Hey

Wasn't sure where to put this...but this is a GM forum so i went for here. If i got its placement wrong feel free to move it elsewhere...not that you'd need my permission obviously :p

Anyhooo...I bought Desolation a while back and I've been waiting for the NWoD campaign I'm running to come to an end so i can start off with this setting/system.

I love the read and feel to it...nicely done by game designers.

I always like to run a test game on new systems to give me and the players a feel for things before jumping straight in with a massive campaign. This hopefully gives me insights into how things work and gives the player insights into what there characters can do - when they get a chance to chargen.

My test game i hope to be 4 to 5 sessions. Half of the sessions will be pre-apocalypse, mid session the night of "fun" and the second half afterwards.

I'm expecting 5 to 6 players, ideas so far: -

1. Lord/Prince type - I will encourage this player to be snobbish, arrogant and really appreciate his wealth...and enjoy his life style. In the afterwards of course his skillset will seemingly be useless. Obviously he'll have uses, perhaps talky type skills.

2. Captain of the guard - Will likely just use the supplied Legion guy from the book. His place is provide the muscle for the party, and hopefully be supportive of the Lord/Prince when he presumably gets hassle in the after.

3. Scummy Thief/Poacher type - He will be held in captivity initially and will probably be brought before court and abused for being scum and for doing illegal stuff. Of course later on his uber survival skills will be very much popular with people. I fully expect him and the lord/prince to have plenty of heated discussions

4. Elf - awaiting inspiration

5. ?????

6. ?????

The main idea i have for the Before is that the game will be based around a traveling lord/prince. He will be holding court somewhere, even if its just a large marquee tent. I will encourage excessive flaunting of magic for every purpose. During the evenings festivities Scummy Thief/poacher will be caught doing naughty stuff and brought before the court. He will be humiliated and held in captivity until they can sort out his punishment.

At some point i'll bring in a Gnome to scream seemingly insane things which later on they will wish they'd listened to.

The "night" will be just filled with panic and terror, and the after will be all based on survival and getting by in the early days. I hope for heated debate about whether this Lord/Prince guy should still be ruler...with the Scummy Thief/Poacher being the only guy with decent survival skills - so his opinion will hold a lot of sway. In addition the lack of food stuffs and so putting the Lord/Prince guy in a spot of trouble.

Once this is all done, the real campaign i start will be from this community they create.

Anyhooo i thought i'd share my initial ideas on what I'm planning and will (hopefully) post any addition and share the final idea and how it played out ( if others are interested ).

~Jim

Hullo, Jim,

Welcome to the Desolation game forums! A pleasure to have a new player and GM here, and always great to see folks discovering the joys of the game (even if you've had it for a while!). Just be careful, and watch out for the carrion reapers, they're pretty prevalent around here! Seriously though, you'll find the folks around here very friendly, cooperative, and helpful. Any questions, just ask us.



Nope, I would say that this part of the forums is as good as any to ask questions and get some GMing advice on a game!



Congrats on finally getting to start your Desolation game!



A lot of folks like to do this sort of thing. In all honesty, I run what I consider to be the Introductory Scenario of my game to do the same thing, but it is the first step in the campaign and all. Different folks do it other ways. No big deal. ::shrug::



Sounds like an extremely interesting idea for the prequel to the campaign, and I rather like the basic premise and the player character ideas.

There are two things I would like to say in terms of advice here. The first, is that I would suggest you pay a great deal of attention to the detail on the Night of Fire itself, and the period immediately after it, as noted in the main rulebook, since running the sequences for the Night of Fire and the period immediately after it but before the Long Winter, will definitely shape the player characters a bit more. The Night of Fire is such a huge event, experienced in different way by each player and their characters, that you need to make it special and unique for them.

The second thing that I would advise you is to create their Community for the After with a great deal of care and attention to some of the detail. One of the special elements of the [i}Desolation[/i] game is the Communities, as they are the heart and soul of games set in the After, and can take the shape and form that you (and/or the players) desire. The more love that you give it, the more enjoyment and breathing reality into it the players will get.

Btw, out of curiosity, are you creating the characters for the players, or are they creating their characters?



I would definitely like to see how the final idea on this works out, and would love to see you post about the game, either during the game or when it's all over.

Good luck with the game!

