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Either madness or mad genius
02-13-2014, 12:14 AM
So I've been enjoying some of the 'Dungeon Crawler' fics posted on Spacebattles. A guy dropped into Sailor Moon with abilities based on an Anima character build out. A guy dropped into the Buffy universe in the guise of one of his Champions character builds. One of our own, Vulpine Fury, has Giving It the Old College Try, in which a guy finds himself at Illuminati University with abilities based on a GURPS build...
Watching these I've been getting tempted to try one too. Only I've been getting tempted to try doing one in which the system and setting are mismatched. Like say Buffy & Golden Sky Stories, or Worm and Toon (well, at least a Toon character would have a survival advantage in the Worm universe). As the title says, it seems to me this is either madness or mad genius.
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You forgot the Dark Heresy psyker in Mass Effect. One of the best of them, in my opinion.
Also, why must it be one or the other? I SAY BOTH!
(Go for it. ^_^)
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish by dropping a psyker in a nonWarp universe... even if it had a Warp it wouldn't really matter as intelligent life it systematically offed at regular intervals. Kind of nerfs the effectiveness.. You'd get what, a guy herding drunken Krogan?
Honestly, I'm confuse as to what 'Worm' is... the reason being that the name popped up around here a month ago. I don't think its from the old goofy strategy game either. No one ever describes anything about it. Toon from what little I've heard is basically a way to get immortal... basically someone to drop in Warhammer 40k and have no one able to kill him or hold him for long.
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The real question you should be asking is what type of story do you want to have. Comedic? Desperate survival? One of stealth verses the Megacorp? Its all fine and good to have a 'mismatched powers with universe' thing going... but what kind of story are you writing. So far all I can suggest is one where MC is surviving thru bizarre uses of powers that would be Out Of Context issues or nonsensical in universe abilities.
I'd need more of an idea what your going for to give more advice.
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Worm, a doorstopper of a story that does to superheros what Evangellion did to giant robots. It recently became the hot thing over at Spacebattles and also reached its final conclusion. Tropes page here for a summary.
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad. In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.
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Quote:Necratoid wrote:
Honestly, I'm confuse as to what 'Worm' is... the reason being that the name popped up around here a month ago. I don't think its from the old goofy strategy game either. No one ever describes anything about it. Toon from what little I've heard is basically a way to get immortal... basically someone to drop in Warhammer 40k and have no one able to kill him or hold him for long.
Worm: http://parahumans.wordpress.com/
An immense (and complete) web novel about a teenage girl who gains bug control powers in a superhero setting. Very dark and depressing. Most of the good guys aren't particularly good and some of the bad guys are positively demonic in their sadism.
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Quote:LilFluff wrote:
Watching these I've been getting tempted to try one too. Only I've been getting tempted to try doing one in which the system and setting are mismatched. Like say Buffy & Golden Sky Stories, or Worm and Toon (well, at least a Toon character would have a survival advantage in the Worm universe). As the title says, it seems to me this is either madness or mad genius.
Yeah, I've seen those fics and found them to be moderately interesting. Provided the SI doesn't know anything about the world they're getting dumped into, doesn't have a premade character sheet on hand and has a strict character creation time limit, I'd be tempted to go with the Aberrant system. Fast and easy creation process with enough potential power to let you handle anything short of a truly extreme death world. Eufiber 5, Mega-Stamina 5, Mega-Strength 1, Teleport 1 gives you basic defense, offense and escape with a few points left over. As an added bonus, you can evolve new powers in response to whatever you run into.
The only negatives are the potential for accumulating high levels of mutative Taint (which is quite easy to avoid) and the possibility that you wind up becoming the boogeyman that everyone else unites against.
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TOON in Worm... Hmmm.
For shits and giggles, do proper random-roll character creation straight from the red book.
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The GURPS Dungeon Crawler is, appropriately for IOU, Give It the Odd College Try.
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Deadpan29 Wrote:Worm, a doorstopper of a story that does to superheros what Evangellion did to giant robots. Wow, that actually makes it so much clearer why I get Nope-y feeings whenever I think "Some of this fanfic has been pretty awesome, I should check out the original!"
I did that with Evangelion, bought the boxed DVD set, and discovered that I hated the original so much I ritually microwaved the discs one after the next. Still don't regret it, even with a list as long as my arm of other stuff I could have spent that $120 on.
Worm fics, well, I've been checking out the crossover elements, because anything that turns that kind of grimderp awesome is worth a closer look.
