Author Topic: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas  (Read 17820 times)

Daryk

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #30 on: 28 September 2019, 15:32:42 »
Paul has been throwing clan pilots at us lately, and generally, jumping 5 into Heavy Woods hasn't been enough.  Range rules all so far...

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #31 on: 28 September 2019, 18:24:43 »
Paul has been throwing clan pilots at us lately, and generally, jumping 5 into Heavy Woods hasn't been enough.  Range rules all so far...
  I had to boost Clan pilots and omnis to use against my players -They'd eat anything out of the scenario books alive. They were bad playing IS and far worse as Clan pilots in a hysterical Burrock campaign I ran. It was Archer...set in the Clans.

Daryk

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #32 on: 28 September 2019, 18:35:42 »
I should have been more specific... He's been throwing Veteran clan pilots at us.  He's just had absolutely ATROCIOUS dice...

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #33 on: 30 September 2019, 23:23:40 »
I should have been more specific... He's been throwing Veteran clan pilots at us.  He's just had absolutely ATROCIOUS dice...
  Exactly. When players become gods on the battlefield, I have to throw gods at them...they know the rules well enough to build units that would crush canon forces.

Daryk

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #34 on: 01 October 2019, 03:30:15 »
We're not really gods on the battlefield... he generally gives us a mix of 2 and 3 gunners.

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #35 on: 04 October 2019, 07:10:36 »
We're not really gods on the battlefield... he generally gives us a mix of 2 and 3 gunners.
  Exactly. When players become gods on the battlefield, I have to throw gods at them...they know the rules well enough to build units that would crush canon forces.

My question about this, though, is how much of a personality beyond being a mech god were these players?  How big of an enemy/bloodmark or whatever did they have that helped boost them more?

I prefer players that have a wide range of skills and incorporate those as part of how their characters think.  You spend your childhood years learning most of your skills, right?  It should be harder to learn new ones (not just languages).  Otherwise I imagine these characters having sad, pathetic lives where their skill means nothing if they can't ingratiate themselves to a few people.

...huh...  Pardon me while I start generating Clan characters simply as thought experiments.  Well, during the beta I did make one joke Elemental washout that ended up as a medical doctor.  I've since deleted that character ever since Avengers:  Endgame.

Daryk

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #36 on: 04 October 2019, 15:35:17 »
AToW gets after that by requiring you to buy a skill at level 0 for 20 XP, while level 1 in that skill will only cost an additional 10 XP.

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #37 on: 05 October 2019, 04:22:46 »
AToW gets after that by requiring you to buy a skill at level 0 for 20 XP, while level 1 in that skill will only cost an additional 10 XP.
Well, I'm more saying that they spent all their time becoming gods that learning to train Rover or pick a lock simply by going that route is a little... off to me.  I mean, yes, there's plenty of downtime during the games, though for me it's usually in the form of long-distance jumpship travel.  Watching the Dog Whisperer on repeat might give them some insight, or picking the lock on a locker to prank someone could be a way to learn during the voyages.  I'm more arguing to my players that it's best that they spread out skills to reflect their characters and remain green.  It's easier to excuse spending extra simulator time to go from Zero to Hero and be more fleshed out.

But enough about my thoughts and feelings.

I don't want to start a new thread, but my awesome players want to do a long RP session.  They've seen the rise of the battle armor, and one character, the glass-jawed noble who might possibly die to a sunburn, is a technical wizard, and wants to design battle armor.  He is essentially Anemic Tony Stark.  All the players want to do this, rather than go the Mechwarrior route, and I think it's awesome.  Once they get around to raiding the backwaters of the Lyran Alliance and hopefully return successfully to The Rack, they want to put that plan into motion.  I figured I'd throw them hijacking the plans for the Rottweiler battle armor, deconstructing it, and building their own design.

They have some access to Star League technology thanks to Morrison's Extractors, and breathe a little easier now that the Rim Collection has cleared out Pain.  But I've ruled that the access they have are to computers and stuff to help with processing information.

