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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Erik S Jameson <esj@***.UUG.ARIZONA.EDU>
Subject: Power gamers and Astral quests
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 1995 17:19:20 -0700
Okay, I think our group down here in the armpit of the world, Tucson, AZ,
has figured out a way to bring power gamers, or anyone else with powerful
characters (earned or not) back down to earth, and make things difficult.

Astral Quests.

Seriously. As most of you know, HB involves a complicated, strange
astral quest. Sometimes your gear is with you, sometimes you can cast
spells, sometimes not. For your own campaign, now and again, throw the
PCs into the metaplanes and watch the fun. Feel free to design as wierd
a metaplane as you want, feel free to take away watever items and goodies
you feel you have to to hamstring the PCs and actually force them to do
someting OTHER than kill everything in site. Right now, our group is on
a run being GMed by the GREAT Cornholio (who should be back here soon),
and we went to a place called "Hopelessness." We spent something like an
hour and a half talking and role-playing, trying to figure out what we
had to do to get the hell out of there. We only killed one person, and
that was merely a way for us to find an answer. We hardly rolled any
dice the entire evening, and killed only one person. And this is
EXTREMELY unusual for us. And you know what? We still have "Despair",
"Anarchy", and another one to go before we are near finishing.

The really strange thing is, despite the fact we all love to shoot-em-up,
and blow everything in sight up, we are also loving this current
adventure. Hell, my next turn at GMing the group will involve some
astral quests now...

This might now always work, but it is working beautifully for us. It's a
great change of pace, and I think some other people out there might also
be able to use the idea.

Erik, a.k.a. the Whistler

"33+10d6 ain't much good if your only weapon is your bare fist and you're
going up against a Shoggoth..."
Message no. 2
From: Andrew <wadycki@***.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Power gamers and Astral quests
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 1995 11:55:07 -0600
On Fri, 3 Feb 1995, Erik S Jameson wrote:

> Okay, I think our group down here in the armpit of the world, Tucson, AZ,
> has figured out a way to bring power gamers, or anyone else with powerful
> characters (earned or not) back down to earth, and make things difficult.
>
> Astral Quests.
>

Astral quests are also good for one-on-ones with magicians. I had a mage
who wanted to learn a higher manaball spell, so he tried to find a
teacher. The teacher turned out to be a theorist hermatic who needed a
favor. He was missing a page from a grimoire he was studying. I had the
teacher preform some wierd ritual on the character and send him on some
sort of astral quest to the past. The neat thing with astral quests is
you don't have to say if it really is the past, or just a copy. The
character was adventureing around in midieval Europe looking for the book
and the page. Makes for great role-playing. Ever have to explain to a
king what you are doing in his lands?

-Andrew
Message no. 3
From: Gurth <gurth@******.NL>
Subject: Re: Power gamers and Astral quests
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 12:46:40 +0100
>Makes for great role-playing. Ever have to explain to a
>king what you are doing in his lands?

You can make it even better by letting him have all sorts of stuff that
doesn't exist in the time the character is supposed to be -- give him a gun
if he's in ancient Greece, for instance. And let everybody ask him why he's
dressed like that :)


Gurth@******.nl - Gurth@***.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
(Always in for silly ideas)
Geek Code v2.1: GS/AT/! -d+ H s:- !g p?(3) !au a>? w+(+++) v*(---) C+(++) U
P? !L !3 E? N++ K- W+ -po+(po) Y+ t(+) 5 !j R+(++)>+++$ tv+(++) b+@ D+(++)
B? e+ u+@ h! f--(?) !r(--)(*) n---->!n y?

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Thwap!