Campaign -- Hollow Earth or Cortex
OK. As opposed to doing nothing with this blog, I'm going to record our weekly RPG. Expect something every Thursday.
Some history: we've been playing for a while, with Phil and I alternating GMs. We're currently doing two weeks of my game, two weeks of his games, because of Bill's schedule. Phil's been doing a long running D&D 3.5 Eberron, then a D&D 3.5 Manual of the Planes game, and we're just getting back into Eberron, 4th edition. My game was a GURPS IOU, GURPS Superhero that didn't last long, Serenity, GURPS Victorian, and now I want to do a 1930's campaign.
We started with deciding what rules set we want to use. The choice was between Hollow Earth and Cortex. The group has played Cortex (through Serenity), so people built characters using the Hollow Earth rules, and we ran a sample game.
First, we forgot to include the extra 15 experience points when generating characters, so the characters weren't as powerful as they should have been. Oops. But, I don't think the way people created the characters, the extra points would have helped much. It's fairly easy to rig the system so that two people with the same set of points can generate different power levels -- the beginning points and experience points work completely different.
The game's gimmick is the d2 -- they have d8 that has 0's and 1's for successes and failures. You roll X number of d2 dice, you add up the successes, and if you met the number of successes (dictated by the GM or the opposing roll), you succeed. You can spend plot points to get extra dice, and penalties and bonuses remove or give you dice. Very Serenity/Cortex like. I was thinking that Hollow Earth was custom built for this type of adventure, so I was leaning towards it, but during actual play, it just wasn't as fun. Cortex rules let you take multiple actions and has a nice dodge rule (you can dodge, but all your actions during your next turn are penalized). Also, Cortex has a neat stun/wound scale that means that even beginning characters are pretty sturdy. In Hollow Earth, both the PCs and NPCs were dropping like flies. Hollow Earth just felt unpolished; the rules just weren't there. Or, the rules were there, and I wasn't as familiar with them as I should have been. I was woefully unprepared for the game.
In short, we played and decided to go with Cortex.
The intro scenario was WWI era, where the American troops were sent to find a box behind enemy lines. There was a lot of shooting, most of it pointless. One nice trick was Kevin's character set up an M30 on a tripod, and shot the crap out of the German truck. During the fight, they found the box, smashed up. Brian's character found a small medallion. The players don't know this, but the German swallowed a second medallion. These medallions are going to be one of the keys to the main adventure.
In the midst of all this, I sent out a list of roles, and people picked what they want to do. People can pick multiple roles, and many did.
Captain / Financier: Kevin
Archaeologist: Amy
Marine Biologist: Brian
Engineer: Phil
Scuba Diver: Phil
Soldier: Amy
Medic: NPC, most likely
Native: not chosen, probably scrapped.
Next week, we'll be creating characters.
Some history: we've been playing for a while, with Phil and I alternating GMs. We're currently doing two weeks of my game, two weeks of his games, because of Bill's schedule. Phil's been doing a long running D&D 3.5 Eberron, then a D&D 3.5 Manual of the Planes game, and we're just getting back into Eberron, 4th edition. My game was a GURPS IOU, GURPS Superhero that didn't last long, Serenity, GURPS Victorian, and now I want to do a 1930's campaign.
We started with deciding what rules set we want to use. The choice was between Hollow Earth and Cortex. The group has played Cortex (through Serenity), so people built characters using the Hollow Earth rules, and we ran a sample game.
First, we forgot to include the extra 15 experience points when generating characters, so the characters weren't as powerful as they should have been. Oops. But, I don't think the way people created the characters, the extra points would have helped much. It's fairly easy to rig the system so that two people with the same set of points can generate different power levels -- the beginning points and experience points work completely different.
The game's gimmick is the d2 -- they have d8 that has 0's and 1's for successes and failures. You roll X number of d2 dice, you add up the successes, and if you met the number of successes (dictated by the GM or the opposing roll), you succeed. You can spend plot points to get extra dice, and penalties and bonuses remove or give you dice. Very Serenity/Cortex like. I was thinking that Hollow Earth was custom built for this type of adventure, so I was leaning towards it, but during actual play, it just wasn't as fun. Cortex rules let you take multiple actions and has a nice dodge rule (you can dodge, but all your actions during your next turn are penalized). Also, Cortex has a neat stun/wound scale that means that even beginning characters are pretty sturdy. In Hollow Earth, both the PCs and NPCs were dropping like flies. Hollow Earth just felt unpolished; the rules just weren't there. Or, the rules were there, and I wasn't as familiar with them as I should have been. I was woefully unprepared for the game.
In short, we played and decided to go with Cortex.
The intro scenario was WWI era, where the American troops were sent to find a box behind enemy lines. There was a lot of shooting, most of it pointless. One nice trick was Kevin's character set up an M30 on a tripod, and shot the crap out of the German truck. During the fight, they found the box, smashed up. Brian's character found a small medallion. The players don't know this, but the German swallowed a second medallion. These medallions are going to be one of the keys to the main adventure.
In the midst of all this, I sent out a list of roles, and people picked what they want to do. People can pick multiple roles, and many did.
Captain / Financier: Kevin
Archaeologist: Amy
Marine Biologist: Brian
Engineer: Phil
Scuba Diver: Phil
Soldier: Amy
Medic: NPC, most likely
Native: not chosen, probably scrapped.
Next week, we'll be creating characters.