How would you suggest the sessions go (all through "downtime")?  Deconstruction phase, reverse engineering phase, redesign phase, prototype phase, then production phase.  At each step of the way, how would you suggest rolls go for each step?  Operation:  Painkiller may take forever to get to, though, with how my players love just roleplaying wandering around the planet Winter in the Lyran Alliance.

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #38 on: 05 October 2019, 06:34:08 »
My question about this, though, is how much of a personality beyond being a mech god were these players? 
  Personality has nothing to do with skills. That being said, my players took on hilarious quirks and drawbacks in order to gain more points to boost their skills, such as debilitating addictions, one player had split personality that manifested through hypnotic suggestion -Meckjock on campaign, but when he was on Galatea, he'd get a phone call and disappear for a week...and come back exhausted and unable to recall anything...eventually he has the rest of the players track him to see what was happening...they found out that he was appearing in extreme porn vids...the porn ring disappeared, but the character suffered emotional scarring for life. Another character played a failed Elemental turned Mechwarrior...he hated the Jags do badly that he would always alpha strike and risk all the consequences involved...and then there were the practical jokes, like the CSJ posted attached to the door inside a restroom stall...he got time in the brig for ripping the toilet from the floor and tossing it through a third story barracks window, causing injuries...  Or the Trinary Commander who had an evil twin, who scarred him so badly while in the Sibko, the character couldn't stand being in his twin's presence, with reactions from stuttering, all the way to high-pitched hysterical screaming, and eventually uncontrollable crying...My players payed for their godhood; some were captured by their hated enemies, paraded through city streets, jeered at but crowds and pelted with offal...others committed crimes then lost their lands and titles.
 
  The really fun part was, I always give my players plenty of rope...then they fight each other over who gets to jump from the tallest chair after the nooses are prepared.

Daryk

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #39 on: 05 October 2019, 07:35:16 »
All of those phases are going to months (if not years) long.  I'd probably take a page from Pathfinder, and set ridiculously high thresholds that require an accumulation of successes on a weekly or monthly basis (i.e., accumulating Measures of Success over time).  Say the Deconstruction Phase requires Technician/Myomer 20 AND Technician/Electronic 15 AND Technician/Mechanical 15 to complete.  Week one, they throw enough manpower at it to accumulate 4 MoS for the first, 3 for the second and 1 for the last.  You can then throw in wild cards that consume their time, result in actual setbacks (subtracting MoF), or potentially provide a morale boost (or penalty) to the weekly rolls.

Robroy

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #40 on: 05 October 2019, 08:10:00 »
Also between redesign and prototype you need design tooling and building tooling.

Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis of life and death, the Way (Tao) to survival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed"-Sun Tzu

"Subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence"-Sun Tzu

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #41 on: 05 October 2019, 09:18:36 »
All of those phases are going to months (if not years) long.  I'd probably take a page from Pathfinder, and set ridiculously high thresholds that require an accumulation of successes on a weekly or monthly basis (i.e., accumulating Measures of Success over time).  Say the Deconstruction Phase requires Technician/Myomer 20 AND Technician/Electronic 15 AND Technician/Mechanical 15 to complete.  Week one, they throw enough manpower at it to accumulate 4 MoS for the first, 3 for the second and 1 for the last.  You can then throw in wild cards that consume their time, result in actual setbacks (subtracting MoF), or potentially provide a morale boost (or penalty) to the weekly rolls.
With the way things are going, with one player constantly trying to hack, eventually LOKI will notice, so... there's one wildcard!

Daryk

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #42 on: 05 October 2019, 09:25:51 »
A morale boosting wildcard could be somebody throwing a party.  A set back wildcard could be somebody finding out they're going down the wrong path.  A morale penalty one could be as simple as someone's dog getting run over... the possibilities are endless!  :D

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #43 on: 05 October 2019, 10:13:36 »
Well, so far we're still on what I would call "Chapter 1".  I'm letting them get away with more, but I'm starting to do visible, but unidentified contested rolls.  Just to start sending signals.  It's roll20, and I don't want to bother rolling dice at my desk.  By definition, if there's a label for the party, it's "Pirates" from The Rack.  Suave pirates who can blend into high society, but still pirates hiding out on The Rack.  They're on an objective raid to hijack medical equipment, and possibly a ceremonial mech from a tiny noble house as an insult.  I'm thinking they either get the plans for the Rottweiler while they're there, or they are gifted a couple by a mysterious benefactor.