Yeah i intend to make the night very eventful

I will pregen their characters for them. Make sure i have a nice balance and clash of personalities. They don't, and won't, even know what the system/setting is. So it should be some fun for them. I'm a fan of low magic gritty settings(Midnight being my fav) so they will be very suspicious of the abundance of magic...but most of the group are in for the rp so it should be fun. *edit* I've even took time to remove the "DESOLATION!!!!" from the top of the character sheet...i'll perhaps put some other word to make them feel warm and cosy

They can read the rule book after the Night, and can generate characters when i run the campaign proper...they will hopefully help create the community they will be based in/from.

I've not put to much thought into the after at the moment as i'm wanting to make sure the first session or two in the Before works well...which considering i want a group of people from a mix of backgrounds who do interact with each other...its a little challenging. I'll get there. I got a month or two before i need to run but just beginning the prep.

Oh and thanks for the warm welcome.

Hullo, Jim,



That is always good. However, it's also important to remember that you don't want to kill the player characters off during the Night of Fire, and wtih some of the stuff that can potentially happen that night, this is a risk that one takes.



That sounds neat, actually. I don't particularly think that leaving the Desolation moniker on the character sheet and letting the players know what the game is called is all that big a thing, especially if you're going to do the Before thing with them.

Hopefully, you'll let us have a look at the pre-generated characters once the game starts or whatever? Please.



Always a good plan.



It's a mistake not to give any thought to the After in terms of one's campaign. Part of the reason for this is that the Community that you start the player characters in after the Night of Fire should be in some way connected to their playing in the Before, but if you're not going that route it's not important. Another reason is that whatever you plan for the After, some of the precursors to that stuff might occur in the Before game. Even though the game world doesn't have any continuity, in the sense that the world After is completely alien in many respects to what it was Before, it's important to give the players and their characters some sort of "feel" of continuity. But this is moot if they're not playing the same characters.



You're welcome. Look forward to chatting with you here on the forums.

Yeah i will be putting thought into it...i have some vague ideas about clash of personalities and some obstacles to put in there way. Just trying to concentrate on initial Before stuff first...once i have that in place. I'll go on to organising the After, and make any adjustments needed to the Before ( was a mouthful lol ).

Character 1: Ruler type ( Lord/Prince/something )

Human

Stats
2 BODY
2 DEX
2 STR
4 CHA
2 INT
3 WILL

SKILL levels(rating)
Academics "Philosophy" 2(4)
Warfare "Logistics" 2(5)
Melee 1(5)
Linguistics 2(4)
Gambling 2(4)
Diplomacy "Leadership" 4(8)
Con 2(6)

Talents
Incite
Bold Attack(melee) - i presume this means your roll in Melee = CHA+MELEE ranks...and not CHAx2

Flaws
Condescending
Calous

* * * *

I think i pretty much followed the rules for character gen, i granted an extra 15 xp which i spent on Con 1 + 2, plus 2 specialities(Diplomacy & Logistics).

What I'm looking to achieve with this character is someone who in the Before is the respected type, and someone to RP a ruler type who is going to enjoy his position and be a bit mean about it. I don't mean in an obviously Evil way but just someone easily disliked for his arrogance.

In the after i don't want this character to be too useful, and wish him to be seen as someone taking but not giving, a burden on the group. His safety in the group will be maintained by those loyal to the former ruler...especially the fighter type who will be flawed to be fiercely loyal to the this ruler.

I will request the player to try and keep his Bold Attack on the quiet if possible and for all purposes appear semi-defenceless

I wouldn't normally force a player to play a duff character but at this is only for a few sessions and if given to the right person should be a lot of fun

Welcome to the game and the forums!

I wish you good luck with this short campaign you plan! Everything sounds appropriate and interesting that far. Your plan sounds like if the upcoming new book could be great help for you but I don't know if you can wait until August. I certainly don't want to stop you from playing Desolation as soon as possible.

Hullo, Jim,



Ah, gotcha. Just figured I would point that stuff out.



Ah, got it... I had wondered whether you had given the character another 15 EPs to play with here. The number work, and are pretty good.



The character seems to be set up the way you wanted him, and he doesn't seem to have any useful skills for the period After. It will be interesting to see how the character gets played in both the Before and the After, and I think that this one is pretty interesting. Nice job.

If you hold off on the campaign 'til after August or so, the new supplement that is coming out for the game will be quite useful to you.

For the other characters i plan to have similar skill levels and attribute numbers, but just differently assigned.

I've yet to buy Survivors...but plan to. I wanna run the game first...then if that works well, i'll pick up Survivors and this new product. I'll post the rest of the party when i get a chance plus any finalised plot.

Thanks for your time and sharing your opinions

Hullo, Jim,



Excellent news to hear. Look forward to seeing them.



