Table top adventure ideas

[animeshon]

So I've been nagging the boys I D&D with for a while to try something different. Next year is my last year at uni and I won't be able to commit to our regular fortnightly sessions so they've agreed to play a whole host of one-off adventures in various game systems other than D&D. That being said they want us to take it in turns to DM (or GM as the case is). I have been playing D&D for about 20 years now (I started real young) but I've never actually been a DM.

Anyone have any suggestions for a nice easy adventure to try in one of the other game systems. I'm kinda interested in Scion or one of the World of Darkness systems as one of the boys is doing a homebrew post-apocalyptic/Fallout type adventure, another is doing Dark Heresy and the third is doing Mutants and Monsters.

Comments

Try this...

[ysabetwordsmith]

If you want something radically different from D&D, I highly recommend small-press games.

Atomic Sock Monkey Press has several games in different genres, sharing a very simple and elegant game engine. Dead Inside is kind of dark fantasy; Truth & Justice is whimsical superhero action. They even have some stripped-down versions you can download free.
http://www.atomicsockmonkey.com/

More complex, but utterly fascinating, is World Tree, a high-magic fantasy:
http://www.world-tree-rpg.com/

Re: Try this...

[animeshon]

Thanks for those. I don't think I'll be able to get the guys to buy into World Tree but some of the Atomic Sock Monkey Press stuff sounded pretty good :)

[lassarina]

I really don't recommend the prebuilt Scion stuff; the flavor of the game is amazing but the mechanics really start falling apart, especially with Epic Attributes. My partner and I are working on houseruling it into effectiveness but it's taking a while.

On the other hand the prebuilt adventures for World of Darkness Changeling and Vampire are quite good, and the free demo for Exalted (Return to the Tomb of 5 Corners) was fun even for veteran Exalted players.

[animeshon]

Oh thanks for that. I'm a bit disapointed about the Scion stuff as the world sounded really interesting. Let me know what you come up with for houserules!

I might give WoD Changeling a read, I think Exalted uses a few too many d10 from memory.

[lassarina]

If you're looking for small numbers of d10s, you don't want any White Wolf-based system. Scion and Exalted use roughly comparable giant whacking handfuls of dice (which, for me at least, is part of the fun! Listen to them clatter as they all rattle down on the table! I mean, mostly I hate rolling dice, because it means I didn't roleplay enough/well, but if I HAVE to it should at least make an awesome noise while I'm doing it.) Even the World of Darkness games involve, typically, between 3 and 7 d10s for any given pool.

Scion is a gorgeous world, and a beautifully designed setting, and lots of fantastic stuff. The real problem is Epic Attributes, which quickly render a character not explicitly stacked for the situation at hand completely useless, particularly when it comes to Epic Dexterity (where, functionally, you are out of the fight without at least 3 dots of it if ANYONE ELSE in the fight has those 3 dots.) Scion rapidly devolves into situations where half the party sits round twiddling their thumbs, while the other half shows off (comparable to bringing the bard and cleric to a fancy dress ball where you want to impress the king, while the barbarian sulks in the corner.)

For our gaming group, having half (or more) of the group be useless (but, in combat, super squishy and likely to die) in any given situation is absolutely untenable. YMMV.

[animeshon]

Ahhh well if everyone needs lots of d10 I guess I'll just have to suck it up and buy some more!

I can see where Scion falls down there. There is nothing more boring than sitting on your ass during combat. I'm playing a pacifist cleric in an Eberron campaign at the moment and combat bored the crap out of me until our DM ramped up the bad guys and I basically had to start running around healing everyone from the second round. Before that I basically just hid somewhere and didn't do anything for the hour or so combat generally took. Talk about a dud!

[lassarina]

I have a massive d10 collection, but in our Exalted game we get by with about 10 per person (I usually bring 16 just because those dice love me to a possibly unfair degree; I don't use them when GMing.) Figure out how many you're going to roll, roll the first (number available), set aside/make a note of successes, continue until you hit the number of dice you need. :)

Partner and I have discussed it and have determined that, statistically, the best way to "fix" Epic Attributes in Scion is probably to make them grant extra dice instead of extra successes (comparable to the Arete Boon available to Dodekatheon Scions, which is a whole 'nother can of broken worms); this makes it more reasonable for Scions and NPCs of differing Legend scores to face off. (Partner is an engineer and ran all manner of simulations in Excel that made my eyes glaze over, but this is the executive summary of the results.)

[animeshon]

Sounds viable. I will have to give a whirl when we finally get around to it. I've decided I'm going to be running an Exalted adventure first up. We're having a GMs meeting on Sunday to create characters for our campaigns seeing as these are all just going to be one-off one-day campaigns with fairly new players.

Any tips for a good Exalted adventure to start with?

