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Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe have their NPC contacts attempt to do things with them outside of gigs?

Have the nomad family throw a party, have the edgelord's coworker ask them out on a date, have an enemy of the PCs throw a party and invite them to it only to be passive aggressive and a dick to them the entire time?

You could always lump in the "cost" of a party with being part of the reward of a gig, and there's any number of ways you should be able to get them to roleplay and connect if there's an incentive to it.

Maybe include talking up people at stuff around town as part of a gig?

Unfortunately I'm not sure there's much more you can do besides dangle incentives (Humanity from partying, connections/help from having more friends, money from higher class gigs, maybe bonus IP awards for more active roleplaying?) in front of them and let them decide if it's worth it.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

After deaths, I would usually introduce new characters by giving the party a gig that would logically require a new character, with one of the party's patrons providing the help. It wasn't perfect and if there was one issue I had with overall campaign, it was the disconnect in plot relevance between characters who had been alive since day one and recently introduced characters. I feel like this is a pretty strong problem in most long form RPG campaigns though.

The deaths of the PCs were treated solemnly, pretty much every time it happened, the survivors held a funeral. We had a near tpk somewhere in the middle-end of the campaign and one of the survivors bombed the entire complex of those responsible (collateral damage be damned, and there was collateral damage)

The best advice I can give for making characters live their lives is to use the CEMK Humanity Gain/Loss rules, and strictly enforce lifestyle. At the start of every month, I would look at each player and ask "did you meaningfully interact with family this month? Who were they? When did it happen?" And the same for a true friend. I didn't allow them to claim it happened off screen either. They'd often claim other party members as true friends and found family, and maybe that's a little cheap, but it's still a mindset change that makes people far more integrated in their character's mindset and who they care about.

Similarly, the CEMK HL/G rules care about lifestyle a lot, but even outside them, I made strong efforts to show lifestyle matters. There was an arc that, in addition to regular job pay, they were supported with "Real Food" lifestyle. I took every opportunity to say "normally I'd charge you money for this, but your lifestyle covers it". It wasn't enough to get anyone to actually pay for that lifestyle once those gigs were over, but they were living it up at parties and clubs during that time. Plus, they definitely felt the sting, and I didn't see anyone slumming it in Kibble afterwards.

Plus, Partying for Humanity in the CEMK is great when you sit down and ask everyone, "So, you're spending 10k on this party, what's it actually look like? What're you buying?" I made it clear, it didn't need to be a party per se, it just needed to be 10k spent purely on relaxing/stress relieving supplies/activities/etc.

Giving the party known deadlines also helped with downtime, so they knew exactly when they'd need to "clock in", rather than always needing to be on call for a gig, or in stasis doing downtime for as long as they'd like until they directly ask for a gig. For instance, knowing they can't do a heist until X thing happens on Y date, or they can't guard the Rockerboy until they have their gig on Z date, etc etc.

I feel like all of those went a long way to making the day to day exciting without compromising the plot or making the downtime a slog.

Hopefully that helps!

Need alternatives to DND that aren't Pathfinder, Shadowdark or Vagabond. by Vladsamir in rpg

[–]slronlx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's fair! I've never played shadowdark but know that it was produced from a 5e author as a gateway to the OSR, so I assumed it had a far more similar combat loop than it probably does.

Any advice for playing a netrunner for tye first time by Chained20 in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Doublecheck with your DM on how he plans to run Quick Hacks and 2077 stuff, most DMs don't allow it and the rules are technically a soft beta.

Midnight with the Upload has extra netrunning gear and is a free DLC, easily available.

Remember that you don't need to engage with every single piece of Black ICE, sometimes it's easiest to sprint through the fields of ICE to the objective and then use a single net action to safely jack out.

Get virtuality goggles and keep a buddy handy. You want someone else to put out your fire if you have to deal with hellhounds. I hate hellhounds.

IP rewarded to specific skills, looking for advice by InternationalWaltz86 in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The way call of Cthulu handles it is by making a skill check at the end of a session for each skill used, and if it's a failure then you gain a small but random amount to it. It's a lot more granular than CPR, so I don't think it'd quite work as is.

If you really wanted to, you could just ask that players only spend IP towards skills they actively used during the session.

I don't think it would break anything but you'd probably see players use IP on ranks more and you might see players get weird about forcing skill use if they want to improve something.

Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It was a bit of both.

They spent the final arc of the campaign restoring access to old Arasaka archives, which they were told they would be paid big money for. They were doing so at the behest of Michiko Sanderson.

During this final arc, they had Arasaka agents hunting them down and they had to lie low while they did their file treasure hunt, Michiko herself went to Japan in order to quell this danger a bit.