Poking around looking at new RPGs (the ones available as free PDFs, anyway, like OpenD6, Dungeons the Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition, Thrash, Eclipse Phase, and (via mechanical translator from Brazilian Portugese, which is occasionally funny but more often baffling) 3D&T Alpha) was what moved me to knock out my own pastiche of a relatively lightweight game core as seen in the YAPPY thread (I should be ashamed... I've fallen to the Dicepool side of the Force...) though several variations on Dungeon Crawl story/system/character ideas have bubbled through my mind as well.
To get back to LilFluff's actual point, as long as you can mesh the mechanics well enough to get the story told, genre mismatch sounds like a fine idea to me.
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Okay, I just did a Random Roll for Taylor Hebert as a "Dungeon Crawler Protagonist" in TOON and I got "Ant" for her race.
Muscle: 4
Zip: 4
Smarts: 6
Chutzpah: 4
Wow, those are great rolls, for TOON.
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The fact that you rolled "Ant" amuses me greatly. Wasn't there ... yeah, one of the scenarios in the red book is called "Ant Misbehavin'" - I don't remember the details though, and Little Dog is currently dozing in my lap, so I couldn't possibly get up and grab my copy to check.
What are you thinking for her Schticks? Going to keep Bug Control?
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Another entertaining way to run it is to put the setting in one of those worlds where (insert random nonviolent competitive event) is the Only Thing That Matters (Hikaru no Go, Prince of Tennis, or whatever) or even in a setting that's more or less purely social with a character built as an aberrant indestructable tank or whatnot.
Also, terrible crossover - Hikaru no Naku Koro Ni
For that matter, I notice that all of the dungeon crawlers to date that partook of a recognizable world did so straight - no crossovers, no altverses - nothing like that. This has meant that those protagonists that knew what the deal was with their destination (the gurps/buffy, the shadowrun/ME, the DH/ME, the Anima/SM) came out the gate with a lot of highly accurate information with which to make long-term plans. Having a world that presented initially as a recognizable world, but then had a major crossover or altverseness that revealed at just the right tim to really mess with the protagonist would be cool, and it could let you double-dip on one of the more the awesome bits of Dungeon Crawlers - that bit at the beginning where the protagonist is doing terribly risky things in a desperate scramble to power up fast enough to maybe be able to take the next terrifying foe that shows up.
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Quote:ClassicDrogn wrote:
The fact that you rolled "Ant" amuses me greatly. Wasn't there ... yeah, one of the scenarios in the red book is called "Ant Misbehavin'" - I don't remember the details though, and Little Dog is currently dozing in my lap, so I couldn't possibly get up and grab my copy to check.
What are you thinking for her Schticks? Going to keep Bug Control?
That was the idea. For giggles, I was going to make her "Case 53" include a little golden crown that she can't seem to get rid of. Taylor still has her serious motivations and goals. However, she's going to Boggle a lot of folks with her "world rules" she goes by.
I'm trying to decide if she's a teeny ant like Atom Ant or the Ant from the Ant and the Aardvark cartoons, or if she's a HUGE (for an ant) 3-4-foot-tall "only an ant because she's got antennae, an extra pair of arms, and wings and the crown."
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To be fair, Atom Ant was only an ant because he had a pair of antennae - he didn't even have four arms, and his face looked more like a monkey. I think I'd go for the arms, antennae, and a smooth exoskeleton, but keep her human size (or nearly so) and proportions, and just make her face more angular since it only flexes at hinge lines in the exoskeleton, without drastically changing the features. Ants are fuzzy little buggers when you look at them under a microscope, so she could even keep her hair. If not, well, there's always a wig, especially if she saves her real hair and gets it embedded in a skullcap.
She may also start wearing skirts exclusively, to avoid the "ants in pants" puns. Tops will be a bit tricky, though a sleeveless tee with extra slits in the sides could do for a start until there's time to get something more elaborate worked out. I doubt human body modesty would let her go around in just chitin, even if it's full-coverage as far as a visual inspection can tell. Along with the swarm control, I'd suggest some moderate super-strength and the ability to wall-climb (even when the surface should not logically support a human's body weight) since they're pretty iconic ant abilities. Wings, well, I suppose she is ant royalty after all, but they're not what I think of when I think of ants, and she is a Dungeon CRAWLer Protagonist, not a Dungeon Flier Protagonist.
What would a dungeon flier be, anyway? An advertisement to lure in some more of those yummy adventurers with the promise of treasures undreamed of? The basements of a cloud castle? Stirges? Maybe just the "Garn'teed acc'erate, guv'nor" maps the mumbling possibly-a-man with the peculiarly intense odor sells in the alley at the low end of the market square.
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Quote:Sirrocco wrote:
Another entertaining way to run it is to put the setting in one of those worlds where (insert random nonviolent competitive event) is the Only Thing That Matters (Hikaru no Go, Prince of Tennis, or whatever) or even in a setting that's more or less purely social with a character built as an aberrant indestructable tank or whatnot.