Downtime is expected to begin the deconstruction phase.

I'd like your thoughts on my next chapter, if that's cool.

Chapter 2 would be the beginning of a CO type phase.  With the chaos caused by Able's Aces on Pain, a pirate queen has been filling the power vacuum and moving her forces to take over where Hopper left off, the players would start forming a company, knowing full well that this nameless queen will want to consolidate her power on the planet.  The players would be "heroes" in a sense, learning to mobilize riff-raff natives and refugees from the FedCom Civil War.  It's a bit complex of an idea, but considering how they're handling an objective raid to hijack equipment, I'd love to see how they address a power struggle in a bandit kingdom.  A junkyard salvage company versus a Pirate Queen with Clan Mechs.

Too much?

(As we brought up Pathfinder, I am running this game kind of like a Kingmaker style with CO rules.  Eventually might have them scout out former RWR worlds lost to the annals of time as part of any and all expansion projects.)
« Last Edit: 05 October 2019, 16:19:08 by fever_Dream.) »

Daryk

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #44 on: 05 October 2019, 19:25:07 »
I don't know your players, but from what you've said about them it sounds like they'll handle it just fine, and have a blast while they're at it...

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #45 on: 05 October 2019, 19:32:32 »
How would you suggest the sessions go (all through "downtime")?  Deconstruction phase, reverse engineering phase, redesign phase, prototype phase, then production phase.  At each step of the way, how would you suggest rolls go for each step?  Operation:  Painkiller may take forever to get to, though, with how my players love just roleplaying wandering around the planet Winter in the Lyran Alliance.
  How involved are the players in each step of the process? Are they the experts, or is it beyond their understanding? When my players found Star League items, they approached several companies and not all of them were interested in, or capable of duplicating the items. One of the players failed his negotiations roll and was ripped off entirely. Again, these "gods on the battlefield" were not businessmen, the nobles with landholds left their properties in the hands of executors who skimmed a tidy percentage of the profits and the players were clueless, as long as they received their allowance. The further the players are away from monitoring the process, the higher the chance of a weak link, no matter who they may hire to do the work in their place.

  One of the things I value more than tech toys is data. Players able to use good data can move a campaign in interesting directions:

Pirates of Carver V Campaign:
  Okay, this was a small group of players, 3 mech pilots, 1 infantryman, 1 ASF pilot; The NPC Commander was based on Sterling Archer, so you already know he was just there to party and sign the paychecks:

Quote
“That’s enough!” Helga Rheinhardt rolled her eyes; unit briefings always degenerated like this. She paused a moment until she was certain that she regained their attention. “The Corporal’s personal life isn’t an issue here. According to his report he found a vast underground warehouse filled with crates.” She pressed the button on her remote and the image of rifle appeared, “Unfortunately, this one nonfunctional, pulse-laser infantry weapon was all he was able to smuggle out of the facility and off planet.”

 “Are you sure we have the correct information?” von Wiener held his notepad up and looked at the map on its display.
 “Our intelligence analysts have narrowed the search area to a five by five kilometer location.”
 Dover spoke, “By ‘intelligence analysts’ you mean Doctor Mengele and his wife, don’t you?”
 Rheinhardt crossed her arms, “Do you have a problem with that?”
 “Does anybody else have a problem with a guy who made a living doing biological warfare experiments on prisoners?”
 “I don’t,” commented von Wiener, “Who else would you use?”
 “Prisoners?”
 “Meaning the losers,” added the Baron, “Who believes that surrendering should be rewarded? Other than somebody from the FedSuns, who’d whine for a medal?”
 “Me from FedSuns,” declared Corporal Dong. “We not coward!”
 “Which FedSuns? The effeminate, tea-drinking FedSuns or the effeminate, wine-drinking FedSuns?” replied von Wiener with a dismissive gesture.

