A group of vigilantes teams up to stop an evil cult’s plans to summon a powerful being from beyond time and space. Unfortunately, there’s more to this plot than meets the eye. This game was run at Fear the Con so thanks to Fear the Boot for letting us run the game!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:06:49 — 85.5MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Wait . . . so, essentially, all of the controversy came from the following exchange:
Douchebag: “I want to use persuasion.”
Ross: *in a tone that sounds like he thinks the Douchebag was joking* “Heh. Weeeellll, I’m not going to let you rob the other players of their free will.”
From this compelling conversation, we have three blog posts and some podcasts dedicated to it? That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Yeah, it does seem that way, Rayner.
I’m listening right now and it seems like a phenomenal game that was retroactively ruined by a grumpy player blogging.
Also, that comic image makes me science rage. Everytime someone says that gravity comes from the earth spinning it makes me sad and angry all at the same time. (in reality, we would all just fly east at the moment the earth stopped… then die because day and night now last 6 months each.)
Yes, because remember, there is only ONE RIGHT WAY to interpret rules and handle any complicated situation at the table.
I don’t know who that dude is, but I guess for him gaming is SERIOUS BUSINESS.
You must understand, His gaming time was DESTROYED all cause Ross shot him down from using presuade on a couple of people in his group at the end of the game and he still made his choice of ending that he wanted.
I’m about 90% positive the monday after the con, he was pissed about weeding his Garden, coming down from his Mt. Dew high, and had nothing else to Angry blog about so he picked the one and only topic that he could think of.
Well gosh, Ross, why are you such a jerky mcjerkyface? 😉
I can’t believe how overblown this has gotten. Now this dude’s pissed about the tone you guys took in your latest episode. Apparently you don’t have the same rights he does to say what he wants.
What gets me about all of this is that there’s no real right answer, it all depends on the group you’re playing with and what they want. If this wasn’t a con game, it could have easily been resolved by a social contract ahead of time. I think Ross did the right thing in this situation and without those guidelines set ahead of time.
I’ve GMed for players that have been awful shy before, and the more personable people will run everything in that case. If you’d let them make social checks on the other players, they would run EVERYTHING. The shy players might as well hand in their character sheets. That’s not fun. That’s what I think, anyway, but I don’t expect everyone to, y’know, share the same thoughts as me. Differences are going to occur. If there weren’t any differences in thought, we’d be pretty bored.
But for fuck’s sake…this is supposed to be a fun game. Not a ‘omgz you didn’t do it the way I would bahhhh fuck youuuuu’ game. ;P
Thanks for running this Ross, Sara and I had a blast.
It’s a shame the game had to be so rushed at the end, it seemed like an interesting new variant to have the Dr. Manhatten-like superhero/villain being summoned by the cult.
I can see how – unlike other Age of Masks versions I remember – it’s easy to miss exactly how crucial individual choice was at the end. Just so little time to wrap it up! 🙁
Anyway, cool to listen to.
This is the rare exception to the “I really enjoyed this AP” standard.
I knew this session was on the fast track to oblivion when I realized that Ross was desperately trying to move the story forward with minimal interaction and roleplay from the gamers.
This particular group didn’t seem interested in participating at all. It was like Ross was a very patient dentist performing a very tedious root extraction. Perhaps this was due to their seeming unfamiliarity with game system.
A few of the players perked up towards the end, but these players seemed stuck in the “blow shit up” mentality.
There was little or no discussion on what to do. I think there were maybe 20 or so minutes of actual roleplaying and most of that occurred in the last 15 minutes of the game.
I gotta give it to you Ross, you really tried to get them involved, but in the end I think you just sort of realized you were spinning your wheels.
And another thing; Is it just me or did anybody else find themselves increasingly creeped out by that guy’s strange, tittering laughter in the background. That guy should do voice-over work for “the crazy guy/villan” laugh. There are some things on this earth that are so terrible that they cannot be forgotten once heard and that guy had a laugh that I will never quite un-hear! Fucking nightmare material. He had a laugh like the puppet from that Twilight Zone episode “The Dummy”… anyway I digress.
Ross, why not run this scenario for the guys in RPPR? I think you’ve got it pretty well polished and I would love to hear how Cody, Mike, Tom (again), Aaron (again), Bill, Dan, RJ (gotta get RJ in on this one) and Jason would fare! RJ and Cody in the same game would make for some great podcastin’!
The only thing I would suggest is to change the antagonist’s name. Stardust is a little too “Xanadu” if you know what I’m saying… 😉
P.S. I didn’t even catch the persuade comment… Man, what a buzzkill, it had been billed as so “controversial”!! What the fuck over!?
Stardust is the name of the Hank Fletchers superhero, which is why I used him. Stardust is an omnipotent superhuman who spends most of his time devising elaborate tortures/punishments for bad guys. His comics are unreal and that is why I used him in Age of Masks.
My bad, it’s just whenever I think of the name Stardust, I think of the villain in some movie that involves the future, musical numbers and rollerskates…
Jesus, I’m fucked up!
Hmmm. That was…rather anticlamactic, wasn’t it? Now I’m wondering what all the fuss was about.
Im 95% sure I have it right in my comment. No one not even the happyest of Gardeners like pulling weeds.
LOL! I’m one of those garden-y sorts myself, and I find weeding to be a somewhat zen, relaxing task for the most part. YMMV, of course.
My perspective on the FtC3 hullaballoo…I’ve known and gamed with Aron for…almost 12 years now, I think, and I love him dearly and think he is a master storyteller and an evil genius. But! If Aron were a PC and had a character sheet, one of his character traits would clearly read: “unable to tolerate being balked, thwarted or disagreed with on any level without feeling compelled to get even in some way.” It’s just how his brain is wired. Those of us who enjoy gaming with him just accept that quirk as part of the package. It adds a certain extra spice of danger to the game, and also fairly quickly weeds out the cowards and weaklings.
Anyway, that’s my 02¢ on the subject. Like I said over at IoM, I think Ross made the right call for the AoM game. I was just expecting the moment to be a bit more dramatic somehow. That was barely a blip.
I’ve actually had these kinds of problems in my games before. On numerous occasions. I have come to one simple and easy to follow rule on manipulation of other PCs. You can attempt to LIE to fellow characters in an attempt to get them to believe you in something devious, but you cannot manipulate them into acting in a particular way.
I’ve found that this solves ALL of my problems, because manipulative characters can still be devious and convince everyone of what they want, while the other PCs can choose how they react to and deal with the situation.
Not one time has this ever created a confrontation between players. Maybe I’m just lucky to have players who can role play their way through a sticky and/or difficult situation. Anyway, that’s my take on this. Take it how you like.