Also, terrible crossover - Hikaru no Naku Koro Ni
For that matter, I notice that all of the dungeon crawlers to date that partook of a recognizable world did so straight - no crossovers, no altverses - nothing like that. This has meant that those protagonists that knew what the deal was with their destination (the gurps/buffy, the shadowrun/ME, the DH/ME, the Anima/SM) came out the gate with a lot of highly accurate information with which to make long-term plans. Having a world that presented initially as a recognizable world, but then had a major crossover or altverseness that revealed at just the right tim to really mess with the protagonist would be cool, and it could let you double-dip on one of the more the awesome bits of Dungeon Crawlers - that bit at the beginning where the protagonist is doing terribly risky things in a desperate scramble to power up fast enough to maybe be able to take the next terrifying foe that shows up.
I need to read the rules more, but part of my amusement with the idea of giving someone Golden Sky Story stats and dropping them in a world like the Buffyverse is that from what I've read so far GSS animal henge don't do combat. Argue or bicker, sure. Fight? Nope. You get some nifty powers (for example, a cat henge can walk immediately between two scenes even if they're taking place simultaneously on opposite sides of the town) at the cost of having nonexistent combat skills.
And because if don't as a SI any world I'd pick would be one I'm familiar with, yeah either have it turn out to be a surprise cross or alternaverse just to screw with advance knowledge ("What the... if this is Buffyverse why did I just see ads for both Stark Industries *and* Swift Enterprises?").
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Quote:ClassicDrogn wrote:
What would a dungeon flier be, anyway? An advertisement to lure in some more of those yummy adventurers with the promise of treasures undreamed of? The basements of a cloud castle? Stirges? Maybe just the "Garn'teed acc'erate, guv'nor" maps the mumbling possibly-a-man with the peculiarly intense odor sells in the alley at the low end of the market square.
A dungeon flier is what your character finds if they get dropped into the world of X-Crawl (D&D 3/3.5 alternate fantasy Earth setting in which dungeon crawling is a major televised 'sport', like some mad blend of LARPing and professional wrestling). So remember you're on camera and don't damage the plaster 'tunnel walls', the DJ hates it when you ruin the illusion like that and might send a deadlier monster after you. "Next up on ESPN, highlights from last nights Phoenix Crawl, find out why this team's sorcerer is aiming a crossbow at his own teammate..." (Ooh that was a fun moment, especially because the other players forgot just what I'd purchased before the first session a month earlier).
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Quote:Sirrocco wrote:
Another entertaining way to run it is to put the setting in one of those worlds where (insert random nonviolent competitive event) is the Only Thing That Matters (Hikaru no Go, Prince of Tennis, or whatever) or even in a setting that's more or less purely social with a character built as an aberrant indestructable tank or whatnot.
Yeah, a genre mismatch like that is amusing, but it is also a reason why I went specifically with the Aberrant system. Six experience points buys the first rank of a new Mega-Attribute, and the rules state that when someone with a Mega-Attribute gets into an opposed roll with someone who has a lower/no Mega-Attribute, the guy with the Mega-Attribute wins. Get dumped in Hikaru no Go? Buy Mega-Intelligence and/or Wits 1. Prince of Tennis? Mega-Dexterity 1. 
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Shepherd Wrote:Quote:Sirrocco wrote:Another entertaining way to run it is to put the setting in one of those worlds where (insert random nonviolent competitive event) is the Only Thing That Matters (Hikaru no Go, Prince of Tennis, or whatever) or even in a setting that's more or less purely social with a character built as an aberrant indestructable tank or whatnot.
Yeah, a genre mismatch like that is amusing, but it is also a reason why I went specifically with the Aberrant system. Six experience points buys the first rank of a new Mega-Attribute, and the rules state that when someone with a Mega-Attribute gets into an opposed roll with someone who has a lower/no Mega-Attribute, the guy with the Mega-Attribute wins. Get dumped in Hikaru no Go? Buy Mega-Intelligence and/or Wits 1. Prince of Tennis? Mega-Dexterity 1. I was about to ask what would happen if you put somebody with a Mega-stat into one of those slice-of-life high-school anime... then I realized that would just be Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
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X-Crawl! I had a copy of that! I kind of half-forgot half-suppressed it because it was one of the things that were lost in the house fire, but that setting (running on less crappy rules) wold be a great one for a Crawlfic, if only because it messes with expectations for a modern world, or a fantasy world, or an urban fantasy world, all at once. Taking it a level further by giving the character a "Class" that's mostly fluff and the rest kayfabe while running it in a system free of class and level restrictions would just make it all the better. Then when the SI thinks he's got this stuff figured out, Emperor Reagan has a stroke and is replaced by (insert name here) who cracks down on the social progress of the last few generations and hit them with the Venusian/Belter rebellion from the Sol Invictus setting in Mekton Mecha Manual 1. Suddenly all X-Crawlers have been drafted into the Legions to defend the Garden Jewel of the Empire against the Provincials (Venus and the Belt, having already usurped the Martian governor) that most modern gamers' sensibilities will align with much more than the ass that wears the crown - in mecha, which even if they include a "scale personal magic up to mecha size" system the character has not been built to pilot at all.
