Good Session on Saturday

Saturday's session was pretty good all things considered. I was an evil DM and took away all their posessions... then was nice and gave them a TON of good stuff to have. I also gave them a world map sorta and have to start researching stuff as a result. It was definitely a fun session to play.

Started out with the players talking to the elderly couple they found last time... unfortunately, while up there, their stuff was stolen (the car was broken into and taken with 90% of their belongings). After that, they basically high tailed it away from that place and found a fortified house to stay at. After breaking in, they found some important stuff to take with them but my character (Obadiah) told them that they essentially gotta go. Since there was signs that people were living there, it was definitely not a safe place to be. However, just as they were leaving, they were ambushed by the houses occupiers. After driving away and getting in a gunfight on the roads, they managed to DESTROY their old vehicle and kill 2 of their pursuers.

After all this, they went to a safe location to spend the night and recoup... with that they got some information on places to go and now they're aimed at Lorain Ohio... Hear there's a city built out of the tall buildings in town that is all connected by rope bridges. Should be a good time. Now, should I be nice and have the place be there? friendly? anything? I'm not sure. Gonna do some background research on the city though and see if it was a good selection :-\. I'll let you know what i find tomorrow!

Comment if you'd like!

Post-sickness

Man Oh Man did i get sick!

Anywhoo, sorry for the lack of posts again, i was hit by a TERRIBLE fever for the past two days, I'm telling ya, I am having no luck with this blog thing these days!!! and soon I'll be swamped with work. Eep!

I'm really excited about tomorrow's session. I got a few dastardly plans that I intend to utilize and I'm sure the players will have a good time. Hell, maybe they'll learn that lesson i talked about the other day! I started writing my own rules for stuff, I find it lets me get exactly what I want out of the game and there are distinct nuances to what can be done. It's a lot of fun too! So far I've written the rules for a few cars and because of this, I have a plan of action for whats going down in the future of this game. It should be an absolute blast.

One thing I do wish however, is that we had more time to play. Since the first semester of this year is coming to an end, I'm not nearly where I hoped to be and I don't think we'll even reach a distinct finishing point by the end of next semester. It's scary to think about the future like that... but hopefully, I'll manage to get it to work out (and find a good crew after I graduate... that'd be very beneficial too...). Ah well, I'm sure it will all work out. Anyways, I'll update tomorrow so that I can try to make up for these few days of illness, and maybe (if you're lucky) you'll get another post tonight even! Who knows?

Anyone got any topics they want me to discuss? anything at all...

It really is amazing how you can get very sick at the most inopportune times. Right as I was getting back into the routine of writing for this (had a few ideas I wanted to talk about) I get very ill. Seriously, that's just annoying. So today's post should be fairly short and I'm going to be talking about my take on adapting characters from other sources (life, movies, books, etc) and putting them into d20.

A lot of the characters my players are going to meet are going to be either direct copies of other characters, taken and put into this game... or based very heavily on outside sources. With this in mind, I feel that it should make an interesting twist for the game and will be something that amuses me to think about. Heck, the story is going to be taken largely from another source and I am hoping that the players figure it out as i think that would be a funny little joke. Anyways... for all my players reading this: start guessing where all the source material is coming from! should be fun :-D.

Like I said, sorry for the short post. Really am feeling terrible today :(. Feel free to leave comments as usual!

The Apocalypse

We've finally reached it!

Sorry about the hiatus for the past week (or two, i'm not really sure how long it was, it's been a long day). We finally got into the post apocalypse and the transition has gone suprisingly well. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I'm going about this the right way, but i threw them straight into it with a lack of fuel and a hostile environment. It seems to be working out though, and I have the counting their fuel consumption and all of that. On the other hand, I haven't had them shoot any weapons yet... I plan to make them very aware of their limited ammunition resources... in fact, I probably gave them too many bullets to start with! Oh well... things will work out.

Anyways, so far, they have waited 22 years and finally exited the bunker they lived (and then were cryogenically frozen in) in, only to find a desolate waste land. They followed a light for over 240 miles to get to a small makeshift town and finally started scavenging in a former city. I actually forgot the name of it.... it's been a long day as i said. Anyways, they scavenged and when we stopped playing, it was right after they met a person (and his wife) who had lived in their house for this whole time. Unfortunately, the party members trust everyone to tell them the truth, which may, or may not be what the NPCs are telling them... We shall see however. Anyways, that is about it... I'm very excited to continue playing this upcoming weekend. Should be a blast!

