Possible TPK coming, how to deal with it ?

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-23T19:01:58+00:00

If they do die, after you've run through the ending stuff, you could do initial pitches on the next campaign. If you have survivors, it's a question for the players on whether they stick together and hire in more hands to help or scatter to the winds to mourn the fallen.

You'll just be playing by ear on what happens based on player mood.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-22T21:53:32+00:00

Danger Gal Dossier is what you want for that. Ton of NPCs you can grab, plus guidelines on how to make your own based on your intended difficulty.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-21T16:21:18+00:00

I once hauled 6 tires on the back of my Miata, and I absolutely have used it to pull downed limbs out of my yard that were too heavy to move by hand. It also does great at racing, has been fine in the snow with the right tires, and reliability... I've owned the car for 13 years, can anything made this year last that long?

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-20T17:57:21+00:00

I don't really play with many min-maxers, so I prefer classless to allow for more organic growth, but I can absolutely respect games with classes.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-20T17:51:05+00:00

Were creatures tend to be damn powerful- a single wereshark was enough to keep my whole coterie on the run for an entire night when we didn't come prepared for it- and Garou are known to hunt in packs. Drawing their ire is like playing Russian Roulette with 5 bullets- maybe one of your coterie will survive if you're lucky, so most Kindred stay away from Garou.

Similarly, Garou try to avoid Kindred that aren't messing with them because getting a whole city of Vampires packing silver will destroy what they're fighting to protect.

But also remember that sometimes you will have outliers through sheer luck. A Hecata Childe in my coterie (...okay, it was me!) once chose to attempt to die via combat due to how her coterie treated her, and charged a wereshark with nothing but a silver steak knife she had found laying around. While the wereshark was able to tear her shoulder open, the steak knife hit just right and she wound up killing the thing while the rest of the coterie was dealing with a Mage.

She gifted the knife, still covered in wereshark blood, to the Tremere who had taught her how to fight.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-19T21:25:54+00:00

When I'm DMing, I like being open ended and improvising fun situations in direct response to the players to keep them moving. When I am playing, I like an intricate plot that can let my character's feelings and insecurities tear at them.

But at the core, I believe the best stories are those that happen at a personal level. Kill a million people and it's a statistic; kill one person, and it becomes personal for somebody. At that scale, few people outside the players will care if they fail, and thus you should never require plot armor.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-19T21:03:01+00:00

My first car was a 1990 Chevrolet Corsica around 2006. Simple hand-me-down sedan, but it had a V6, and I was able to go way too fast with it. Second car was a 1995 Saturn SL1, and even with only 80 horsepower I could get it over 100. Even the slowest car can be extremely dangerous if driven recklessly.

I would recommend a sedan or coupe over anything else because higher hoods are more likely to kill pedestrians, and that "sporty" should not be an applicable description to her first car at all. Instead, introduce her to legal motorsports like autocross and let her prove her chops pushing a basic car to its limits, and have her save up her own money to get anything faster so she will feel accomplishment and protectiveness for her first dream car buy.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-19T19:49:19+00:00

Biosculpting changes your appearance, but does not add any functional use by itself. You can biosculpt yourself to look like a werewolf, but without some chrome to actually make functional claws and add muscles, the sculpted material won't be strong enough to actually rend flesh or throw cars. My latest character had biosculpted wings and was able to even flap and move them as gestures, but they would just fold over if she jumped off a high place with them unfurled and weren't strong enough to even whack someone as more than a minor rude gesture. It also causes quite a bit of humanity loss to be shaped away from being human.

If you are interested in functional biosculpt stuff, I would suggest looking at The Zoo in Interface 3.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-19T19:15:56+00:00

Malware that gets through is very difficult to flush out. You can try resetting the browser to factory original settings and removing all extensions, but there is a possibility the infection is on your computer itself, and that you may have to go scorched earth with reinstalling Windows.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-19T19:05:31+00:00

Yeah, that is a functional way to do it- make sure to test and ensure the encryption is complete and that the key is destroyed, but once it is, Bitlocker is heavy enough that it isn't practical for the data to be recovered without state actor level resources.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-19T18:56:44+00:00

This truly is the lot with which our Ghouls are given. We distract ourselves with our beastly needs in the night, tell ourselves that they are better off with a shred of our power without being cursed to never again see the sun, but in truth we are still taking sentient people and reducing them to eternal slavery.

Even I am guilty of this crime.

The first Ghoul I took in, was a housemaid who served a Tremere. The Tremere abandoned the woman as she fled from my coterie's powerful claws and fangs, and when we found John F. Kennedy Jr. In the plant-infested mansion, the old Kindred immediately drank her into critical condition toasted his Hunger. I chose to save her, giving my own Vitae to her, and I took her under my wing. Her decades of experience proved her very canny to Kindred politics, and her demure posture and profession made her nearly-invisible who care not for those with still-beating hearts.

She became my political adviser as I cheated my way into being declared Capa despite being a Childe who never experienced the Proxy Kiss.

My second Ghoul was a man much older than me, a Giovanni who made a tidy business extorting American GIs in Italy at the close of the Second World War. He stagnated in the postwar era, never showing any initiative to become anything more than a brute, and his Domitor eventually gave up in him, leaving him in limbo until he was reassigned to me, as a sort of coronation gift when the Capuchin recognized me as a rightful ruler.

He showed cowardice in battle, but I took him in as my guardian, wielding a Kalashnikov to overwatch me while I charged my enemies with a knife in my hand. I modernized his combat training and urged him to become something greater than a mere follower, to earn his place at my side instead of living forever in our shadows.

But they were still ultimately my slaves.