 “Ahem.” The Grafin frowned.
 “What if you were taken prisoner?” asked Dover.
 “Unlike the common rabble, I’d be ransomed,” replied the Baron.
 “Ahem.”
 “Well maybe some of the common rabble don’t have a wealthy mommy to bail them out.”
 “How is that my fault?”
 “Ahem!”
 “What?!” von Wiener raised his voice; he was obviously annoyed at the interruption.
 “This briefing isn’t over,” said the Grafin.

 “So we have a simple dig, grab and run, why do I have to go? Send the menials.”
 Rheinhardt continued, “Although no fighting is expected, Carver V is still border world with possible hostile elements present so the operation has to be discrete.”
 A handful of the attendees chuckled.
 “If you don’t want us to be noticed then make sure you don’t send the Baron,” said the shapely female ASF pilot, Seven E. Leven.
 “That’s right,” added Baron Helmuth. “As one of the best mercenary commanders in the universe, I’d be immediately recognized –So I’m not going.”
 There was more chuckling.

 “The plan requires some bureaucratic maneuvering and that requires your presence, Helmuth,” explained the Grafin. “Please reconsider.” She pressed a button on the remote and the image of a posh resort hotel appeared on the screen. “Over the years
since Corporal Dong’s discovery of the site, there have been numerous commercial improvements and development of the area. This hotel and gambling casino are located at the Northeast corner of the site and shopping mall is located at the Southwest corner.”
 
“And with all that renovation nobody found the cache?”
 “There is no record of anything like it being found,” replied the Grafin. “If everything goes as planned, the operation will take place during the Fasching celebration.”
 “That does it, I’m definitely not going,” announced the Baron. “It’s bad enough to be digging around for buried crap but why would I do it while surrounded by Catholics holding some drunken, farmer orgy?”
 “We going to orgy?” asked Dong, he looked somewhat hopeful.
 “Shut up,” snapped Rheinhardt. She used the remote to advance the image to one of a voluptuous blonde woman wearing an expensive gown, furs and jeweled tiara. “This is the Markgrafin Maria von Schleicher, the current owner of a major part of the site as well as the owner of the hotel and casino.”
 “Which means my presence there is essential to the success of the mission,” announced von Wiener, his interest suddenly piqued, “I suddenly see the possibilities of all manners of discreet insertion.”
 There was a sudden chorus of exasperated exclamations.
 “This is just like you,” scolded Leven. “Show you a large pair of boobs and you’re suddenly focused.”
 “You should know,” replied the Baron. “I’m ready to spearhead the undercover portion of this mission.”
 There were more exasperated moans.
 “Is that all?” asked Rheinhardt.
 “Just a moment,” he paused to take a breath. “Penetration,” the Baron said. “Okay, I’m
done.”
  The party decided to travel to Carver V under the guise of a holovid production company and obtained permission to film in various areas, including the hotel and shopping mall, under which the cache was hidden. What the party didn't know, there was a Maskirova team hunting for the same cache... Events all collided when the party, Maskirova team, and Fasching (German version of Mardi Gras) celebration attendees, all met at the mall, broke into opposite ends of the chamber containing the cache, and ending in a mall-wide shootout, with everybody dressed in pirate costumes...

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #46 on: 06 October 2019, 05:53:08 »
  How involved are the players in each step of the process? Are they the experts, or is it beyond their understanding? When my players found Star League items, they approached several companies and not all of them were interested in, or capable of duplicating the items. One of the players failed his negotiations roll and was ripped off entirely. Again, these "gods on the battlefield" were not businessmen, the nobles with landholds left their properties in the hands of executors who skimmed a tidy percentage of the profits and the players were clueless, as long as they received their allowance. The further the players are away from monitoring the process, the higher the chance of a weak link, no matter who they may hire to do the work in their place.
I talked with them last night and said that yeah, all this is going to be a series of rolls over downtime, provided they had successful missions.  I'm going to be using everyone's suggestions, coupled with a "work track" sort of like the one from Star Trek Adventures from Modiphius, sans breakthrough rolls.  It's going to be a long track for each step.

