Author Topic: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)  (Read 6385 times)

Offline Blechpirat

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #15 on: November 30, 2012, 05:45:36 PM »
My Campaign startet in modern day Berlin, where the heros suddenly had to deal with WWII Soldiers, both german and soviet, fighting the Battle for Berlin again...

Offline Mr. Death

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #16 on: August 02, 2013, 05:03:23 PM »
So, I think last night I started with the biggest bangs we've managed yet.

Some backstory: The game's set in LA, and the players have been put up against an alliance of the Black Court (run by an Elder souped up with an Outsider Sponsor) and a rogue court of Faeries. They've stopped three or four schemes, usually involving trying to revive the Red Court (who had been a third prong of the alliance before Dresden exploded them). Additionally, they've made significant headway in identifying the enemies, and it's been made personal on both sides.

So last night, starting a new scenario, I lowered the boom on them with simultaneous assassination attempts. I tell you, the players' reactions when I said the first thing I was doing was making 7 fate points' worth of compels between the three main PCs was worth the price of admission alone.

One player, playing a blind mage who sees auras, I had set up in the previous downtime scenario that she was regularly receiving packages and letters from an NPC that she had to step outside and sign for. After several weeks of this, I start the scene describing the same thing--only to compel the blindness and have the courier be a gunman, who hits her from ambush. Some magic armor saves her from further injury, but she ends up with a gunshot wound (Severe consequence, the first a player's taken so far). Of course, it turns out attacking a wizard on her own doorstep is a bad idea, so the gunman is struck by the wards (earning a Severe consequence of his own) and runs off scared shitless.

The second character, a mortal cop who has a Denarian's shadow in his head, is the target of a minor entropy curse--someone screwing with traffic while he's crossing the street. He narrowly manages to escape injury (and save his ex-wife and kid, who'd gotten caught in the crossfire).

The third character is an overpowered Wizard on the Dresden template, who has among her aspects a terrifying reputation, and has made the fight the most personal. As such, she warranted overdoing it--a lowercase 'd' dragon, flanked by giant bugs I ripped off from Scyther and Beedrill. The hilarious part? When I flat out told the players in the previous scenario that the rogue faeries had a dragon on their side, they assumed the NPC was speaking metaphorically.

The dragon and his cohorts, it turns out, are very much prepared for the wizard--the dragon's first action is specifically to take care of a 7-shift shield item the wizard's been relying on for defense, which leads to the bees poisoning her--with a special poison forcing an Endurance check equal to half the power of any spell she throws.

They knock her out of the sky, and onto a speeding semi on a major highway, where she proceeds to take a Severe mental consequence in order to go nuclear--she throws out a 16-shift spell (12 power, +2 to make it a zone attack, +2 to exclude herself from it), and dumps every fate point I'd given her (6) to roll it at 19. Needless to say, it's super effective against the mantis and the bees...but the dragon is immune to fire. And, it turns out, the truck she was standing on was not, so it derails and throws her for a loop, giving the dragon an opening to knock her out and capture her--making it the first time one of the PCs has outright lost a fight. And said player was excited about it, noting that it feels more Dresdeny if the wizard gets her ass kicked once in a while.

We cut to the cop, who's in the hospital (the ex-wife sustained some injuries). Where his boss comes in and tells him that the blind wizard (who's dating the cop) was brought in with a gunshot wound, and another ex-PC (player had to quit for life reasons) was found in her apartment beaten to within an inch of her life. Then he finds out the GMPC was captured, and the nuclear wizard is MIA (only clue being some grainy footage on the news of her exploding).

So, the pure mortal is the only PC who isn't injured, half the party is MIA, and it's clear that the badguys are making their move. The pure mortal is seriously considering taking up the coin to even have a fighting chance, and I am stoked for the next few weeks' sessions.

And then in our OOC chat, things went off the rails when another PC, playing a pixie, decided because his character was the only one who wasn't viciously attacked, and because the attacks were all tailored to the PCs, said pixie was the prime suspect.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2013, 05:10:33 PM by Mr. Death »
Compels solve everything!

http://blur.by/1KgqJg6 My first book: "Brothers of the Curled Isles"

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2013, 11:05:33 PM »
That sounds like a hell of an opening to a new chapter Death. It was a new chapter right? Sounds like the game has been going on for a while. Keep us all up to date on what happens next!

Offline Cadd

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2013, 07:34:26 AM »
My story opened with the two PC's meeting over coffee at a cafe to talk over the weird sh*t that had happened to them the week before (one of the First Story/Guest Starring phases), and just so happens to become witnesses to the robbery of a goldsmith. By dead people! That night, one of them gets press ganged into service to Cerberus and it all just sorta gets more complicated from there :p

Offline Mr. Death

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2013, 02:57:48 PM »
That sounds like a hell of an opening to a new chapter Death. It was a new chapter right? Sounds like the game has been going on for a while. Keep us all up to date on what happens next!
Yeah, it was a new scenario for a game that's been going on for a couple years now.
Compels solve everything!

http://blur.by/1KgqJg6 My first book: "Brothers of the Curled Isles"

Quote from: Cozarkian
Not every word JB rights is a conspiracy. Sometimes, he's just telling a story.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_T_mld7Acnm-0FVUiaKDPA The C-Team Podcast

Offline Taran

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #20 on: August 04, 2013, 03:28:50 PM »
I thought this was pretty cool.

http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,38321.0.html

One of the PC's is a time traveller so I'm running the time-line in reverse.