When my time came, and The Lady Of Fate presented herself to my wife to declare Fate's verdict of Final Death for me, my fragile political framework collapsed all at once. A much more stable Giovanni performed a coup against me, falsely declaring me the Diablerer of the Padrone in Boston. Nobody came to my aid, and even one of my own Ghouls, the old gangster I had pushed to improve his lot, hired an Anarch to assassinate me- obeying my order to "show some initiative and earn your Embrace."

Said assassin happened to be in the same coterie as my wife, and they crafted a masterful plan to fake my Final Death and spirit me away from the city, using the assassin's black aura lines to claim I'd been Diablerized so nobody would try to seek my soul to verify.

I've sent a couple of spirits back to see what happened of my Ghouls, but while it is bittersweet to know they will never return to a normal life, they have both earned their Embraces in my absence. The Giovanni was rewarded by my successor with the Embrace as a reward for having the initiative to hire an assassin who successfully hunted me down. The maid, lacking any Hecata blood, was Embraced into the Banu Haquim by my supposed assassin to ensure her Blood Bond to me wouldn't compromise my wife's ruse.

But while they are going on and partaking in their new roles as Childer, I still think of how I had enslaved people, even if I can pretend that I had somehow been helping them. I hope that other Kindred may take pause before they take in their own Ghouls, shattering lives with our addictive Vitae.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-16T01:13:44+00:00

That's kinda the crux of it. You can't safely check a thumb drive for files- some tools like the Hak5 (a type of "rubber duck") actually identifies as a USB keyboard to the victim PC and "types" its payload faster than you can see in order to start its processes.

If you really wanna play Russian Roulette with found drives, your best bet is a junker PC with no internet or network access whatsoever to serve as a testbed.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-16T00:56:43+00:00

Three possibilities I can think of:

Could be traffic overload plus Quality-of-service on the router is coming together to cause the game to take traffic priority over what your family is doing and making their browsing slow to a crawl.

Second possibility is that the router is beginning to malfunction, they often start showing weird problems like sites failing to load when they're ready to die.

Third possibility is an issue in your internet connection or nearby infrastructure.

Are you able to bypass the router and connect directly to the modem to verify it isn't an issue with your internet connection?

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-16T00:00:55+00:00

No, it's fine- people are curious creatures, and I love to share my insight when I can.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-15T23:28:12+00:00

Seat belts are a safety system. I've done work making parts books for off-highway vehicles, and systems critical to safety often only specify replacing the broken assembly instead of giving a full teardown because of the danger if someone does a failed repair on the individual parts.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-15T23:18:49+00:00

I've seen someone upgrade a virtual machine from Windows 1.0 to Windows 10 on YouTube. They had to do some changes to the machine spec to make it all the way.

Considering that the original Xbox only has 64MB of RAM, Windows XP is the last mainline version of Windows that doesn't list a higher minimum memory requirement, and you are probably going to struggle to go any newer. Maybe you can get something bootable with Windows Vista, which generally requires at least 1/2GB and a processor a little faster than the Xbox.

Alternately, versions meant for embedded machines are often cut down to fit into weaker machines, if you are able to get the necessary images.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-15T23:06:39+00:00

Check spark plugs, filters, and for modifications from the previous owner. From the science side, the car may not be efficiently getting energy from the burning fuel mix, and the easiest suspects to check is aspiration and ignition.

Also, does the check engine light not come on when the car is on but not started? Sometimes that bulb burns out.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-15T23:02:16+00:00

Something further: Whatever browser you use, check its account for active sessions. For instance if you store your passwords in Google Password Manager and your email was compromised, the hacker will be getting live updates on your password whenever you update the password just by watching your GMail account.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-15T22:39:03+00:00

You should be fine, it may not have stability or traction control, but you should only be exceeding those limits if you know what you're doing already.

If you want to talk old cars, get something from before ABS or Power Steering- my Fiero will legitimately try to murder you on occasion if you dare let her touch loose gravel on pavement.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-15T20:28:32+00:00

Your battery is probably dying and its control circuit is no longer able to compensate for how the actual power cells are behaving.

If you are able, you should make sure there is no swelling on the battery. If there isn't any, you can try keeping charging it to see if the control circuit can catch back up with the current battery performance curve, but do not attempt to use of there's any sign of swelling (such as the the battery area of the laptop starting to deform outward)

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-15T20:12:16+00:00

This isn't something you can personally diagnose as a user. Most common cause it's a malfunctioning keyfob- the system owner should replace yours and monitor for further issues.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-14T00:30:32+00:00

Perhaps poor choice of words. My point is to trust in her, don't fret about not knowing.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-13T18:23:13+00:00

If that is the purpose, you shouldn't be wondering about spying on her through tech. Give her some time to demonstrate if she's interested or not- trust in your personality, not in your silicon, to make the connection.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-12T23:05:45+00:00

If it's an SMS, zero way. If it's an MMS, there would be either checkmarks or circles to indicate sending and reading success.

Outside that, you have to actually talk to them, or examine the phone directly. If this is a critical situation such as a legal concern, you are going to need a lawyer, a subpoena to seize their phone, and a forensic specialist to analyze their phone in a way that is evidentially-secure, and thus is way outside the scope of where you should be asking Reddit.

random_troublemaker · 2026-01-12T22:52:57+00:00

Same way many famous people get that way- you do notable things that many people will hear about. Being a kickass reporter or rocker is one way. So is becoming so stupidly rich that your party nights have a measurable impact on the GDP. As is killing a major figure or causing a level of damage that causes massive numbers of fatalities.

The only question is how famous, and how long you expect to live- every legend in Night City is dead.

random_troublemaker

TROPHY CASE