As the canon goes, Hopper found a Star League cache, so I fudged it that it got spread around his two planets.  The salvage company managed to yank the computers away, and now and then offers to repair Mechs, but with the new pirate queen, she's starting to get suspicious of this company's motives.  And hence why in my Chapter 2, it's going to focus more on the battle between the salvagers versus the Pirate Queen and her Star League/Clan tech.  I thought about them redesigning the Vampyrs and Carbines the company has Dark Age style.

Quote
  One of the things I value more than tech toys is data. Players able to use good data can move a campaign in interesting directions:

Pirates of Carver V Campaign:
  Okay, this was a small group of players, 3 mech pilots, 1 infantryman, 1 ASF pilot; The NPC Commander was based on Sterling Archer, so you already know he was just there to party and sign the paychecks:
  The party decided to travel to Carver V under the guise of a holovid production company and obtained permission to film in various areas, including the hotel and shopping mall, under which the cache was hidden. What the party didn't know, there was a Maskirova team hunting for the same cache... Events all collided when the party, Maskirova team, and Fasching (German version of Mardi Gras) celebration attendees, all met at the mall, broke into opposite ends of the chamber containing the cache, and ending in a mall-wide shootout, with everybody dressed in pirate costumes...
Damn, now you're going to force me to novelize my current adventures.  Revenge of the Nerds MMMLXVII:  Pirate Trouble on Winter.  And that's after the 61 reboots over eight centuries.

Let's see.  I have asthmatic Lyran Noble who is Tony Stark obsessed with creating an AI and power armor (I'm kind of railroading him into quad armor to be funny).  A Lyran noble's kid who did the family service in the military, then after the FedCom Civil War, hooked up with the "salvage" company the players work for.  He runs the industrial mechs and is happy to live low key, even if he is flaunting his nobility on Winter, which I'm thinking of having it hurt him.  A street thug from the Rim Collection who is essentially Black Widow who is badass at melee and shooting, but knows to run from Mechs and heavily armed infantry.  Enforcer for the salvagers.  A spacer who know is the dropship pilot that is good at doing tricky landings and take offs for getaways to the jumpship in orbit. Skull tattoos everywhere, so it's been fun with the nobles trying to go all "My Fair Lady" with her.  A Belter doctor who made her way to the periphery because her neuropharmacological experiments didn't exactly have IRB approval.  So, she's Timothy Leary who brings her Belter augment knowledge with her.  She runs a clinic on The Rack, but sometimes people get a little more to their prescriptions.

I absolutely adore this group.

I'm tempted to make a second game, one which does focus on the Mechwarriors that work with the "salvage" company that is, in fact, headed by a Malory Archer with Ukiyo-e tattoos.  Former Circinian pit fighter slave who doesn't want people to suffer, hence why she's been using her company to help refugees, but there's still that cutthroat dark side PTSD that comes out.  I don't have the players interact with her much except when she's in Malory mode, because they want a lighthearted game.
« Last Edit: 06 October 2019, 05:59:33 by fever_Dream.) »

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #47 on: 06 October 2019, 09:33:51 »
Damn, now you're going to force me to novelize my current adventures. 
  Pretty much all of my fiction is based on my campaigns, the PG-rated ones, at least. My R-rated adventures are posted on FB but I spend most of the year banned 30 days at a time for "violating community standards" through some algorithm that kicks me out the moment I post a comment contrary to the FB narrative, with no possible appeal...go figure.

  BTW, help yourself to any and all of the campaigns I've posted; Take the plots and run with them. For NPCs, I cast known actors or characters, from Archer to Woody Allen, to Slim Pickens. One campaign featured a famous Japanese legendary character from the Japanese language television channel (growing up in Hawaii, we had regular Japanese and Filipino programming on TV. Toyama no Kinsan was a Tokugawa-era chief of police that often patrolled the Edo (Tokyo) underworld for criminal gangs and famous for his sakura (cherry blossom tattoo) covering his shoulder, that he would display to the bad guys before subduing them and the players acted as deputies/bounty hunters that would burst in to make the arrests and drag the villains into custody. In order to take the baddies prisoner, the players all had a skill that allowed them to aim low without the usual penalties, which meant their targets would be legged and prefer to surrender, believing the only witness was a tattooed thug named Kinsan, and not the Chief of Police/Judicial Magistrate.
Toyama no Kinsan: (I watched his show every Saturday night). After he caught the villains in the act, his dramatic line was: "My sakura have witnessed your evil deeds; Scatter them if you can!" His PHX 1-b was painted with cherry blossoms, just like his tattoo.)