Offline fantazero

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #21 on: August 06, 2013, 03:08:45 PM »
Doing a Roll20 online game using Dresden.
A Suicide Bomber tries to kill the President. Wizard stops him (traps him in a Earth Shield), Warden sees that and basically goes "Well, some suicide bombers don't die, but you killed that dude using magic, you're on the list (didn't make the player take a Lawbreaker stunt, but I like the idea of a lot of Lawbreaking is in the eye of the beholder)

Offline PatchR

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #22 on: August 06, 2013, 03:42:32 PM »
....that sounds... messy.
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Offline Ulfgeir

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #23 on: August 06, 2013, 05:46:20 PM »
We started the campaign I am playing in the following way: All the characters were students at the Boston university.

First every character got some screen-time of their own were we introduced their private lives. My character (focused practitioner with specialization in divination) who worked parttime at a theatre as an actress had some stuff there as the old director had quit, and a rather spoiled kid wanted to take over. He was of course a worthless actor as well. The Werewolf worked as the bouncer at the local student pub, the Emmissary of Power (belongs to Ferrovax) worked as the bartender. They had a small scene where some underage girls were visiting and some guys managed to get them drunk. The activist worked at a political event for the Obama re-election, and the rather clueless genie helped her out. I can't remember what the changeling prince and the journalist were doing. I think the Changeling was on a date/one-night-stand...

Then we started getting into the supernatural, as my character were woken up from a rather bad nightmare (beings trying to push their way into our reality) by her roommate who had tried waking her up for over 10 minutes. The activist who lived in the same dorm came in to check what had happened, and found that my character was bleeding from the eyes due to the nightmare. She called an ambulance, exaggerating and saying it was blood everywhere. (Let's just say that delicate medical equipment in an ambulance and a rather upset magic-user, who is frightened out of her mind, was not a good combination).

Then fast-forward a few days and everyone one was at a halloween-party at the student bar. The activist came as Little Red Riding Hood, carrying a huge sword that the Genie had gotten her. The werewolf bouncer who didn't like her of cource confiscated said sword. my character who is the typical goth girl came dressed up as a sexy vampiress. The morning after, my character has a new nightmare, and is again bleeding from the eyes. This time it was worse... The werewolf and the dragon emmissary were out for their morning jog, when they come across a murder-scene. Two students had been killed and hanged up in a old sacrificial tree near the library. The cops were already there. As they are about to leave, the activist makes her way home to the dorm (with the sword of course), and she goes past the murder-scene. She of course acts uppity against the cops, and they decide to bring her in for some questioning...

Later we all start to investigate as the leader of the wiccan sorority is missing. The two gitls that had been killed before had been members of the same sorority, and it turned out that there had been some weird stuff happening earlier on involving that sorority.

/Ulfgeir
I have not lost my mind, it is backed up somewhere on disc...

Offline finnmckool

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #24 on: August 29, 2013, 07:06:47 PM »
My game was set in my small city of a hometown of Lexington Ky.

Four words. Big troll. Small bridge.

Offline InFerrumVeritas

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #25 on: August 31, 2013, 01:20:43 PM »
All of our PCs (except one) were independently hired to steal the same thing from a museum.  It was a set up, sicking the wild hunt on them.

We actually started in media res, the day after the heist, with the one PC investigating the break in as the others kept running.  So she was chasing after them too, but in a very different way.

Offline blackstaff67

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2013, 08:31:58 PM »
Doing a Roll20 online game using Dresden.
A Suicide Bomber tries to kill the President. Wizard stops him (traps him in a Earth Shield), Warden sees that and basically goes "Well, some suicide bombers don't die, but you killed that dude using magic, you're on the list (didn't make the player take a Lawbreaker stunt, but I like the idea of a lot of Lawbreaking is in the eye of the beholder)
I would soooo challenge that Warden:  "He nuked himself, I didn't use any magic to press that button or force him to even push it.  Mangez moi."
 
My Purity score: 37.2.  Sad.

Offline fantazero

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #27 on: September 01, 2013, 01:41:06 AM »
I would soooo challenge that Warden:  "He nuked himself, I didn't use any magic to press that button or force him to even push it.  Mangez moi."
 
you mean "in character" or out of character?
In Character, oh yeah, it's been a "sticking point" between those two* Basically one of the Wardens Aspects is "Everybody gets one" and that, in the slanted view of our Warden was "One" next time, it's head chopping time.

Out of character
The Player understood that basically I was painting the Grey Warden as a SOB.

*Recently the Warden was about to cut off a dude who was legit guilty of law breaking. The problem was the PCs needed to talk to that character. So they were able to convince the Warden to not cut his head off for 10 minutes so they could talk to him. The Warden shot the Law breaker in the gut, as a "Just in case". So soul gazing with a dying man was a mental marathon for our Wizard
« Last Edit: September 01, 2013, 01:43:37 AM by fantazero »

Offline Lanodantheon

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Re: start it off with a bang! (your coolest campaign beginnings)
« Reply #28 on: September 01, 2013, 05:03:20 AM »
My group rotates GMs. Most GMs write-out their characters through "They're off training" "Getting inducted into a secret society" or "In Disney Land Paris as a cover for further Venatori Training".


One fateful session our GM decided to write out his Wizard Character by having a Potion over-dosing Hulk-like guy bounce him off a car. The session went well from there...
« Last Edit: September 01, 2013, 06:50:22 AM by Lanodantheon »
www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/the-emerald-city  (Nov 2012 Campaign of The Month)

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My name is Lanodantheon Thul, Conjure that by your own risk....But first, you have be able to spell it...