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First off I went for the Durandal. This was the easiest to get so far, after being able to steal a Leshach Halcyon at the first attempt from a Leshach Entite (not bad considering there's only a 6% chance of stealing one). The problem there was getting the snowstorms to start, taking about 15 minutes of re-entering the Paramina Rift. Emperor Scales weren't too hard either, having to Poach the Archæoævis in the Zertinan Caverns - 7 Poaches got me the three Scales I needed. After having already sold a few Lifewicks, I got the Durandal an hour after I started getting the required loot.
The Saggitarius bow was a pain. I started at about 7pm and didn't get it until four hours of gameplay later. Starting with the 3 Beastlord Horns, these were obtained by Poaching the Humbaba in the Mosphoran Highwaste, took a couple of hours. The Ash Wyrm, also at the Highwaste, dropped a Moon Ring after the third battle, which was lucky too. I had already sold 2 Moon Rings in the past so I only needed the one.
The problem was the 4 Saggitarius Gems. I spent the rest of the night in the Henne Mines, working my way down to the areas where the Hecteyes lived and from there, chaining them. After three hours reaching a chain of 89 Hecteyes, I had only obtained two of the gems and gave up as my eyes were burning. Next morning though, I tried a different approach and went to the Stilshrine Of Miriam to steal the gems from the Oilings that lived there. Annoyingly, I got two gems in only 8 steals, also with only a 6% chance of the gem appearing. Pah, curse you, chance.
Lastly I've spent two hours this morning getting the ingrediants for Serpentarius, one of the three ingrediants for the Tournesol sword. I have one piece of the required three Serpentarius so far. One ingrediant is the Snake Skin, dropped by only one non-rare enemy in the game, the Wildsnake in the Giza Plains. I had to wait half an hour for the Dry Season and even then, there's only one Wildsnake in the Plains so I had to refresh the area loads. I got 14 Snake Skins after about half an hour, selling one of these to get my first piece of Serpentarius.
I knew where to get Serpent Eyes - the Basilisks in the Feywood, probably the most annoying place in FF history. Two of these are needed for each piece of Serpentarius, and after chaining 56 Basilisks I picked up the four Eyes I needed. Now I need High Arcanas... and now these need three ingrediants of their own. So to summarise: I'm getting the ingrediants (Arcanas, Feystones and Souls Of Thamasa) to get one of the ingrediants (High Arcana) to get one of the ingrediants (Serpentarius) of the Tournesol.
Yeah, I have a headache from reading that last bit too.
We're all familiar with CRPG conventions, where characters have 6 stats (hlth,str,dex,int, etc.) and then we get a +6 sword, which usually means +6 points to your character's damage while the sword is wielded. The Disgaea system simply makes characters, monsters, and EVERY item in the game have the same set of stats. Your character might be defined as (12, 9, 17, 11, 11, 11). You wield a sword that is defined as (0, 0, 3, 0, 0, 0). So your adjusted stats, while wielding the sword, are simple the sum of the stats (you plus the sword), or (12, 9, 20, 11, 11, 11).
Not only is this system simple to understand, but it opens up lots of complexity (just what the player wants). It's trivial to "fuse" items together. Combat calculations are written once; no special cases for hitting a wall instead of a monster. On top of that, Disgaea goes crazy. Do you want to upgrade your sword? Level it, just like you would level yourself. Do you have a magical stick of gum? Wield it, for extra magic. Or fuse it with a trash can and a bone wand. Or sacrifice it to your god. Or sell it back to the shop.
So, if you don't want to traverse 50 random dungeons just to level up your helm, stay away from Disgaea 2. But if number-crunching turn-based CRPGs are your thing, play it.
Mythic is really quite a neat little "magic 8 ball" gaming system. It's almost more of a mindset than a game, and the whole system is driven by a 2 dimensional "Fate Chart" (actually, it's 3 dimensional, but it's only 3 planes deep). It was designed for "choose your own adventure" style gaming with or without a GM, and as such is perfect for generating and running a solo wargame campaign.
Combine the Mythic RPG, 5150 and my Hydrissian miniatures, and you get:
The Adventures of Slevan, last heir to House Senoj
[Note: I'm naming my 'driss using hacked up "Earther" names just to make things easy on myself. Slevan = Steven, Endru = Andrew, etc.]
Though I have yet to really write it up, here is the background and a summary of the first Scene:
Slevan is the only offspring of a minor noble Hydrissian family. He has distinguised himself as a "Diplomat" (what the 'driss call their captains) in various minor conflicts along the imperial border. Unfortunately, his successes have drawn the ire of more powerful families, one of which decides its time to "retire" Slevan before he causes any more trouble.
[As an aside, the Hydrissians are a Dinosauroid race with high tech equipment, a rigid and slightly pompous social structure and a society that seems like a strange cross between the Merchant Princes and Germanic Warlords. While VERY civilized and technically savvy, the 'driss "empire" is really more of a feudal confederacy with only their culture tying them together.]
SCENE 1 - SLEVAN'S ATTEMPTED ESCAPE
Mythic generated a "PC positive, Destroy Elegance" twist to the scene, which I interpreted as a singularity bomb being set off in the ballroom to cover Slevan's escape. As I was playing this scene to get some familiarity with Mythic and to set the starting parameters for my campaign, I decided to keep it pretty simple and focus on getting Slevan away from his enemies. I began to ask Mythic some questions:
Did Slevan manage to collect his personal effects before leaving? [Likely]
Exceptional YES - He's clearly [from the bomb in the ballroom] been planning his escape, and Slevan gets away with his gear, some cash and his personal starship! I really wasn't expecting this. I figured I might get a "yes", and Slevan would have to find some way off world.
