A group of commuters in a New York subway find themselves stranded after crazed robots start attacking the subway station. Fleeing into the tunnels, the commuters stumble across the base of a masked crime boss. What secrets lurk within it? What are the robots after? This scenario was run using new playtest rules for running origin story adventures, when unlikely heroes answer the call to action and gain superpowers to fight evil (or villains gain superpowers for fun and profit, whatever floats your boat.) Playtest rules are available on the Base Raiders website.
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Awwwwww…I was really hoping they were the PCs!!
Ah well, at least I finally know what Science-Ghost/Girl-James looks like!
ughhh, you guys are so much better than Night Vale. why doesn’t RPPR have dozens of tumblrs devoted to it?!
this was super fun. crazy immiscible superpowers was always a good idea, and I’m glad it worked out so well in practice.
(does anyone else feel like Caleb remains silent for as long as possible at the start of episodes so as to tease use as to whether or not he’s in them)
First time I have heard greed spelled C-A-L-E-B.
I got the homeless, addict character. What? I should have been passing out free samples?
Oh wait, I did. That totally worked out. It turned one of the players into a graylien and the other into a reptilian monstrosity. Hooray for charity 🙂
I gave up on this one, about a hour and a half in.
I found that Caleb was effectively blocking other players fun and using the excuse “Don’t blame me, it’s my character”. Now don’t take this the wrong way. You were not being an asshole. But you were just annoying me enough to make me think “I have limited time to listen to things. I could just listen to something that makes feel happy instead of listening to something that makes me cringe”.
I have nothing but respect for you Caleb, but ask yourself this. If you had been playing with a woman at the table. Could you have played a misogynistic character and just said “Don’t blame me, it’s my character”?
So I didn’t give make believe people make believe powers, and this is not only somehow an infraction, it’s the equvilent of thousands of years of patriarchal opression? Really? And you have nothing but respect for me?
Really?
Did you even read that before you posted it?
By the way, I’m typing this as I hang out with all those people who were made so miserable by my actions that they decided to hang out with me again this week.
Ross is dead. I AM THE NEW MONSTER!
Wow. That blew up in my face.
I’m just a consumer of a product that RPPR is making, so I don’t have any right to say that you guys are having wrong fun. But I can say how things look from my point of view. And from my point of view it looked like the goal of the game was to have make believe people acquire make believe powers and by doing that to have fun. And from my point of view it sounded like you were actively blocking other players from that fun. As I said, I’m just consuming this material, not actually participating in creating it, so I have no right to say “Your fun is bad fun”. But I can also choose not to consume. In this case I did and I wanted to talk about it, because it’s uncommon that I make that chose with RPPR.
Now, the misogynistic character may have been a bad example, I just picked it because it seems to be a common one in our hobby. I believe that the excuse “Don’t blame me, it’s my character” is a false one if it makes for less fun for the group. Because I feel that the whole goal of playing is to have fun as a group. Maybe everyone playing that game had fun. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I do know that I did not have fun listening to it.
And I do respect your work and what sounds like a sharp intelligence. I just think you had a shitty day.
If I may offer my two cents?
This is a new system for many of us, and we’re learning not only how the rolls work but also how the roles play into it. In FATE system, each character has a number of aspects, and points are awarded based on the player’s interpretation of those aspects. If a player were to stray from the concept too far (a boy scout committing a cold-blooded murder, a nun robbing a liquor store, a burglar using the front door instead of breaking in through a window) the GM and other players can argue that the actions were out of character and can force that aspect.
As a player in a role, I respected Caleb for sticking to the information on his character sheet. He had several aspects to rolelay, and my hat is off to him for playing these in a logical, direct manner.
As a minmaxing metagaming asshole, I thought he was bogarting all the super-juice.
Unlike other games where the role isn’t as important, the justification of “It’s my character” is a vital distinction. It doesn’t make for less fun in the group, it simply challenges us to find ways where that characteristic of the character can be challenged.
Did any of us say “You’re mixing your space-worm juice with space-crab juice; it’ll kill your buzz, man” or “Oh, I’ve heard of this one; it sobers you up. It’s like espresso, but super-sciency” in order to persuade the addict to part with the serums? Did any of us point out that if we wanted to, we could take the drugs by force, trickery, or stealth?
No, no we did not. That does not mean that CALEB failed, it means that the rest of us did.
And in the end, everyone left the table with a better knowledge of the system and the challenges inherent in trying to play in character while simultaneously resolving the challenges of the plot.
Did I have fun? Absolutely! I can’t wait for the next session.
Great game, I just hope to see more of wisconsin lizard cheese!
I need to chip in on this as well: during listening, I myself considered whether what Caleb was doing was ruining the game for the others. I’ve personally been in role-playing sessions where one person takes charge or ‘plays their character’ in a way that robs, figuratively and literally, other players of the fun and rewards of roleplaying.
All I could tell in the end is that while the ‘but it’s what my character would do’ kept being brought up, this did not feel like one of those sessions. Indeed, it felt far from it, and I admire the way the other players in the group allowed Caleb’s own character to run off with what basically was a superpower smorgasbord simply because that’s what their own characters would do. Metagaming minmaxery running rampant is often a problem in many gaming sessions, and I’m happy to say this is not one of them.
I would highly encourage mister Fridrik to see Caleb and his character here in a less antagonistic light and give the remainder of the session a second chance because it’s rather funny, all told.