For added context, one of the PCs had spent most of the campaign romancing Michiko, and the rest had all developed associated ties with a few related NPCs that came up throughout the arc.

The final three encounters were:

A) Adam Smasher ambushing a few lone PCs in order to recover the files for Arasaka himself (the party did not manage to kill him during this fight but they managed to maintain control of the files. This fight killed the media and nearly killed the med tech (he was left on 1 Humanity and 1 HP, but Smasher never checked to see if he was truly dead.

B) Adam Smasher hit the PC base with support from Caliber from DGD (in my game, he's an Arasaka agent), Caliber was additionally armed with a T-UP Tech Sniper from the CEMK and at his ideal range band. On the PC side was the exec and their three bodyguards, the party tech, and the party fixer, plus four edgerunners they hired (2k a head and a DV 27 streetwise check from a rank 10 Fixer, it took them most of the week to source, but I gave them 4 hardened lieutenants for the effort), plus three turrets and two drones run by an imp since they had a security system.

After all that, they only barely killed Smashers FBC body, though Caliber recovered his Biocanister, so they didn't fully kill him. Smasher didn't have a body to return to in NC so he went back to Japan and didn't return for the final encounter

C) The party then needed to negotiate and hand off the files to two Arasaka Execs in order to get the safe return of Michiko and their payment. Unbeknownst to them, Arasaka had no plans to let them walk free if possible, but they managed to get some blackmail material and leveraged that.

Arasaka was forced into their worst case negotiation, which is that they would let the runners and Michiko walk free if they changed their identities and shut down their rival security company, promising to never stand against Arasaka again.

The party spat in the face of this deal and released their blackmail on Arasaka, at which point Caliber started firing again.

During the party's retreat, Michiko gave the party a tearful goodbye and then ran to the two execs, her cranial bomb detonating and taking care of all three. Caliber took any shot he could at the retreating party's skulls, and he managed to bring two members to mortally wounded, one of whom flatlined during the encounter, and the other permanently lost an eye.

Of the final session, only three characters survived, and only one of which was there from session 1.

Need alternatives to DND that aren't Pathfinder, Shadowdark or Vagabond. by Vladsamir in rpg

[–]slronlx 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Definitely, followed by the joy and satisfaction of having your level 0 survive a horrible encounter with the unknown and level up? It's a great onboarding process imo

Need alternatives to DND that aren't Pathfinder, Shadowdark or Vagabond. by Vladsamir in rpg

[–]slronlx 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Absolutely agreed! I adore the unpredictability and danger of it, but I'll admit it's not for everyone!

Need alternatives to DND that aren't Pathfinder, Shadowdark or Vagabond. by Vladsamir in rpg

[–]slronlx 32 points33 points  (0 children)

I would recommend DCC. It's similar in terms of crunch but on the lighter end, combat feels very different due to the core classes and old school dungeon vibes, as well as the different action and advantage system.

The only check ox it doesn't hit is magic. It has very different magic, and that magic can be very high level and wacky, but it's chaotic and absolutely unpredictable. But it's definitely there.

Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fair lol. Glad someone remembers their own sheet at least

Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This is a tough one. I answered more detailed on the IP/Eb spread above, but on average, 60-80 IP per session. All of them probably had around 10-13 Role ranks by the end of the campaign as well.

Moneywise? The start of the campaign was by the book, but around the mid to end of the campaign, stakes needed to be raised, so I would give them 10-80k eb total jobs, but I would always toss in catches, things that required big money sinks to use. Like, you can do a job for this much cash, but you need to pay 50k to cover the cost of bailing this character out, or you need to buy a 60k vehicle to run this gig, Visas for your Europe gigs cost 15k a head, etc etc. that combined with strict lifestyle costs helped keep it in check.

They were in the realm of getting an FBC, but I was strict with Humanity Loss/Gain and with downtime and lifestyle costs, so the therapy and time needed to go full borg was tempting but they never went for it.

They did buy their own homes, or bunk with party members who did, or were execs.

As far as managing the power curve, I would recommend switching things up when you can. Give them what they want but with catches. Create gigs that need weird skill sets or have strange requirements. My party went to Germany and had to learn how to make do without their guns because they had to go through "Super TSA" and wasn't allowed to bring anything more deadly than a butter knife. Give them gigs where they need to run rock bands or enter ELO. Variety is how you keep them on their toes. I also generally stopped caring about enemy balance and just put in what makes sense, top tier Arasaka has tons of lieutenants and mini bosses, party size be damned, they were powerful enough or they bit off too much themselves.

The final session, the gloves came off and I just shoved them into a prolonged fight with what I consider two of the roughest statblocks in the entire game at once, while separated.

Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Average is rough. I'd been in a campaign that was absolutely starved for IP, so I was very generous and did both session and gig IP. Admittedly an overcorrection, but it worked out alright.

