sentry0

I loved Rifts as a kid and even did my own OpenD6 conversion because I found the Savage Worlds adaptation not to my liking. Don't get me wrong, the SW adaptation is really good, I just didn't like some of the things they did. Palladium was not without its charms 😁

Ah yes, new players with grand ambitions that get crushed when they realize an average housecat in D&D has a decent chance of murdering them because they're level 1 and rolled crap for HP 🙄

Sounds like Davien and the player from my post would have gotten along nicely. Let's call the guy from my post Wolf. Wolf was a total rules lawyer and meta-gamer extraordinaire who was also a DM when he wasn't wrecking other people's campaigns. Like Davien, Wolf had near encyclopedic knowledge of game systems and would find ways to circumvent them when it served him. Unlike Davien (as described), Wolf was an egotistical jackass who thought he was smarter than everyone. He was content to lie and manipulate people as his modus operandi and it was sickening to see him in motion. I had to intervene one time because he bullied a player from the table by insulting him and deliberately pushing his buttons. To be fair, Wolf was a bright guy. Unfortunately, he was stuck being a part time janitor (Wolf was older than us by a good 5 years and out of highschool) and not the benevolent dictator he could have been. All a little sad really, pitiable even. Fun story, one time I was running this Darksun module for the guys that Wolf had lent me. He assured me he had only skimmed it and didn't remember much, I didn't really believe that but I also didn't care because it was a one-shot. Anyways, he split off from the party at one point to go investigate a path they chose not to follow. It just so happened that there was a Thri-Kreen at the end of this path that he engaged. He was close enough to see over my screen and saw me roll a critical hit that would have ended his shiznit but I instead chose to incapacitate him. After the session Wolf wanted to know why I ignored the Crit and didn't do him in. I told him it was because it was more important to me that people had fun and played together than blindly obeying the dice. I'm a soft touch I guess but I just didn't want him all moody and down because his awesome new character that he spent more time making than actually playing would have got iced. The thing about Wolf and people like him is they always get found out eventually and exposed for what they are, small and mean spirited. It may take a long time but I firmly believe this. Everyone knew Wolf was the way he was but no one could or would call him out on it because of some weird group politics that was a combination of apathy and fear. Fear that this jackwagon would turn his attention to the and bully them away from the table next. Apathy because we were all stupid teenagers in the 90s and that was just en vogue at the time 😂 Anyways, where Davien seemed harmless I can assure you Wolf was not. He had a very real and very negative effect on the people around him, sometimes just because it amused him.

You could put a limitation on either power that it "Requires a modified INT/Skill check vs target sensor" to simulate that it's harder for you to tap into a secured system. An unsecured sensor grid may be at a +1-3 while a Dr. Destroyer base could be at a -10.

I can see this having some value for a convention style game where it's a bunch of strangers getting together for the first time. I doubt a group of IRL friends would have a lot of use for it. Remember this - https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/06/rpg-shocking-inappropriate-behavior-at-ukge-the-importance-of-consent-in-games.html?. It could have potentially been avoided if something like this was in place.

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I'll start... Back in the 90s in high school I was in a Vampire: The Masquerade game being run with a group of friends. One of my friends, the GM, was a little older than us and needed to travel to Germany for school so he handed the reigns over to me. We did a quick knowledge transfer session and went our separate ways. When I started running the game I found out that one of the players had been amassing a small army of illegally created vamps. Not only that but he had access to military grade equipment and had some personal body guards that were always hiding nearby that were serious badasses. He started to launch his campaign to overthrow the local Prince shortly after we started playing. I naively went along with all of this as this particular player assured me that the previous GM know all about this and had sanctioned it. Fast forward a few terrible months and my friend returns from Germany. We reconnect and talk about the game and much to my surprise I learn that this player had been lying to me the entire time. I was furious at him for lying to me and ashamed of myself for being gullible enough to believe him. So, I had a huge mess on my hands to clean up. I think I was like 17 at the time so I didn't have a lot of coping skills so my solution was to have one titanic battle of a session that ran to 6am where I completely and utterly dismantled this player, his organization, and his lies. In retrospect, I should have just told him to make a new character or just threw him from the game but as I mentioned, I didn't have a good set of coping skills at the time. I'd also be lying if I said 17 year old me didn't enjoy it.

Let's face it, we've all had experiences as players and GMs that have left us shocked, horrified, angry, and/or confused... maybe all those things at once. I know that over the couple of decades of gaming I've done I have certain memories that still make me twitch when they come to mind. I propose that this thread be used to share some of those memories so that we can get them off our chest and strategize with one another about dealing with these problems in case some else is experiencing them or something similar. This thread may also be used by people currently experiencing difficult challenges from players or GMs to seek out advice on how to deal with the situation. The Rules No real names Offer a possible solution to the problem or explain what you did to combat the problem Keep feedback constructive and positive

The type of effect described by the OP would be pretty problematic in most campaigns, certain types of villains probably wouldn't have security equipment like your rampaging monster or mystic villain. I would fully expect that any self respecting modern villain would have a security sensor or 2 to protect their diabolical base... the smart ones who knew who they were tangling with would have them removed I guess. Neat power but it's the kind of power that would give me a headache as a GM, kind of like Telepathy or extreme enhanced senses do. It makes certain scenarios very challenging to pull off or even outright impossible. It is a Stop sign power for a reason I guess

I think you can simplify this a bit by starting with Clairsentience as your base power with a limitation that it only works through cameras/sensors. I personally would give it 1/4 or maybe 1/2 limitation value if anything given the relative ubiquitous nature of sensors in our world today, let alone the near future. Strictly speaking, Clairsentience doesn't provide you with telescopic or microscopic vision. Perhaps a small VPP would make sense in this scenario. One that only works with your Clairsentience and only to mimic the sensor you're looking through.

Like many systems, designing an encounter is part art and part science. I've had my players tear through an encounter I thought was hard because of some lucky die rolls and other that were nailbiters when they really shouldn't have been. Campaign baselines are critical to make this work. You need to know what is considered average in order to make any of this work IMO. Generally speaking your average mook encounter should have lower CV and lower damage than the player average while an even super encounter would have about equal. Sometimes that means dialing up CVs and attacks , sometimes that means dialing them down. It's something that comes with time and experience and is most hard at the start of a campaign when you don't know all the PCs as well as you will in a few sessions. Some players may have a nasty power that slipped by you in character creation that trivializes content, someone may be underpowered... It's challenging but my advice is: Make sure you understand what your characters can do Go slow, setup a few mook encounters and get a feel for what your players can do Don't be afraid about dialing up or down NPCs powers and stats to fit into your world Design a variety of encounter types, not every encounter needs to be against equally powered foes Use your campaign baselines as a guideline to figure out if someone is less or more powerful than the players Hope that helps... I know it's not as black and white as in some systems but it can be done.

Looks amazing, great work

I just wanted to give a quick update about the last week of development... good news and bad news I guess. The good news is that I have enough of a working application to start an alpha test. A special thank you to all the people who signed up! I'll have something available for Android and iOS within the next day or so. The "bad" news is that World of Warcraft Classic has stolen my free time! Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I'm working on balancing my free time between WoW and developing the app (and being a husband somewhere in there too )... I'm not going to lie, WoW killed my forward velocity on this project. I am still committed to making this thing work though and will find the time to get it done. More info to come once I get alpha test launched.

Yes, in fact I now have experience writing code that will scale properly based on device size from another app I wrote. It's unlikely that I will be doing much more than scaling it, to start. In the future, I may write screen size specific screens but that would be sometime off in the future, if ever.