d20)