  Kinsan had a team of Ninja-type infiltrators and spies who would dig up leads and he'd sneak up on the villains to catch them in the act, with the players close by to back him up and make the arrests.
  Running a Kinsan campaign allows players to be mech police, infiltrators, spies, detectives, etc., so go ahead and have fun battling gangs, smugglers, pirates and human traffickers, all without having to leave town.
« Last Edit: 06 October 2019, 09:35:29 by Mohammed As`Zaman Bey »

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Re: Something's bugging me (edit: And other questions)
« Reply #48 on: 06 October 2019, 17:32:54 »
  Pretty much all of my fiction is based on my campaigns, the PG-rated ones, at least. My R-rated adventures are posted on FB but I spend most of the year banned 30 days at a time for "violating community standards" through some algorithm that kicks me out the moment I post a comment contrary to the FB narrative, with no possible appeal...go figure.

  BTW, help yourself to any and all of the campaigns I've posted; Take the plots and run with them. For NPCs, I cast known actors or characters, from Archer to Woody Allen, to Slim Pickens. One campaign featured a famous Japanese legendary character from the Japanese language television channel (growing up in Hawaii, we had regular Japanese and Filipino programming on TV. Toyama no Kinsan was a Tokugawa-era chief of police that often patrolled the Edo (Tokyo) underworld for criminal gangs and famous for his sakura (cherry blossom tattoo) covering his shoulder, that he would display to the bad guys before subduing them and the players acted as deputies/bounty hunters that would burst in to make the arrests and drag the villains into custody. In order to take the baddies prisoner, the players all had a skill that allowed them to aim low without the usual penalties, which meant their targets would be legged and prefer to surrender, believing the only witness was a tattooed thug named Kinsan, and not the Chief of Police/Judicial Magistrate.
Toyama no Kinsan: (I watched his show every Saturday night). After he caught the villains in the act, his dramatic line was: "My sakura have witnessed your evil deeds; Scatter them if you can!" His PHX 1-b was painted with cherry blossoms, just like his tattoo.)

  Kinsan had a team of Ninja-type infiltrators and spies who would dig up leads and he'd sneak up on the villains to catch them in the act, with the players close by to back him up and make the arrests.
  Running a Kinsan campaign allows players to be mech police, infiltrators, spies, detectives, etc., so go ahead and have fun battling gangs, smugglers, pirates and human traffickers, all without having to leave town.
I'm pretty shameless in appropriating other GM's ideas.  I have been digging around the forums for ideas, though I try not to write too much.  No plan survives contact with the enemy and all that.

I just secretly hope that I come up with things that people feel are worthy enough to put into their games.  Heh.

I feel like writing up a Touring the Stars kind of thing for The Rack, or any of the Dark Age Rim Territories planets.

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #49 on: 10 October 2019, 23:54:29 »
Renamed the thread to more reflect me just making a FAQ, sharing stories, and whatever.

Big question:  So, one of my armies I made for BattleTech was McIntyre's House Guard.  As much, his family, before all his domain got glassed, seemed to be the only "noble" family, but is that the situation?  Is there a case that there's highly influential families there?  Something akin to nobility?  Would they have their own minor noble houses that pledge to House McIntyre?  I'm asking because I'm rolling up contracts for the players when Chapter 2 of my game starts.

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #50 on: 18 October 2019, 13:19:53 »
The presidential family and the leadership of the Black Warriors were the only families I remember being mentioned. The other worlds are relatively newly settled and I think the political establishment is described as disorganized, so I doubt there's any particularly well-established families on the civilian side.

Membership in the Black Warriors may be hereditary. I believe their "rightful" leader was displaced in the 3050s, and I don't recall how that played out in the 3060s and 3070s, or how much power the various lieutenants might have (especially once Circinus allies with WoB).
Blog: currently working on BattleMech manufacturing rates. (Faction Intros project will resume eventually.)
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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #51 on: 18 October 2019, 14:38:49 »
The presidential family and the leadership of the Black Warriors were the only families I remember being mentioned. The other worlds are relatively newly settled and I think the political establishment is described as disorganized, so I doubt there's any particularly well-established families on the civilian side.