Post Apocalyptic Mayhem

Ok, since there are so many post apocalypse scenarios (aliens, nukes, robots, disease, zombies, etc.) How many are too many? I am almost afraid that I'm combining too many right now with the zombies and the post apocalypse but I still feel they go hand in hand. Only problem is I want to add some other elements too, but doing so might make it excessive and limit the story that exists. So today's (short) post is to ask people what they think. Is it bad to combine 3 of these? I think it could be done but I want to know what you readers think. Leave me a comment!

I am excited because people are finally reading the darned book! It's about time! They think I'm gonna be upset by all the stuff they can do but PLAYERS: I WANT YOU TO DO THAT COOL STUFF! I'm just not gonna spoon feed it to you guys! I'm all for you reading the book or looking at the SRDs online because of how there is you can do! Combat could be a lot more fun (given i'm not doing everything i could myself).

On another note, I am trying to think of ways to make the game a bit more challenging. I think I'm going to have to increase the difficulties of certain tasks so it doesn't become overly simple and no longer fun. Guns are going to limit the combat excitement (especially against zombies) but I hope to make up for it with other tasks/skill checks/ inventive ways to make zombies more fun to kill. Then again, everyone loves killing zombies :-P

Leave comments!

Week of no posts

Hey everyone, sorry about posting nothing last week, I had a hectic two weeks there and blew off some steam by not doing anything (and i mean ANYTHING). So anyways, playing time this weekend was really short as we basically just had one small encounter, killed off a character and then got everyone leveled twice. Yep, boring weekend :-P. Unfortunately, I ruined the surprise of killing the character (basically so he could make a new personalized character) so nobody was shocked or awed.. Oh well, worse things have happened.

So now the party is two people larger. I made their boss join the game (so i can deus ex machina if need be) and another player returned. It should be fun now, I like the group and feel they should be ok with it. Gotta say though, the apocalypse (which we are just getting to now) is not comfortable, sorry girls (all players except one are female). Ultimately though, this poses problems as I need to come up with a way to keep adventures going. So far, I have basic scavenging and going to certain locations that require intense amounts of travel. I want to keep things rolling and have it be a bit scary (so scavenging a grocery store doesn't become boring but more a scary scary thing to do).

Any one got ideas for where to take the campaign? Anyone got ideas of what to do for adventures or rewards? Leave me a comment!

Zombies This Weekend!

We're finally at zombie point! I'm very excited for this as it will be an absolute blast to play. I've opted to use a combination of the traditional zombie with the zombie from 28 Days Later. Here, the zombies will have the increased life expectancy while they will be able to run full speed (but not climb ladders and such) and attack their prey quickly. It should be very scary facing them especially as their interests lie solely in eating the players (and NPCs) leading to a continued spread of zombie mayhem. It should be an absolute blast.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with a bit of a challenge as I've got adventure laid out for one (maybe two at tops) session more and then I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with everything, from here I suppose I'll have to wing it much more. But should be very exciting to play, I can't wait!

Anyways, I've got a few suprises for the players so I can't go into detail over the campaign that happened this weekend. I'm very excited about how things are working out and the details are awesome (I feel). As always give me some comments and feedback! Also, I'm thinking of changing the layout of this page, anyone got suggestions on what to change it to be?

Single Player Games

While RPGs are good for single players when on the computer, I have discovered this weekend that it is rather difficult to run a campaign for a single player. With that being said, I ran a mini-campaign for one character this weekend and it felt rather dry. One thing I think is necessary for the game is the gathering of players and the random insanity that ensues. I believe that it is clear after this weekend that while a single player can play with only the GM, it is a lot more fun to have that joking nature. A gathering of two people (player and GM) doesn't allow for the goofing off and fun that D20 provides.

So yep, short message today. Unfortunately I wrote a 7 page paper today because I have a ton of work to do this week. Unfortunately, that means my writing skills are rather fried right now and I'm not in the mood for a long post. If I have the energy tomorrow, I'll be sure to write about all that happened this weekend. That's all for now though.

As always: COMMENT!