Sheperd: At that point, you're dodging the issue of genre mismatch completely, and just smacking down all opposition with your order-of-magnitude greater power level. Which is also great fun if there's enough of a hatedom to appreciate it, but isn't what I took the intent of the suggestion to be about.
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One of the best ways to fight a munchkin as a DM is to keep making their min maxing irrelevant. They get good at fighting, endless block puzzles that reset if they break things. They take super speed, make the city have endless fragile stuff everywhere and have the MC to busy doing odd jobs (slowly) endlessly to pay for all the random stuff he broke. Get out of the starting slums and goes all high society on you... turns out the threat was in the slums and the media wasn't covering it. Have fun trying to use class and diplomacy on the zombie hoard. Giant robot pilot... meet super heavily armored giant rust beast, it flies and teleports. They get too powerful for the system... this attracts epic level encounters.. and as its MC's fault MC gets the fun of paying for the damages.
In short, the GM (unseen or whatever) has the job of making things difficult for the MC. To keep things interesting. To keep the MC involved.
That was the biggest strength of Gantz for me. After getting nothing, but useless fodder the Gantz in charge of that unit get a super combatant with absolutely no interest in participating. The interplay between Gantz forcing the MC to participate and the MC trying to weasel out of things is the best part.
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Well, fun for the GM maybe, but frustrating for the player trying to do what he thinks is cool, and doubly so for the rest of the party getting splattered by the collateral damage. I make no euphemisms or apologies about being into optimizing, but the thing is I try to help everyone's character look awesome, because what's the point of a party if you aren't all working together (both IC and around the table) to tell an amazing story? Player vs. GM games never end well, and it's worse if it's one guy messing things up for everyone.
Granted, there's more lenience on that with the solo SI/character insertee in prose format, but unless you're going to have a villain protagonist that the audience loves to hate and cheers to see frustrated, those kind of shenanigans will get old pretty quick.
Edit: to be more specific, if my character concept is a robot pilot, I told the GM and he approved a giant robot pilot, and then bang, giant rust monster, my pilot is now on the ground poking things with sticks like a neobarb, I would just leave the game, because that kind of assholery is a major warning flag.
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Shameless double post go!
You know what would be an awesome place to have one of these dungeon crawler SIs show up? The Mass Effect 2 Bad End.
Shepard is dead. Liara, Garrus, Miranda, Jack, Legion, Grunt, everyone except Joker and EDI are dead. This is a galaxy that needs a hero, no matter how munchkin or oddball.
Apologies to LilFluff, for continuing to feed the general Crawlfic bunnies instead of sticking to his(?) Toon/Worm, but I just happened to see this clip and it started jumping up and down on my head like mad.
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edit: I posted in wrong thread.
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Quote:ClassicDrogn wrote:
Quote:Deadpan29 wrote:
Worm, a doorstopper of a story that does to superheros what Evangellion did to giant robots.
Wow, that actually makes it so much clearer why I get Nope-y feeings whenever I think "Some of this fanfic has been pretty awesome, I should check out the original!"
Just to be fair it is actually fairly good up to about Cell 22.4, to that point all the really nasty stuff is purely background, and mostly background of side-characters at that, but starting around there it starts hard shifting from semi-realistic Super Heroes and Villains to Cosmic Horror.
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So having read further into the Golden Sky Stories rules, someone operating under them in a Dungeon Crawler would be at even more of a disadvantage than I first expected.
* You gain your, "do nifty things," points from being in scenes with characters you have relationships with. In normal games that would start as the fellow player-characters and the town. So until the character makes relationships the do-stuff-points economy will be in a depression.
* Oh, and among the things you might want to pay points for? Passing as human. GSS characters default to animal forms, anything else costs points. Points owed in every scene in which you want to be anything other than a regular looking animal.
* And it turns out there are rules for fighting. Which basically start with, "Don't. Seriously, find any other way of solving the problem. Don't resort to violence if you can find any other way." Then gives the fairly simple one roll+stat vs another roll+stat rules. But whether you win or lose you face a consequence, for getting in a fight your relationship with the town drops to the default starting level.
I now actually want to try it even more than before simply for the challenge.
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