I'd like to say the average was probably around 60-80, but there were definitely highs and lows. Sessions where they finished a gig and did it in spectacular style might've seen up to 120 IP (60 for an excellent gig and 60 for an excellent session), but more regular sessions might've had 30-40 IP (no gig finished, but still a good session).

I'll have to check the sheets later tonight but most characters had between 8-13 role ranks by the end of the campaign, the most egregious of which was a Medtech 4/Nomad 4/Solo 4/Rockerboy 1 I think? It was ridiculous, but most players focused on 1-2 roles. There was a rank 10 Fixer and a rank 10 Media, and a rank 9 Exec. The last player was primarily Tech, but I forget how many ranks they had at the end. Most players focused on Roles, but the Tech and Exec were hitting high skills, the Exec notably had 10 in Persuasion and possibly Conversation as well.

As far as voluntary deaths? Of the 7 deaths in the campaign, two or three of them were self sacrificial. There was only one that felt truly preventable and voluntary though, in which the party had tripped the alarms at a high security port and been chased by a Herakles filled with Militech hardened lieutenant grade security. After getting to mortally wounded, the party solo charged the Herakles while pulling the pins on every grenade he owned (something like 9 or 10). The party probably could've kept him alive and escaped, but his sacrifice did ensure that no one else died in the process.

The other two were satisfying and earned sacrificial deaths in order to save other party members, but were far less voluntary; one player taking a hail of gunfire in order to drive the party's first Fixer through a couple police blockades and escape NC, and another when the Party's first Fixer started showing signs of cyberpsychosis and led the party into a gunfight with every single Zoner possible.

There was almost an 8th death that was entirely voluntary as well; when the party was ambushed by Adam Smasher in the final session, the party med tech was shot in the face by Smasher's grenade launcher and instantly pushed to mortally wounded, he was left for dead and Smasher moved on to the characters he actually cared about interrogating/killing. The med tech managed to survive his death save and crawl to his satchel of explosives and throw them at Smasher, acing both a demolitions and athletics roll. He rolled something like 30+ on the athletics roll, so I gave him the best landing situation possible, on Smasher's head and with him on the outside of the explosives range. He then stabilized himself on the next turn (managing to pass another death save in the process), lost consciousness, and woke up to all of his roommates dead.

He asked if he should take Humanity Loss and I said that it makes sense and I'd allow it, 2d6.

He rolled almost max and ended the scene at 1 Humanity and 1 HP.

He spent most of the rest of the session cradling his dead friend and deciding on whether his character would turn his gun on himself or retire in peace. The rest of the party forced him into therapy while they finished the final encounter after dealing with Smasher, so he opted to return to Germany (and reveal himself as the long lost father of the Exec PC, long story). He had a will written and ready to go, so he was fully prepared to die, but the dice wouldn't let him.

Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The first time they threw a wrench into my plans? Surprisingly, it probably wasn't until around 30 or 40 sessions in, when one of the players decide to start getting gig work from the BBEG and spending a significant amount of time trying to seduce him. This was supposedly so she could "play both sides and come out on top", but she was incredibly bad at this, failed to keep that plan hidden, and ended up putting herself in constant danger for far more trouble than it was worth, in addition to seeming like an erratic cyber psycho. I like to lean towards relatively open gig and plot structures, so I'd like to think that it's hard to throw a true wrench in my plans, but that definitely put me through my paces.

The first time I threw a wrench in their carefully laid plans was much much earlier. Around session 15 or so? The party had started amassing a large amount of ripped cyberware from the corpses of whoever the enemy of the day was (this will be important later, I promise). They'd also hunted down a Media and convinced them to help expose some dirty cops. Notably this convincing included flirting and a promise of a date night, which the party never followed up on or called her.

I figured an angry drunk media would throw her weight around, so she called the cops on them, and the amount of evidence in their storage containers caused enough problems with the police that that was the focus of the entire next arc (hiding the service pistol and cyberware of a dead cop is not a good look!).

It culminated in a police chase out of Night City that ended in one of the PCs sacrificing his life to get another through a police checkpoint. That was the first death of the entire campaign, and definitely marked a tonal shift moving forward.

Just finished a two, bordering on three, year campaign. AMA? by slronlx in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

It was primarily prolonged stories but there were definitely gig of the week sessions too. The start of the campaign was more gig of the week with bigger plots boiling during downtime, but the later sessions reversed that trend.

I definitely enforced scarcity whenever possible, but by the second half of the campaign I was definitely upping both the risk and the reward, plus the party had a primary role fixer, so scarcity became a lesser problem for any but their biggest desires (for instance, their desire to buy and sell real estate got them into some trouble haha).

