Quote from: Shipyard Locked;924306My personal favorite in this regard was the module Adam's Wrath, which expected the GM to suddenly kill the party one way or another (the main suggestion was an unwinnable, inescapable fight) right at the beginning so they could then 'surprise' their players when they were brought back to life as Frankenstein monsters. I can easily imagine this went down very poorly at more than one table.

They did something similar in From the Shadows, where the adventure doesn't start until the party has its heads cut off. A lot of these things were cool as possibilities in those eventualities (I.e. If there is a TPK in Lamordia, Mordenheim might turn them into Flesh golems). Adam's Wrath actually had done cool stuff in it too. If you ignore the railroads in the modules many have nice locations, threats and scenarios. But those heavy handed develops really stand out if you go back to them.

I might do some reviews of the modules. I am going to run Feast of Gobkyns again this month and may just go ahead and to the whole Hyskosa Hexad. If that goes well, could also do Adam's wrath.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;924306I can easily imagine this went down very poorly at more than one table.

I didn't pull that one on my party but I did run From the Shadows as written and that didn't go over so well. However the worst reaction I got running a Ravenloft module was the rain lightning in Thoughts of Darkness if I recall.

Quote from: BedrockBrendanAdam's Wrath actually had done cool stuff in it too. If you ignore the railroads in the modules many have nice locations, threats and scenarios.

This is true.

Quote from: BedrockBrendanI might do some reviews of the modules. I am going to run Feast of Gobkyns again this month and may just go ahead and to the whole Hyskosa Hexad. If that goes well, could also do Adam's wrath.

I'd love a play report of the Hexad.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;924331However the worst reaction I got running a Ravenloft module was the rain lightning in Thoughts of Darkness if I recall.

I'm not familiar with the details of that one.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;924336This is true.



I'd love a play report of the Hexad.

I will have to see how the Feast of Goblyns goes first (since I am running two campaigns and this is a special 1-3 session Skype thing). So trying to schedule it with my players now.

QuoteI'm not familiar with the details of that one.

It has been a while, and I lost my copy of the module unfortunately so I need to track it down again, but as I recall it was something like save every round (or maybe every minute) or take a bunch of d6s in lightning.

Oddly enough I found myself provoked into retro-cloning Traveller this weekend.  I don't know why.  There's really no need for it and I have games of my own that I like better.  Still, I've written up stuff for running Star Wars using Traveller recently and it got me thinking about how to do it.  I mainly want it tighter and with fewer tables and a little more flexibility.  I also want to avoid getting sued so there are things that I gloss over to avoid copying tables outright.  I'll post it on the game design forum for people to tear apart.  Mostly a result of poor impulse control and frustration with the glacial pace at which the T5 update is coming I suppose.

Quote from: David Johansen;924356Oddly enough I found myself provoked into retro-cloning Traveller this weekend.  I don't know why.  There's really no need for it and I have games of my own that I like better.  Still, I've written up stuff for running Star Wars using Traveller recently and it got me thinking about how to do it.  I mainly want it tighter and with fewer tables and a little more flexibility.  I also want to avoid getting sued so there are things that I gloss over to avoid copying tables outright.  I'll post it on the game design forum for people to tear apart.  Mostly a result of poor impulse control and frustration with the glacial pace at which the T5 update is coming I suppose.

The Cephus game engine is 100% open content. The original Mongoose Traveller SRD can be found here.

The advantage of the Cepheus SRD is that it is written as a complete RPG so you can use that as template and cut and paste what you need.

heh...thanks for that, I'm not really surprised.  I'm maybe 50 -80% done mine anyhow and it probably drifts a little farther from CT given my own preferences.  Even so, it's the project that interests me.  What I might learn from the process anyhow.  It's not like I expect people to play my games or anything

Quote from: estar;924359The Cephus game engine is 100% open content. The original Mongoose Traveller SRD can be found here.

The advantage of the Cepheus SRD is that it is written as a complete RPG so you can use that as template and cut and paste what you need.