See, the thing is, Caleb was obviously not ruining the game for anyone. Just listen to it. David got turned into Dino-Cheesehead, Tom became Alien Science Heisenberg, and Aaron got rocket boots and shot at by cops. Nobody’s game got ruined. Now, if he’d somehow ended up being the only one who got any powers, you’d have a case.
Awesome AP guys. Now I really wanna run Base Raiders. I’m just a tad worried that the FATE system might be a little too abstract for my usual players, though…
Caleb you’re a horrible monster. A horrible horrible monster creating, drug dealing, narrative destroying, hobo. Your hobo bindle casts a shadow of malice and broken gaming dreams.
The episode was a good tutorial. One the entertainment side it was slow for the first half I felt but that’s just me.
I’m going to say that I really enjoyed how Caleb ended up stealing all the super drugs. Sure it might’ve been a dickish move at the time, but in reality his character totally would have done that.
The main reason why I was happy, is that when Caleb did give the drugs out (either selling them or just giving them away) It prevented the other players from choosing what they typically choose in these kinds of games.
Like for instance, Tom usually plays a big strong monster (kid obsessed with metal gear who gets turned into giant snake, Kairop the bat, etc…) so i really enjoyed watching him end up as the smart scientist guy. It meant he had to play different ways then what he typically does, and i really enjoy listening to players who do that.
Going to have to give quote of the game to Caleb, burst out laughing when i heard: “Wanna know the best place to hide drugs? In your bloodstream. They never check there.”
This one isn’t so bad. People just hand Caleb asshole characters, I guess, because I actually did have to stop listening to the Savage Worlds AP that guy was so bad. My thought before I stopped listening was “I want to punch whoever designed this character”.
That being said, there’s a tendency for two extremes when playing pre-gens (I don’t know if this is just with the RPPR crew, or everyone in general, I’ve just noticed it most pronounced with RPPR). Either people play the pregens as their normal personality, but with some minor twists or influences based on the character background information, or you play a terrible “sterotype” of that pregen character where you hit the un-nuanced bullet points off the sheet. And this is probably just what you get with pregens, unless you get a group of improv or acting nerds together. It’s harder to do a nuanced persona if you didn’t shape it.
“But it’s what my character would do” is only an asshole excuse when YOU made the character. You’re the one who decides how that character works, so you’re somewhat responsible for the kinds of actions they’d take. You get handed a sheet with some numbers on it, that tells you about this stranger you have to portray, your only other option besides just being yourself is to do what the paper says the character would do.
To be clear, I picked from a list of pregens, so I’m at least that responsible for my horrible monster of a character in this one.
As far as El Matador…THAT WAS ALL ME.
GAZE, YE MIGHTY
GAZE AT WHAT I’VE BECOME AND DESPAIR
You’re just pissed because El Matador stole your lady.
This was a fun session. Was it just a one-off or do you plan to continue playing these characters?
We’re playing next week. Most of the players remade their pregens into mid level base raiders and we used the base creation rules to generate an adventure seed for me to use.
The point about Caleb stealing all of the power sources is good feedback. I plan to turn Transit into a full scenario so I’ll rewrite it so that all of the power sources are scattered about which should make it much harder for a single player to hoard all of them.
It’s only a problem because none of the other PCs remembered to add something kind of crazy so they’d be able to gun him down. I learned that lesson with my old group.
I just realized that when I think of roleplaying, it often does shift right to “Shank someone on your first action or you’ll be their bitch.” My last group was big on conflict.
As for the scenario, if I were to criticize it a bit it’s that it’s still too much of people being victims of fate and chance. It’s less bout base raiding or people who want to be awesome super-humans but, a group of strangers in the wrong place gets powers. Except instead of going off to be the Avengers they’re off to make some money.
Here’s the thing, Except David I could see all of the PCs being raiders easily. Aaron with “I’m not normal.” Caleb with “I need money, and worms.” Tom with “I want bigger thrills than BASE jumping.” or so on.
The problem (if there was a problem, which I’m not sure I agree with, I thought it was great) wasn’t so much that the superdrugs were all in the same place (the supersoldier drug cabinet, of course, why would they be scattered about willy-nilly?) it was that one character was playing up a BIG motivation to snatch them all up, while the other characters were still in run-away-from-robots mode.
But that may not even be so much a design problem as it was just the way people chose to play the characters. Maybe the thrill-seeker, instead of metagaming wanting Chimera to become a monster, could’ve been like oh, look, a secret supervillain base. I’m going to grab some crazy futureguns and armor and stuff and go fight those robots.
And maybe the man who was formerly so addicted to superdrugs that he lost everything and hasn’t been taking them for a long time (even if it’s just for lack of access) could’ve initially not wanted to fall off the wagon right away. Maybe he could’ve struggled with the temptation, but eventually taken them because giant killer robots.
But those are decisions the players made in how they interpreted their characters, and I don’t see the problem with it myself. Just like Aaron’s character motivation was apparently “WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE rocketboots!” which I can’t really fault him for because I’m sure in real life that’s what I would’ve done. Then when the cops were like hey, why were you flying around on rocketboots? I’d be like uh, because I found rocketboots. Duh.
I’m just not sure where the overall fun will come from raiding villain bases repeatedly. Then again, I don’t do many dungeon crawls.
Faithful listener, zero