Did Slevan manage to recuit his companions/comrades? [Unlikely]
YES - his 3 most loyal comrades join him, but I have to roll for their REP scores and equipment to see which ones came.
As I'm running this as a 5150 Solo Adventure campaign, Slevan gets 3 randomly generated companions. I rolled them up and luckily all 3 were REP4, and one of them had an SMG on him instead of the usual "Dissembler Gun"(sic). I'll name them later, if they survive the escape. And "exceptional yes", and would have chosen the comrades myself, a "no" would have left him alone, with and "Exceptional No" actually turning his old companions into NPC enemies.
Now Slevan and his crew make a break for the starport.
Did security intervene? [Very Likely]
YES - I then rolled the 5150 encounter set up, generating a "Standup Fight" with equal forces. Due to exceptionally lucky rolling, Slevan's lads took down the guards in one turn with no casualties to the team. Actually, there were no casualties among the guards either - they were taken "out of the fight" or fled the scene. This might help me later, as my guys aren't yet "murderers". [I was pretty surprised - 5150 can be a pretty deadly game, but dang! I'm glad I had that SMG...]
Are there any more difficulties getting to the ship?[Somewhat Likely]
Exceptional NO - There you have it - Slevan and his crew arrive at the ship, lift off and jump out of system. I guess the rest of the security forces were tied up trying to sort out the mess back in the ball room!
END OF SCENE
So now Slevan and his lads have fled. They have a ship and a full loadout of weaponry available to them, but few prospects for recruiting new party members, especially Hydrissian ones.
Their next scene will be choosing a place for refuge. My plan for him is to seek his fortune on the border worlds, ultimately re-establishing his house, defeating his enemies, etc. The problem with the border worlds is that they're full of hostile life forms and prone to SPUG invasions! Thanks to their very balkanized government, nobody actually "goes to war" with Hydrissians, but some words view them with suspicion, so Slevan may not always be welcome...
I hope to advance Slevan's story more tonight. Ironically, the longer I stay away from actual battles the faster the game will go. So even though I started out using Mythic to run a wargame campaign, I'm really using 5150 to do the combat and force generation for my new solo Mythic RPG game! I hope I can get Christy involved at some point, even if it's only to run the OpFor.
I came across a rather odd pen&paper RPG called "Mythic". It's sort of the bastard stepchild of "Choose Your Own Adventure"(tm), Matrix gaming and freeform story telling. Essentially, it's an RPG that can be played without a GM. You can of course play with a GM if you want, but the adventure style is quite different from the usual carefully pre-crafted modules we all got used to with D&D.
Instead of starting with a fully populated world, the players begin with a loose concept of what they want to do, like "We're a bunch of adventurers seeking our fortunes in the Goblin wildlands". From that point on, players engage in a cooperative story telling exercise. The game proceeds as a series of "scenes", like in a movie or book.
Where Mythic steps in (this is a game, not just a social exercise) is any time there is something to be decided. In those cases, players formulate a yes/no question, decide what the "odds" are (good, bad, etc) and then roll on the "Fate Table" to get a "very yes, yes, no, hell no" result, which the players must then interpret in their own story.
Example:
Player1: We search the room. Is there any treasure?
<odds are unlikely, roll on "Fate" table, get "yes" result anyway.>
Player1: Woohoo! We find a small chest under some rubble in the corner
Player2: Sweet! I go over to it check it out. Is it locked?
To make things more interesting, there's a "Chaos factor" that represents the chance of something not going according to plan. So instead of "yes/no", you might get a "yes, but..." result. This Chaos factor can go up or down during an adventure. Any time you are rolling on the Fate table and score doubles, if the number is less than the Chaos factor, you get a random event. You also roll for random events at the beginning of any scene. To carry on the example:
<players decide the odds of the chest being locked are good, and roll "yes, but....">
The random event system is very "mad-lib-ish". You roll on 3 separate tables to generate a phrase that you must interpret in the context of the scene. An example might be "Introduce a new NPC - propose lies". In the case above, you might decide that another adventurer shows up, yelling "Stop! That chest is cursed!".
The Mythic "GM Emulator" engine is generic enough to work with any RPG system, though naturally Mythic has its own character stats and combat rules if you want to go "full Mythic".
As I mentioned, the game proceeds as a series of scenes. Most people aren't interested in (for example) the actual trip from point A to point B, so unless there's a scene along the way, you would just skip over that part and start your scene when you arrive at point B. You would probably do a "Is the trip uneventful?" test, choosing likelihood based on how you plan to travel. Of course, you must might wind up running afoul of the Chaos factor and wind up in a scene you never expected!
So why am I interested in this system? Well, it turns out that a few guys on one of my mailing lists are using it as a campaign story generator for their miniatures games. What a great idea! So you start off with your force and a setting, then let Mythic generate your whole scenario encounter. Once you have the setup, use your rules of choice to fight the battle, letting Mythic run the enemies.
5150 already has a pretty good random campaign system, but it's very light on details, being more of the "do I get to fight anyone this campaign turn, and what sort of encounter is it?" variety. One could use that system to set up the "scene", then let Mythic help determine the story. Definitely something worth playing around with.
Everyone had a good time, DM included. Aside from not giving the "kid" enough chance to hack things up (he had trouble enough staying in his nominally "good" alignment), the game went very well. All players are interested in continuing their adventure, so aside from the inevitable scheduling difficulties we should be good to go with the campaign.
There was the requisite level of silliness from the players ("huzzah!, etc."), some mistakes were made, I forced a number of "stat check" rolls on them, many of which they failed to humorous effect, etc. The players are even starting to get into their characters a little, at least the more experienced players are.
I really need to do a better job organizing things next time though. I had forgotten how quickly a disorganized DM gets overwhelmed! It's crazy to think that I'm DM'ing an RPG game again after all these years, but it's still fun, so why not?
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