Thank you for the Cepheus link:)!

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;924342It has been a while, and I lost my copy of the module unfortunately so I need to track it down again, but as I recall it was something like save every round (or maybe every minute) or take a bunch of d6s in lightning.

Damn.

I'm guessing the objective was to drive the PCs underground and into the waiting tentacles of the mind flayers.

I should try that with the kids at the store.  They're always running away from adventure so they can terrorize the peasants.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;924369Damn.

I'm guessing the objective was to drive the PCs underground and into the waiting tentacles of the mind flayers.

In fairness it was in keeping with the domain's flavor, but Bluetspur was always a strange domain for the core.

So here's a link to what I've done with Traveller so far.  http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?35353-Cloning-The-Big-T&p=924377#post924377  

I expect to get space combat, ship operations, some standard ships and vehicles and robots, and equipment done before I let it slide into the abyss.    I'm also going to do a 3 dimensional nested hex map.  Weird, I know, but people are always complaining about the flat space aspect of Traveller.  I stepped up and refused to call the UPP letter substitutions "hexadecimal" so I might as well keep on pandering to the whining masses who don't get Traveller

Quote from: David Johansen;924379I'm also going to do a 3 dimensional nested hex map.  Weird, I know, but people are always complaining about the flat space aspect of Traveller.  

It a pain in the ass and add little to nothing to gameplay. And this is coming from a hard science fan who worked with the raw Gliese data and newer star catalogs.

What 3D Mapping boils down to is a series of links and branches. The canonical example is the near star map for 2300AD.

This cool looking complicated map

[ATTACH=CONFIG]452[/ATTACH]

What that amounts to in actual play is this

[ATTACH=CONFIG]453[/ATTACH]

By all means crunch your 3D data. But for the love of God have mercy and present the final version as the second drawing not the first.

The best program to deal with 3D mapping is Astrosynthesis by NBos.

For my Majestic Stars campaign, I have four major routes outward from the Solar System with numerous small branches and loops.

This is not what my players will see

[ATTACH=CONFIG]454[/ATTACH]

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;924342It has been a while, and I lost my copy of the module unfortunately so I need to track it down again, but as I recall it was something like save every round (or maybe every minute) or take a bunch of d6s in lightning.

I've got that one (but not the rest of the series).

What happened is theres ample warning of a storm coming. And also warning from either observation or NPCs that the storm in un-natural in nature. So like a normal thunderstorm they know they should likely take shelter. But since this IS Ravenloftland well... haste is ever advised. ahem...

The start at least has some branching paths based on what the PCs did initially. And so I think a player would have to be a bit fucked up mentally to think of that sort of freedom of action as a railroad. The module is linear in that it has a progression from A to B. But there is some freedom in how you get there. (and at other points not so much freedom due to the constraints of the situation).

Thats though about all I recall as never got to run it. I believe its part of an ongoing campaign quest so it makes sense to be more focused?

Quote from: Omega;924412I've got that one (but not the rest of the series).

What happened is theres ample warning of a storm coming. And also warning from either observation or NPCs that the storm in un-natural in nature. So like a normal thunderstorm they know they should likely take shelter. But since this IS Ravenloftland well... haste is ever advised. ahem...

The start at least has some branching paths based on what the PCs did initially. And so I think a player would have to be a bit fucked up mentally to think of that sort of freedom of action as a railroad. The module is linear in that it has a progression from A to B. But there is some freedom in how you get there. (and at other points not so much freedom due to the constraints of the situation).

Thats though about all I recall as never got to run it. I believe its part of an ongoing campaign quest so it makes sense to be more focused?

I haven't run the module since about 1993 I believe. But they were not mad because they thought it was railroady. I just remember them being mad over the lightning (but don' recall exactly how much damage it did and how frequently it fell). The adventure itself was pretty good. It also a really necessary module for me because to that point I had no idea how to run Bluetpsur.