RPG Crosstalk

Episode

This episode will drop Friday, December 30th at 4am PT. Discuss!

FTPH: “The last thing you remember was fighting for your life against a dark shadow, then everything was darkness. You open your eyes and find yourself in a bed in a low lit room. A man in priestly robes sees you awake, stands and takes a step towards you. He opens his mouth and...”

The contest is closed for entries on Jan 14, 2012 at 1159pm PT. The prize is a code for a free download of Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniv. Edition.

You should do some tweaks to your microphone settings because you sound louder and your S' and Ps' aren't as severe, but you sound like you are in a tin can. The gauntlet has been dropped and a plot hook will be given.

Speaking of the plot hook, what you used happen exactly in a Vampire video game. It's called Vampire: Redemption and the main character attacks a vampire, is knocked unconious and wakes up in a bed with a nun nursing a bite wound on his neck.

Hmm... I actually have that video game, but haven't played it in several years.

It's a new mic. I'll get it figured out as time goes by and I get the room set up better.

I'm hoping this is the right thread for the FTPH reply. 

The last thing you remember was fighting for your life against a dark shadow, then everything was darkness. You open your eyes and find yourself in a bed in a low lit room. A man in priestly robes sees you awake, stands and takes a step towards you. He opens his mouth and says ...

 ..."theBeasts are free again! You need to die. Monsters!" Followed by him pulling a knife and attacking. After defending themselves, The players find that the room and the lair  they  find themselves in is strangely familiar, and customized to them in some way. What happened? Who was their attacker? How do they get back to their normal lives?

 The Basically the party (or player in aone-PC game) is a party of terrible villains. The Priest who is now attacking tried reform them by forcing memories of a new life upon them. As far as the PCs are concerned This is the life they know now: the only life they remember. The life of being a dashing hero, or perhaps a loving mother and wife. Not one of villainy.

 The players don't even know why the priest gave up on his peculiar form of reformation. Something happened recently.. an incident where their true selves came to the forefront, one of murder and disaster!. The people in the world are reacting to PCs as if they are villains. The police, or guards are after the players. The dregs of society or perhaps a recurring villain they have faced in the past offers them shelter and help. None of their friends exist, or exist in forms that seem implausible or contrary to the life they remember.

As an ongoing plot device, their alter egos come out and do villainous things when they sleep. Maybe play out a combat scene where their alter-egos in the form of shadows come and fight them while they are in a tricky situation.

The end of this story requires the players to make a choice: either hide away from the world, kill themselves, or find some other way to neutralize their villainous alter egos. Maybe they dont, though: Maybe they give in?

It certainly is, Brian! Thanks.

The last thing you remember was fighting for your life against a dark shadow, then everything was darkness. You open your eyes and find yourself in a bed in a low lit room. A man in priestly robes sees you awake, stands and takes a step towards you. He opens his mouth and says ...

“What the h€ll were you drinking last night boy!? Brother Herbert found you donating your lunch to the collection box outside the front gate, when he enquired if you were in need of assistance  you slurred something about being ambushed by shadowy  figures and pounced on him, beat the sh!t out of him, trashed The Sacred Mother’s chapel and passed out in the pig pen! Brother Herbert is eighty four years old you demented, ungodly b@stard! You’re twice his size! And yes as you’ve just noticed you are tied up. Shut your mouth while I tell you about the job you're going to do for the monastery that will in some small way help you to atone for your drunken, violent soul.”

See this as a hook for a fantasy game. Your party has just finished a story line, made a little gold and so celebrated by going to some grotty little pub to get hammered and shout rude things at the barmaid. Make an appropriate skill check and whoever fails wakes up in the above situation.

FTPH ----

Said – “You guys have to be the dumbest people I have ever met. Who set this up? Who installed the VR (virtual reality) machine in the office…? Well whoever did it obviously thought hooking it into the Time and Probability mainframe for more power would be a good idea. Well guess what numb skulls you weren’t playing in a VR world you just went back in time and killed King Arthur now History has been re-written and the world thinks that he and Merlin were just a myth. You were hired to monitor the timeline not mess it up. You have caused a butterfly effect across history.”

“Now while I can’t send you back to fix the problem at the core I have been able to cross reference the new timeline with the correct timeline and have manage to locate a few key points in time where if we can correct them we can set things straight” The man in robes waves his hands in front of some monitors and brings up to timelines that follow the same line and then one veers off and has a number of locations mapped on it. We only have a short amount of time to correct these before the time stasis bubble around this facility corrects it self to match the new current time line. I will stay here and keep in contact with you through this headset but you lot have to go back and fix this mess. First stop is 1912, there was a cruise called the RMS Titanic which was meant to sink, so you have to go back there and do what you have to, to sink that ship.

(if the players argue about it, the man in the robes will bring up a picture of a nice peaceful neighborhood and say “this is where you currently live this is how you remember it right, well this is what it looks like now if you don’t fix the timeline, he waves his hand and shows a decimated city with explosions going off in the background, everyone you know everyone you love is dead because of you.”