Trade Values

It's time to start making the transition, and I am trying to stay quiet about how it happens on this blog so that when it occurs, the players will at least be surprised when it happens. Other than that, I attempt to focus on the rules and hopefully make things clearer. Today, I will focus on the Trade Value system. It's a fairly basic system where every item has a Trade Value and the only way you can attempt to get other items is by bartering what you have for it. From the apocalypse book, we'll use the example of a round of ammunition. One round of ammunition for a gun equals a single Trade Value. This means that using a few bullets, it is possible to trade for a gun.

The idea behind the trade system is that there is no currency after the apocalypse (and printed currency is as useful as toilet paper with no government to back it up. Unfortunately, it becomes incredibly difficult based on the values that certain items have. The developers gave the various items a trade value between 1 and 40 (primarily) but this means that 30 bullets can be spent to trade for a car. I believe in the coming days I will have to rewrite these rules to have certain classes of Trade Value, so that a handful of bullets can't be traded for a car (except in extreme circumstances).

Stay tuned and include your thoughts (aka COMMENT!) so I can make a better change!

Mini Campaign

I have decided to run a mini campaign for one of the characters so that the player can catch up a bit on experience. Everyone except he is going to be home for the weekend so it gives me a perfect opportunity to run one. Unfortunately, I have never run a single player campaign so it might be a touch difficult to figure out how best to do this. Right now, I'm mildly afraid I made it way too tough for him to complete, but hopefully things work out. Heck, I might have to make it be a Deus Ex Machina experience if things get too hairy. We'll see how it goes though.

Other than that, nothing much has happened in the campaign or planning. Like I said on Monday, we're moving to ZOMBIES. I'm excited. And I managed to change the story a bit so that I like it better. It should be a blast when we get the opportunity to play. I'll keep my secrets but I hope everything works out well. We'll see when the time comes.

Sorry for the lack of anything said here, but unfortunately, I got a midterm tomorrow I really gotta study for. Catch you guys later and feel free to comment as always!

Another weekend, another session

The game session went pretty well this weekend... a minor hickup came when everyone was passed out and napping at the time of the game but we ended up playing later on saturday. Lots of fun, involved one person being a sniper while the rest of the group stormed a factory. One last session before the APOCALYPSE!!! i'm really excited. Unfortunately, I had to make them fail only to push the game along (actually a mistake made by the party to do research before leaving was used as an excuse for the failure :D). So yep, essentially the zombie virus was made, and before the party got to the room where all the ingredients were being mixed, the final ingredient was put in.

In a last minute effort, the party burst through the doors, gunning anyone down they could as the sniper made an amazing shot at the cult leader killing him. Unfortunately, as he fell, the ingredient (a magical flower) fell into the mixing vat and they were unable to prevent it. It was a good time though. Especially with a sniper watching over them. That was unexpected, but a bit more manageable.

One thing I'm discovering is it's much easier to just have both teams go one by one... best way to ensure everyone gets to do something and no creature/player gets skipped. Now the party has to head back to the shop to rescue their boss. I'm very excited about this as I'm going to make an NPC where I can remind them of bad ideas... and he'll be powerful :D. Always fun. anyways, i'll talk about him tomorrow I'm sure. Night all!

Feel free to comment as always!

Supplementary Books

Today I figured I would talk briefly about the supplementary books that are available (as a whole, not going into details on them as I simply don't know about them all). I am of two minds for them, for I've read reviews and seen layouts or chapter lists for some of them and honestly, the d20 system seems to be tightly packed into the original rule book. From the sounds of it, the supplementary books are nice in certain aspects, but are not really necessary on all accounts. That being said, I do own d20 apocalypse, and from the looks of it, it has an excellent modification of the rules system.

Future seems the be the primary addition to the d20 Core Rulebook, and I believe this has a lot to do with the mysteries of advanced technologies in the future. Ultimately, the rules don't seem excellent to me what with the mecha ideas as well as the advanced technologies. While some of it would be fun I am sure, there are aspects I have heard about that would just create problems. Maybe one of these days I will be able to take a look and see if this is true.

I am very excited to use the d20 Apocalypse books that I have. I like the switch to bartering it provides, but that will be intriguing to work out in game. I also am especially wary of the Mutation Points system that is provided... Mutations could add interesting elements, but I feel they might be quickly distorted to make ridiculously overpowered creatures/players. That will require looking at as well.

