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Messages - Shekbo

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DFRPG / Re: Working on a convention scenario inspired by Super 8
« on: June 28, 2011, 03:14:35 AM »
I visited the actual cemetary today and took some pictures. There are certainly notable people there from every era. We got pics of WWI vets and Civil war vets. Some real cornerstones of the community. People who have a hospital or a whole county named after them. Some really cool tombstones and even a sundial with some crypic writing. Hmmmmm puzzle?

I could post a few pics here if you're interested.

Tom in VT

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DFRPG / Re: Working on a convention scenario inspired by Super 8
« on: June 27, 2011, 06:23:40 PM »
@ Devon... Getting the players to the cemetary is not too hard. It happens to be right next door to the park where the local minor league baseball team plays. I was going to have them start the game attending a ball-game and notice something amiss beyond the center field wall.

Also, I was thinking of linking one of the PCs to Ethan Allen but I'm not sure if I want to do that up front as an Aspect or have it be revealed dramatically during the game. "Luuuuuuke, I am your great great great great grandfather...."

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DFRPG / Re: Working on a convention scenario inspired by Super 8
« on: June 27, 2011, 06:20:17 PM »
I actually ran a Scooby Do based Call of Cthulhu game at this same con a couple years back. It was a hoot!

What's going to make these characters fun is that they are going to be local stereo-types for our particular area.

When I ran the Dresden Files adventure at this con last year out of 5 players at the table only one had played the game before. They had all either read the books or had seen the TV show and were very interested in the game. So no, I don't think there will be a lot of declaractions pulling me way off track.

@Richard, thanks for the suggestions. I like tying on of the characters to the evil sorcerer. That's a nice touch. WRT eliciting the help of a different ghost, there are actually several in this cemetary who would be interesting. Including the Vermont General who commanded the only union unit to counter-charge Pickett's charge during the battle of Gettysburg :)

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DFRPG / Re: Working on a convention scenario inspired by Super 8
« on: June 27, 2011, 02:17:58 AM »
I've run quite a few RPG games at our con in various systems from D&D to Serenity. What I usually do is have a beginning, to introduce the players to the problem at hand and I have a climax in mind for the end. How they get there in the middle is up to them and certainly what they do in the middle will effect how the climax plays out. I have a few things in mind that I'd like to see happen in some way at some point of the adventure but nothing set in stone.

Running a completely free form game at a con seems like it could be a waste of my players precious time.

As far as characters go, I'm thinking of doing them like the two published "casefiles". Create a few more then I need so players have some choice and allow the table to flesh out the final few aspects of each character with a Q&A session. That time will also give me as the GM an indication of where the players want to take this game.

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DFRPG / Re: Working on a convention scenario inspired by Super 8
« on: June 27, 2011, 01:46:37 AM »
well, I guess that could happen during any adventure of the GM allows it. I was just looking at it as a bare bones outline for an adventure. Why do you think it's too linear?

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DFRPG / Working on a convention scenario inspired by Super 8
« on: June 26, 2011, 08:47:35 PM »
Looking for ideas / inspiration / advice.

Last year I ran a Dresden game at our local con (www.carnagecon.com) and it was so popular we had to turn people away. So the RPG director has asked me to run another this year and I've been looking for inspiration.

The other night I watched the movie Super 8 and thought, "wow, this would make a great RPG adventure". So here are my initial thoughts, see what you can do to help me flesh them out.

The setting is our local area, Burlington Vermont and it's surroundings. That worked great last year.
I'd like to have a group of low powered (feet in the water) players facing something totally out of their league.
Something that they can't go toe to toe with and survive but that they can outsmart.

I'm thinking that the party is sort of a Professor X and students thing. The leader is a local priest (true believer) working within an order that looks out for young people with talent. I'm thinking 5 players would be good for a con game so I've got the leader, a were-form (something low power like maybe a dog), a changeling with glamour, and two minor talents. The scenario is graveyard and ghost based so one will be a ghost talker and undecided on the 5th.

We have a local graveyard that is supposedly the burial place of Ethan Allen (Vermont revolutionary war hero) but nobody is exactly sure where he's buried. There is a monument to him there but the monument is not his burial site. It could be a conduit to the never never for some crazed sorcerer to summon an nasty entity to our world.....

So my scenario outline is
A) sorcerer opens a portal at the monument and lets a big nasty loose.
B) players need to find Ethan Allen's real burial place and call on him for help.
C) With the revolutionary war ghost's help the players push the big nasty back into the never never.

Questions I need to sort out...
1) How to make sure the players realize they can't fight this things straight up?
2) Should I connect the sorcerer to the players somehow? How?
3) What should my 5th character be?
4) What else an I forgetting?