Membership in the Black Warriors may be hereditary. I believe their "rightful" leader was displaced in the 3050s, and I don't recall how that played out in the 3060s and 3070s, or how much power the various lieutenants might have (especially once Circinus allies with WoB).
Yeah, it was a difficult read (as in, me puzzling the idea of nobility) from Handbook Major Periphery States.  So I think I'll just have the NPC be from one of the Successor states.  Or I could go Astrokaszy.

Daryk

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #52 on: 18 October 2019, 18:34:52 »
Astrokaszy is always a good time...  ^-^

fever_Dream.)

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #53 on: 18 October 2019, 21:15:32 »
Astrokaszy is always a good time...  ^-^
I quite agree.

Now onto something speculative.  I'm seeing i have possible time to run a second campaign.  I'd run it as a kind of "What if?" scene.  The idea I'm toying with is "What if the United Hindu Collective agitated and seceded from the Federated Suns?"  Like, when int he timeline would that make for an okay campaign.  If that would make for a good campaign, or whatever.

What if the Malagrotta Cooperative survived, but went legit thanks to the actions of the players?
What if Clan scientists had quickly gone to work making Jade Wolf gene lines, only to find out it was a sham?  What if some took off with the frozen embryos and went somewhere, like a former RWR planet?

I don't know.  Anyone do any "What ifs?"

Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #54 on: 19 October 2019, 04:32:42 »
I don't know.  Anyone do any "What ifs?"
  Every campaign is a "What if?" Since few of my players liked to lead, they usually worked under an employer who set the stage for the players to have fun. The only campaign where the players actually led the unit was a hilarious Clan Burrock campaign, where the player who won the first Trial of Position was so inept at administration that he was removed from his job as Trinary commander and replaced by a player who had all the needed skills.

Daryk

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #55 on: 19 October 2019, 05:57:47 »
As far as the UHC, what if it never joined the Federated Suns to begin with?  8)

Draven0019

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #56 on: 03 May 2020, 06:25:04 »
I don't know if there are still people watching this or not, I've started GM for the first time with a couple of friends who have almost no knowledge of the setting, spent about 1-2 hours with each of them building a character with only one rule, the year is 2865, no clan stuff.
Ended up with:
a one armed Mechanic who was raised in the belts of Sol, born in FWL
a Lian Deserter who was in an expedition unit, Lone survivor after team triggered a SLDF Trap.
and a former Scout, kicked out of the army for being to much trouble at the end of the 2SW.

all found their way to Davion space to work as Salvage operators and day labors helping with rebuilding a shattered world.

Daryk

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Re: Questions, Naggings, Sharing of Ideas
« Reply #57 on: 03 May 2020, 06:26:50 »
That sounds very cool!  :thumbsup:

Renard

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Re: Something's bugging me, and I don't know why...
« Reply #58 on: 10 July 2020, 22:48:59 »
Update:  Yes, the other players did help.  And it turns out to be a compelling character now.

Player 5:  Canopian.  Typical high school jock.  Smug footballer who has tried to charm every cheerleader from Vixen to Canopus.  Riding on that popularity, tried to get into the academy.  But in Canopus, popularity alone doesn't get you into the Canopian Institute of War.  Managed to convince a family to train him personally... if he married their daughter.  Agreed, turns out he was damn good at what he does.  Was about to have his way paid into the Canopian Highlanders when he welched on the marriage.  Soon he discovers that Hell hath no fury than a Canopian Woman scorned...  And it's led to him having a kind of paranoia about women in general.  Especially well-dressed women.

I actually really like that character.  And I get to put him in a run down Stinger owned by a landowner to pay off all his debts.  I'm not dissing Stingers.  Love the buggers.

Again, thanks for the advice and conversation, folks.

The problem is mostly me, and I realize why.  I like my players' characters to at least have character flaws.  Nothing crippling, just something that makes them stick out.

You're a good dude. I am proud of you.

 

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