Always makes sense not to buy any supplements for the game before running it, and seeing if it works for you and the gaming group. Survivors is a remarkable read, and has some very good stuff in it, including making the Oruskan races playable, and a few other things.



You're welcome. And remember, if you have questions about the game, just ask. In the appropriate forum sections, of course.

Hi jim,

Glad to hear you're playing Desolation. I love the idea of springing the game and the Night of Fire on your players -- even to the point of removing "Desolation" from the character sheets. I'll be interested in hearing how they cope.

Aye. I'm rather fond of running new systems/settings on players when they have no idea what the place is about. Learning the interesting and cool stuff brings nice campaign moments.

Am still waiting for my slot in the group, so i can run this. Looks another month(or two) before thats the case

Hullo, sshagent,



So, has anything come of your running the Desolation game? It's been around three or four months, so I was hoping to hear back on you about this.

Yes, i did get to run this in the end. Not in the format i wanted, in that i wanted 4 or 5 sessions to enjoy my idea.

Our Kingmaker campaign ( which I'm running ) is still in its infancy, so when the opportunity arose for someone to run a one-off Halloween special game i seized it. It meant i had to do a major re-think to get a Halloween-sque game and to try and use my earlier ideas.

The idea i went with was a dinner party at an Eccentric Noble's house, which turned into a murder mystery. The players were loosely based on Cluedo characters, pretty much in name only. But the connection was there.

The players enjoyed the high-magic setting and me allowing them pretty much any magical item for luxury purposes ( ie, stuff to make their lives easy ...not stuff to blow up the world ). I tend to always run a low fantasy/gritty setting so i guess they enjoyed being able to flash the magic. Mr White ( the necromancer ) was particularly happy with what he could achieve with ease...not that he really used it.

In the game i really played up the Noble's eccentricity and dropped massive cliched hints that he was a vampire. That combined with the players characters not knowing each other made for some fun when bodies started to appear. As it happened the victims were being caused by the beginning of the Night Before. As the evening went on, suspicions were high...accusations being hurled around all over the place.

They were close to blows when they realised what was going on. They then proceeded to start discarding their magic items that they so eagerly invented earlier.

As the Night Before started unleashing its true might the characters were fleeing the manor house they were at, one of the party was totally naked as he had previously decided that all his clothing was magical.

In short the game was excellent fun. The players enjoyed the system immensely, especially a couple of my players who tend to seem cursed when it comes to dice rolls...they loved the "Take The Average". Only regrets is that i didn't get to run the game over a few sessions. I do plan to run a campaign, whether that has to wait for Kingmaker to finish...or for my other groups GM to finish his campaign i don't know.

( hopefully some of that made sense...am dead busy with work today ).

~Jim

Hullo, Jim,



Well, at least you got to run something of Desolation, so I guess that's at least a start.



Running the game as a Halloween one-off game? I could see that with Desolation, since the zombie and some of the undead elements of the game would work well for a non-typical Halloween game.



Sounds like that was a good time, and a very interesting scenario and all. The game isn't really a high-magic setting in the After, of course, but all manner of stuff could be done with this style of setting in the Before, especially now that the Journeys supplement is out, which provides a bit more material in that regard. In the After, the game is very much a low-magic setting, especially with how most feel about magic and its use, but there are Communities out there which no doubt can be used for a very magical kind of game, if that's the route one chooses.



LOL!! Ooh, that must have been...delightful! I'm having this wonderful image of a naked character, a rain of fire, and...well, you get the idea!



Glad to hear that the players enjoyed it and that you had a good time running the game. Might want to add a longer post about the running of the game down in the Tales of Survival forum section (where game write-ups go). As for the dice stuff, yep, Taking the Average is one of the mechanics of Ubiquity that a lot of players fall in love with because it allows one to focus on the roleplaying not the roll-playing.



As much sense as anything could have.

PM on the way.

Exactly. I'm not a big fan of high magic, so was just letting the players enjoy something they usually dont get to in my campaigns. Then of course the joy of ripping it from them, well more like them discarding their self-zipping breeches :p



Yes, this was particularly fun. He had taken to the high magic availability, and when i said he could claim any item/clothing in his posessions to be magical in any aspect to make his life busy. He took it to extremes. His fleeing the site of the dinner party naked with just his rapier in his hand was very funny. Particularly when he stopped briefly to catch his breath, then remembered his rapier had magical properties and then flung that into the sky.



I've been trying to find my game notes but failing to ....so far :/ If i can find it i will dump it as a download for anyones perusal