Here's your chance to help me flesh this thing out. Let's hear what you think.

Tom in VT

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DFRPG / Running a 1 shot can game.... here's my problem.
« on: June 09, 2011, 02:42:38 AM »
Our local con... www.carnagecon.com wants me to run a Dresden game again this year. Last year's was very popular. But honesty, I wasn't satisfied.

The main problem was... the characters were not challenged enough.

For the con game I had 5 characters, chest deep. That means that as a group they were plenty powerful.
My problem was that my interesting, thematic encounters were too easy.
For this group, according to the books, for an equal encounter I'd need to bring a 40 refresh point adversary to challenge them. Or 5 8 refresh monsters. That's a lot of opposition.

My other option is to split the party and bring smaller bad guys, but that means some people are sitting and watching.

So my question for the forum is... how to I design a Con game with 3-4 encounters that will really challenge the PCs without seeming way over the top.

Tom in VT

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DFRPG / Re: DFRPG Character Creator/Manager
« on: November 02, 2010, 03:22:48 AM »
Thx for the reply. I'm going to cut and paste the stuff I want into a word doc.

and Thx again for a great tool. I know I'll be using this for a long time.

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DFRPG / Re: DFRPG Character Creator/Manager
« on: October 30, 2010, 11:31:01 PM »
First of all, I LOVE this program. It made it easy for me to create a party of 5 Player Characters for an upcoming con even with ease. I even used it to create the main villain.

My only issue is that I want to print MORE than the default print option allows me to.
Since this is a convention game I'd like the players to have ALL the information in front of them.
That includes the full text of the "background". "Rising conflict" etc.
I'd also like to include the picture I was able to add to the Template page.

Is there any way I can do this and control what is printed?

Thanks
  Tom in VT

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DFRPG / Re: I need an emotion for my White Vampire
« on: May 21, 2010, 11:10:03 AM »
Wow,

  Thanks for all the suggestions. I think I'm going with Blind Devotion and using True Faith as a counter. I think blind devotion and addiction could be pretty closely tied so I will have some of the family into the drug trade as a complication.

Tom

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DFRPG / I need an emotion for my White Vampire
« on: May 21, 2010, 02:59:40 AM »
I'm creating some characters for a game set in Vermont. One of the characters is going to be a White Vampire who is the lead singer for a very popular band (think Phish or Dispatch or something similar). My hope is that he could feed on the emotions of the group during the show... touching the hands of fans leaning up on to the stage and so on. Plus maybe on the groupies that follow the band.

I could go with the standard lust but I'd like to tweak that a little and I'm not sure what to call it.

The ecstasy or high that people might get at a show like this might be too positive an emotion. Is addiction an emotion? I might be able to link this to drug use in some way... Maybe setting up the family as the local drug lords feeding off addiction. But I'm not sure if that works as an emotion.

Ideas?

Tom

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DFRPG / Re: Running Dresden RPG at a con... need some feedback
« on: May 20, 2010, 01:09:02 AM »
Thanks guys. I like the idea of trying to do the last 3 Aspects. I'll play test it with a group of friends and see how long it takes.

Thx for the link to the pre-gen characters. If I make my own for this game maybe I'll add them to the thread.

Tom

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DFRPG / Running Dresden RPG at a con... need some feedback
« on: May 19, 2010, 07:23:34 PM »
Hey guys,

  The guy in charge of RPGs at my local con (www.carnagecon.com if you're curious or in the VT / NH area) asked me to run an RPG event. The con is in Nov so I have plenty of time to prep. I told him I'd like to run an adventure with the new Dresden RPG and he thought that was a great idea. No only are there plenty of Dresden fans around here but there has alos been a lot of interest in the Fate system.

  So I pre-ordered the books and I've been looking through the .pdfs. I need the forums help with a few issues.

1) The time slot for the game is 7-11pm. So about 4 hours. That includes getting people familiar with the characters, explaining how the Fate system works and of course running the adventure.

2) For con games I generally hand out pre-generated characters. It's just so much quicker and I has a GM have more control over the preocess. However, character creation is so integral to the Fate system that I don't want the players to miss out on that. Is there a compromise that won't take up 1/2 my time slot?

3) The big decision is whether to go with Harry and friends in Chicago or to create new characters and run them in a city nearby that everyone will be familiar with. I'm leaning toward the latter and using Burlington Vermont as the city. My only worry is that if I bill this as a Dresden game the players may be dissapointed if they don't get to play their favorite characters from the books.

That's all I can think of for now but any other general thoughts on the best way to run this game at a con would be appreciated.

Tom in VT

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