Next time I might give a brief analysis of D20 Past or Urban Arcana, not really sure what I can say about them as I haven't really used or read them yet, but we'll see what I can figure out!

Writers Block

Sorry about no post yesterday! I might make this blog a 4 days a week thing... that way i can save topics to write about later!

But seriously (I feel like I say that a lot) today's topic is good old fashioned writers block. What do you do when you can't come up with material? Right now, I'm trying to come up with something of a map for the next campaign meeting (in two days) and I just can't get myself to focus enough to get it written down. I'm feeling lethargic and every time I look at graph paper, I have no motivation to do anything. Heck, I sometimes have that problem with this here blog! But due to commitments, the person running the campaign has to press on and get the work done. I have learned that winging it generally doesn't work and that a basic idea is necessary. With this, a general picture of the terrain is needed before anything such as objects in the map or anything more specific can be created. As a result, I'm about to scour the internet to try to get some inspiration. Have a good night all! And if anyone knows any good d20 map sources (free of course!) feel free to send them along!

Plot Hooks/Twists

One thing that always seems to add a bit to a campaign (at least to me) is the good ol' plot twist. For some reason, I like doing them, unfortunately, they're usually cliche and because of this, they really aren't entertaining. Suddenly saying "you're working for the bad guys" doesn't ring as close as it should I feel. As such, I am trying to think how to twist the story in an interesting way that doesn't become generic and boring for everyone involved. Ultimately though, I want to think of something. Betrayal always adds a bit of intrigue I feel. The double agent or some higher up screwing around and messing things up always adds that bit of fun (think The Third Man with the American screwing around). Lots of fun.

Suggestions on how to make this work? Any tips? ideas at all? Comment!

Second Session

So, Saturday was a busy day! Managed to play for (I think) about 7 hours! It was a lot of fun and lets just say, a lot of stuff died :-D.

Started out by having the players be told they were going to Argentina to protect a certain plant from becoming an ingredient in the Zombie Virus creation process (story has it that it was planted in the Andes as that was the best place for it to grow). Ultimately though, as they flew down there, their plane got shot down (egads!) and they had to foot it all the way to the location. On the way, they ran into a couple of drug runners, an ambush and (what I thought would be a challenge) they crossed a rather large river. I really didn't consider how much they would tear up their plane for goods! It was a lot of fun though.

In the end, the players managed to get to the site and defend it using home made explosives. That was a TON of fun. Effectively making landmines, they held off waves and waves of the enemies, and even took down a minotaur at level 2!! Good times all around, and a few unlucky rolls made them all come out with (practically) full health. Finally, I had a chopper come in to rescue them, and right as it got there, waves upon waves of enemies marched in. Chainguns blazing, the party was saved because of the helicopter. So much fun. Next week is (I think) the last session before zombies start popping up! that should be a really good time. I'm not sure how i'm going to deal with them honestly... I haven't picked a main type of zombie, but might just take the zombies from the D20 Apocalypse book. Anyways, that's it for today, tomorrow I might discuss more rules...

Wealth (continued) and Requisition

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday about wealth was that your wealth bonus may never decrease below 0. However, at this point, characters cannot attempt to buy anything that has a Purchase DC of 10 or higher. Pretty clear I feel.

On to the next subject: Requisition. I am not sure how I feel about this in the game, and unless the characters try to requisition goods tomorrow, I doubt I will make up my mind on the matter. I feel that at times it might be beneficial to get goods that might help through this process (such as if they could not normally get it) but I so far have been giving players the things they need from their contact. One thing that intrigues me is that they haven't tried to figure out any more information on their overarching organization (not that I'm complaining, I haven't really created that story yet). I should probably work on that tomorrow, but I figure I might just do it as some sort of large non-profit organization... or maybe the government... or maybe the characters think they're working for the good guys when in fact they are not. Either way, gotta figure it out soon. Game tomorrow at 4!

Wealth

One thing that people have struggled with over the two semesters in my campaign is the Wealth system. It is rather confusing to a lot of the players and so I hope to clarify a bit here.