[lassarina]

I really enjoyed Return to the Tomb of 5 Corners, which was the second-edition demo and includes all the basics of the rules, lots of combat and noodling around, comes with a pretty decent set of prebuilt characters, and is free from DriveThruRPG so you can dip your toes in without having to take a monetary plunge if you decide it's not for you.

If you already have some of the books, though, I find that either An Teng (in the Southwest) or Nexus (in the Scavenger Lands) is a good plan for setting; there's a lot going on. Are you looking to build an adventure from scratch? I have a few skeleton outlines I could toss your way and you could hack around them to personalize for your group.

[animeshon]

For now we are just going to try some pre-packaged stuff. If people are interested in playing some longer campaigns then I would definitely be interested in checking out your outlines.

I might check out Return to the Tomb of 5 Corners when I get home tonight. I've gotten access to some of the books but I'm waiting to see whether people enjoy it before I fork out some cash. Although I really must see if there's somewhere I can buy d10 in bulk. Sadly I only have one set of polyhedral die, and one box of d6!

[lassarina]

Well, there's always Chessex, if you haven't got a local gaming store--although I see from your profile that you're in New Zealand, so any links I'd have are likely very worthless to you. (Chessex, though, does offer shipping outside the US, although it's at-cost and may be pricey.)

[animeshon]

Thanks I'll check them out. We are really limited for actual stores and end up buying most of our stuff online from the US and the UK. Shipping is the killer of course, but it usually still works out cheaper than buying from ToyWorld

[animeshon]

I am so in love with Exalted now! At least one of the boys enjoyed it as much as me so I think I'm going to work on developing a longer campaign for them seeing as GM-ing wasn't as scary as I thought it was going to be :)

[lassarina]

Oh, I'm so glad you all enjoyed it! If you want, I have a short-list of "highly recommended books for a GM"--you can acquire them for reasonably inexpensive in e-book.

[animeshon]

Oh I would love a short-list of what to read. There is just so much!

[lassarina]

Obviously you want the corebook. I highly recommend Wonders of the First Age for badass artifacts, and Oadenol's Codex for hearthstones, Thaumaturgy, and how to invent your own nifty artifacts. If you plan to have a sorcerer, Black and White Treatises are invaluable, offering 10x or more the options in the corebook (and sorcery makes for fantastic plot devices as well as totally sweet characters).

Otherwise: the directional books are some tasty fluff, so if you know (for example) that you're going to set your game in the East, you might want The Scavenger Lands or The East, depending on how far East you plan on being. I love the setting books, but if you plan to build your own setting whole cloth, more power to you!

Antagonists: it depends on what you're planning to do. The Storyteller's Companion offers some prebuilt antagonist packages and a rundown of basic Charms for each Exalt type, although you should be aware that it came out before any of the Exalt-type books and a lot has changed, but it'll definitely get you started. If you know you want your players to be outsmarting the Realm, then the Dragon-Blooded book is your friend. If you plan to conquer the Deathlords, you'll want the Abyssals book. Etc.

So I'd say the three sorcery books from the first paragraph, a directional book (East, South, etc.) if you think it'll help you with the setting, and an antagonist book would definitely get you started solidly. (I own, uh, everything ever written for Exalted, and that's what I keep on hand whenever I'm running.)

If you plan on having a martial artist, Scroll of the Monk is a fabulous resource. You can avoid Scroll of Kings unless you plan to be running massive armies in war games, though.

[animeshon]

Thanks for this :) I am sure I will end up owning everything as I much prefer to read books either in print or on my kindle. PDFs on the computer just aren't the same! I was thinking of doing an order through BookDepository in the new year for the corebook at least, but I might try and grab some extra stuff too. I probably won't have much chance to run my campaign until November next year with all my study, but I want to have things underway.

At the moment I'm leaning towards adapting an anime story line, at least the basic idea behind it. But I have to pick one to begin with!

[lassarina]

Ultimately I do recommend having all the antagonist books, partly because they're monstrously fun and also because one of the greatest things about Exalted is that every group is right, from its own perspective, and every perspective has things to recommend it. Which I love forever about Exalted. (The "Roll of Glorious Divinity" volumes 1 & 2 is lots of fun, too, being full of demons and spirits.)

White Wolf's PDFs are surprisingly readable on a computer, and have the advantage of being fully searchable, but I totally understand wanting it in print. My partner and I share an ebook library, but I bought everything in hardcopy. :D

[animeshon]

Yeah I got a few of the pdfs, but I have to shrink it pretty far to be able to fit the whole page on the screen which annoys me!

[lassarina]

That's my major annoyance, too. I eventually made myself get used to scrolling, but it is irksome.

[animeshon]

It'll do until I can afford to buy things in print :)