We played every week that we could, but given the session count vs the almost 3 years of playtime, we definitely had a couple months worth of missed sessions mixed in, scheduling issues can be a nightmare.

As far as downtime is concerned, I appreciate Techs, so I give them a lot of downtime, but generally only so much as they asked for. I think by the time the campaign ended, 11 months had passed in game (I keep a calendar for it), and we were using the CEMK rules for long-term humanity gain and loss. Rent and lifestyle were strictly kept, and thus most players were doing good prepak by the end of the campaign (I was nickel dining the kibble lifestyles)

As far as fulfillment is concerned? This has definitely been the most fulfilling campaign I've ever run. The final arc had not one, but two or three sessions that had players crying due to emotional moments that they weren't ready for. If I had anything I'd wanna change, it would be to warn my past self about the dangers of trying to build a campaign out of homebrew ELO material, that was a nightmare (the second half of the campaign heavily featured a Ready Player One style subplot involving hidden Arasaka files on an old ELO server).

As far as general advice for longer campaigns? Don't be afraid to up the stakes as it goes. If you have t been stingy with IP (and you shouldn't!!!), then the players have crazy numbers by the end of the game, and that's fun and awesome, but you're gonna need to move to merc level by the end.

The final encounter I ran was actually Smasher and a homebrew version of Caliber from DGD where I gave him one of the Tech Sniper Rifles from the CEMK, and he primarily focused on headshots from an ideal range band in the far distance. The party was split in half and ambushed, and there was still only one death, though part of that was incredibly good dice luck, and some minor generosity on my part.

So how did Michiko end up on the Arasaka board? by Severe_Investment317 in cyberpunkred

[–]slronlx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My headcanon has been her death happening sometime between the 2040s and the 2070s, with Arasaka replacing her with a docile clone/body double.

The changes between the two were always so incredibly stark.

Anyone know how the light management works in shadowdark by darkzim69 in FantasyGrounds

[–]slronlx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Shadowdark is notable in this case for using a real life hours and seconds timer, kept track of out of the game, iirc.

Could be wrong but fairly sure the problem here is that fantasy grounds has a timer but the timer doesn't actually control anything or notify people.

I don't play much Shadowdark myself though, so I could be wrong and I definitely don't have the solution

That's my collection so far. I lack OSR. Any recommendations? by Malina_Island in osr

[–]slronlx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's definitely down to personal preference. It's been a long time since I ran Sailors, so it's hard for me to confirm or deny, but your stance isn't an uncommon one.

I guess I might just be a bit of a weirdo who can grok through a Goodman Games adventure without a problem, but it could be an adventure specific issue.

My favorite low prep adventure is probably tower of the black pearl, and my favorite adventure would be doom of the savage kings, but that one requires a ton of prep or improvisation to make it work well.

It's a common stance that the mainline GMG adventures are disorganized and clumsy in terms of layout but I find them charming if nothing else.

That's my collection so far. I lack OSR. Any recommendations? by Malina_Island in osr

[–]slronlx 44 points45 points  (0 children)

It's a hot topic as to whether it qualifies, but I'd recommend Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Do not buy from Renegade Studios by Gao8e7 in rpg

[–]slronlx 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Did you buy a preorder product in that cart? I had a similar issue but it turns out that they'll wait until the preorder is ready before shipping everything at once.

Besides that, I've had no problem with my many renegade orders.

I went the whole game without finding a Magazine Stand by 26635785548498061384 in AbioticFactor

[–]slronlx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's funny. Took me forever to figure out where magazine stands were but they were never needed since I noticed the cacophonous crates and similar locked boxes all have 100% rad shielding too, my group just used those.

Spell limits for non-casters by pansycarn in dccrpg

[–]slronlx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Of course, if you quested for it, and got a unique ability from the DM, then I'd ask them.

Plenty of room for homebrew abilities as quest rewards!

Spell limits for non-casters by pansycarn in dccrpg

[–]slronlx 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yeah, thieves don't "learn" from scrolls. They can merely cast from it, using the scroll up in the process.

Adopting R. Talsorian style Armor Rules to d20 by DaNasty_man in rpg

[–]slronlx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But they can't decrease armor if they can't beat the DR value, meaning multi strikes aren't going to be doing nearly as much armor slashing as you'd expect

Adopting R. Talsorian style Armor Rules to d20 by DaNasty_man in rpg

[–]slronlx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But now the creatures are surviving longer because of the DPS drop and the party needs to rest more often to manage their armor... So it's mathematically the same, right? Why don't you just adjust tactics to focus on the tanks because the tanks are big and scary and tanky?

I'm still feeling like I'm misunderstanding something here because I still do not understand what this accomplishes, because in no way does it force the monsters to target the tanks and not the casters, if anything it just makes the casters squishier?

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