After playing in the D&D system, a lot of people get used to the gold coins and how those work, unfortunately, switching to a new system (or having never played before) the idea of a "wealth bonus" is quite abstract (as the rules introduce it as). With this, the idea of a fluctuating wealth bonus is confusing. Basically, wealth bonuses vary based on the purchases you make. When you want to buy something, you roll a D20 and add the value of the wealth bonus you have to the number that you roll on the die. If you purchase something which is worth more (by the purchase DC it has) than 15... you decrease your characters wealth bonus by 1.

EXAMPLE: Your character, Johnny, has a wealth bonus of 17. He is looking at buying a PDA (from the consumer electronics section) with a Purchase DC of 16. With this, he must roll a d20 (which he rolls a 7 on) and adds his wealth bonus to the result. With this he gets a 7(d20)+17(wealth bonus)= 24. He can successfully buy the PDA. As the PDA was worth more than a Purchase DC of 15, he reduces his wealth bonus to a 16.

Not so hard is it? Next, if an item is worth more than the wealth bonus you have, you subtract a value from your Wealth Bonus based on how different the two numbers are. If it is an item that has a Purchase DC of 1-10 points higher than your Wealth Bonus, you decrease your wealth bonus by 1. If it is an item that has a Purchase DC 11-15 points higher than your Wealth Bonus, you reduce your wealth by 1d6 (roll a 6 sided die and subtract the number shown from your wealth bonus). if it is an item that has a Purchase DC 16 or higher than your Wealth Bonus, you reduce your wealth by 2d6.

EXAMPLE: Your character, Johnny, has a wealth bonus of 2. He is looking at buying a Gas Mask (from the survival equipment section) with a Purchase DC of 13. With this, he must roll a d20 (which he rolls a 14 on) and adds his wealth bonus to the result. With this he gets a 14(d20)+2(wealth bonus)= 16. He can successfully buy the PDA. As the Gas Mask was worth 11 points more than his wealth bonus, he rolls a six sided die (result was a 1) and subtracts that value from his wealth bonus. He keeps a wealth bonus of 1.

Not too difficult is it?

Guns and Damage

Ok, as I said yesterday, everyone in the party got a gun to use in the campaign and with that, they're now forced to be concerned with bullets flying at them. With that, guns do a lot of damage and they are definitely something to be afraid of. So far, they flipped a table to get 3/4 cover (kept them from getting hurt badly) and avoided getting shot.

Next session, they're likely to get damaged however, as they'll be running into a jungle not sure where shots are potentially coming from. I understand how concealment works and imagine i'll be using that as underbrush does not provide much protection but still, I remain concerned about them actually getting hit. I only hope nothing too serious happens and that they all live to get away. I figure this might be an opportunity to teach them a few things about retreating tactically and surprising their enemies. Last time I was particularly impressed as they made Molotov Cocktails to throw at their enemies. I figure, that they might not be a great idea in a Jungle in the Andes, but we'll see what happens. Any one have any ideas to mitigate damage from guns? I look forward to any ideas!

First Session

Hey all, sorry about not posting yesterday, unfortunately some personal life issues came up yesterday and i was not in a psychologically strong point to write anything. But I'm "better" now, at least enough to write about the first session we had this semester.

Anyways! Yes, we played on Saturday and there was much joy to be had. The group size has shrunk considerably (and beneficially) from last year and because of that, we can get things done much faster. We played for darn near 4 hours and managed to get two of the characters leveled up (the other two just need to do my EXP earning background story), and they got the prized possession of the d20 modern system: GUNS. Man they're deadly... I mean seriously, they REALLY dangerous. One person got "hit" accidentally once (i screwed up and rolled for an extra enemy, turns out that enemy had died the last round and the damage wasn't done to him) and lost i think it was 8/10 hit points. Bang!

Beneficially, the players took my warning of "GET IN COVER OR MAKE IT" and flipped a pool table... i gave them a pretty hefty bonus to defense, but I figure it will in the future determine concealment or cover depending on the stopping power of the materials they're behind. Other than that, it was a great session, and we're on step closer to ZOMBIES!

A quick summary of what happened: They spied on a meeting in the subway maintenance tunnels and learned of the zombie virus. Following this they investigated the chief thug's home (a Goblin named Vehec), got in a fire fight and then are being sent to Argentina next to stop the harvesting of a Zombie virus ingredient. Should be a blast!