GM note: cause of the destruction could be world war or alien invasion whatever the GM likes. The players would play ever session or two in a different time and place correcting what they messed up, sometime the change might be better then the correct history but the players will have to make the choice are they willing to save the live of 1,500 as in the case of the sinking of the titanic to then know it could cause millions of deaths in the future.

FTPH: “The last thing you remember was fighting for your life against a dark shadow, then everything was darkness. You open your eyes and find yourself in a bed in a low lit room. A man in priestly robes sees you awake, stands and takes a step towards you. He opens his mouth and...”

gabbles at you in a language you don't recognise. After a few moments of this he beckons for you to follow and he leads you out of the room into what appears to be a chapel of some kind. Further investigation reveals that the small chapel lies in the middle of a desert. There is a single road that stretches out towards the horizon in two directions. There is nothing else in view and nobody else present at the chapel.

The priest has water and food, the PC's belongings are with them. The players will notice that the sun is close to setting, and if the PCs make to venture out, the priest will attempt to prevent them. Not violently, but it should become apparent that he is afraid. If the PCs stay, the priest will begin boarding up all the windows and doors to the chapel. If the players ask him what he is doing or try to unboard the windows and doors, the priest will panic again, tryign to reboard the doors and windows all the while saying "no muerta" over and over again. (If your players are versed in Spanish, try "mort vivant" (French) or "untoten" (German) ).

The reason for the priest barring the doors and windows is the fact that when night falls, the living dead come to the chapel trying to find a way in.

Provided the players survive the night, the priest will show them to a nearby village (only a handful of survivors still hold out here) one of whom wil be able to translate into a language the player's understand. The translater will be someone the PC's find vaguely familiar (and will later learn or remember that this person IS the 'dark shadow' they encountered. They have been summoned to this location by this person (although they are not aware of this. They simply dreamed of the players) in order to lead the survivors to safety/hope/civilisation. A prophecy may even be involved.

The living dead may be of any type you as the GM prefer. They may instead be aliens, ghosts, lawyers, Nazis or Mutant Blood Sucking Space Gerbils.

The player character do not need to have known one another before the adventure. They do not have to be from the same genre/time period/milieu/setting/world or universe as the setting for your apocalypse.

What the characters ARE however, is CHOSEN. They have been chosen by fate/god/destiny/time as Champions. Saving the survivors of this small desert community is just the first step on what could be an ongoing campaign that allows you and your players to journey through as many various settings and genres as you like while maintaining one overarcing storyline.

Saids in delight, "Ah, good, you're awake! We were just talking about you."

Curious as to what he meant by we, you turn your sight to the other figure near him. From the looks of it, it was another man dressed in a grey trench coat, covered in strange symbols. Most importantly, you notice the symbols all lead to a cross, located where his heart  would be.

"You were very lucky," The man tells you in a cold tone, staring deeply into your eyes, "Not many are able to resist the darkness, let alone survive it."

The man in the grey coat then opens a carrier bag on his right side and reveals a package wrapped in brown paper.

"Seeing that your clothes were ravaged when I blessed the demon away from you, you might want to wear this."

(He tosses the package to you)

"Also," He smirks, "Since you weren't burned alive by touching those holy garments, what say you join me in killing the demon who tried to kill you, eh, Shadow Hunter?"


Hook: After being attacked by a shadow demon, the player is recruited into being a hunter for a religious order. The player remembers very little about their past because the trauma from the attack  blocked out most of their memory. Seeking answers, the player accompanies the hunter on a journey, going from place to place to kill other shadow demons as they try to find the demon who tried to kill the player.

When you want the adventure to end, inform the player that they feel a surge of emotions when confronting the last demon. The feeling gives glimpses of the player's past, moments before they were attack. Allow the player to write their own history about themselves and let the player defeat it. When the demon is defeated, have the ghost of someone that could have been from that player's past emerge from the shadow, as if it had a grudge to find the player. You or the player can insert the reason why the ghost came after them. end scene.

Devon at December 29, 2011 at 3:36 PM

Episode

This episode will drop Friday, December 30th at 4am PT. Discuss!

FTPH: “The last thing you remember was fighting for your life against a dark shadow, then everything was darkness. You open your eyes and find yourself in a bed in a low lit room. A man in priestly robes sees you awake, stands and takes a step towards you. He opens his mouth and...”

 

The contest is closed for entries on Jan 14, 2012 at 1159pm PT. The prize is a code for a free download of Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniv. Edition.

He opens his mouth and says, 'Welcome to hell!'

.

'I am going to give you a choice.  You can take our standard package where you suffer unending torment,' the man says as he waves his hand causing a curtain to part and display thousands of screaming souls in different forms of torment.

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'or you can choose our eternal servitude package where there is a slight chance of redemption and return to your previous life.'

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'The standard 1200 page document is on the table by the bed with a pen.  Don't worry on the ink as the pen uses your soul to provide the ink.'

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'I'm a busy person; so, you have three seconds to decide.  One, two, '

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Submitted Sat Jan 14 at 6:11 PM EST