What are some of the strangest places your players have explored in one of your games? 'Place' in this case means anything from a building to a landscape to a universe.
Also, what system was it in?
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;906967What are some of the strangest places your players have explored in one of your games? 'Place' in this case means anything from a building to a landscape to a universe.
Also, what system was it in?
Lowest accessible
board of reality in "JAGS: Wonderland", or the realm of Chokmah in "KULT" - they, or rather their variations as presented by me, are pretty similar.
How do they look like...
It's... Difficult to describe in my own language, and in my shitty English it's even harder, but imagine a place, a primordial ocean of things and ideas becoming one another, changing their state from solid matter to loose ideas and the other way around. Players, their words, the way they express themselves determine the elements of the landscape and entities their PCs meet, sometimes influence the way they change, evolve.
Since it's damn difficult to play (for players and GMs alike) it were rather short visits, sometimes a stage in a multidimensional chase, sometimes part of a quest to find something. Each time it produced truckloads of "WTF" moments. ;)
Quote from: JesterRaiin;906973Lowest accessible board of reality in "JAGS: Wonderland", or the realm of Chokmah in "KULT" - they, or rather their variations as presented by me, are pretty similar.
JAGS:Wonderland seemed really interesting to me, but it looked like a challenge to play. How did that go?
The strangest place my players visited so far was my own creation, the Cosmic Library. It was built a long time back by an interstellar race of giant spiders who had conquered much of the galaxy, and is basically a library the occupies an entire planet. The star system where this planet exists has started to go red giant, so the planet itself is wrapped in a time distortion field where everything happens very quickly, so it's been about five minutes till destruction for the last hundred thousand years of use (you get there through wormholes, since the planet is already gone in the current timeline). Yes, the idea for a planetary-scale library on the verge of destruction was stolen from Dr. Who.
The race that made the library has since devolved into their current forms, which are (mostly) mindless spiders of all varieties; modern spiders are their descendants. The various races of extant giant spiders are the remnants of their old castes. To get around the library, you need to hire one of the Librarians, who are a race of four-armed tattooed blue giants able to (usually) safely guide visitors through the wilderness of The Stacks. In return for this service, they charge one of your fondest memories. While my players visited, they found a reading room with "mind-books" on crystal cylinders that gave them some random skills (some useless, some not).
The system is Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and yes, this is a fantasy setting.
Yeesh what havent we?
Lets see. Up there on the weird-o-meter.
SMT playtest: Exploring the stomach of The Dragoness after she ate everyone. Exploring Gigantica (cant remember her name. Been nearly a decade since worked on that RPG.) after Buxome Gal KOed her trying to find a bomb that was stuck on her... somewhere... Yeah the comics were weird like that so so was the RPG.
BX/BECMI D&D: Forget the module. But the group ended up exploring a wizards tower. Which was the petrified body of a dragon that tried to eat said wizard and learned their mistake the hard way and was hollowed out to make a home. Another was a city that was a giant conch set up in the sea as a tower city, and another that was a castle sort of set up. A giant train powered by death. A giant robot that doubled as a gnome city.
Gamma World: An automated amusement park thats AI had gone crazy. Then another park whose AI had not gone crazy. Well kinda.
Star Frontiers: Exploring an abandoned alien space station apparently created by a race either adapted to zero-G or one with no real concept of up and down. The place was a a cross between a habitrail and a 3d maze. My maps looked like a handful of spaghetti tied in a big knot.
D&D: Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut. The Dragon Magazine version especially. Another one where we wandered around inside Moanders dead petrified body in the god grave void. Any given time you realize the tunnel you are in isnt a tunnel.
Spelljammer: uh... Everything? What wasnt weird in Spelljammer? A town on the back of a giant? Got that. A death star shaped like a beholder? Got that. Essentially a Dyson sphere inhabited by mountain sized fauna? Got that. Space Pyramid piloted by a Mummy? Got that. Ship made out of skeletons and inhabited by Spectres? Got that.
And many more.
Quote from: Edgewise;906979JAGS:Wonderland seemed really interesting to me, but it looked like a challenge to play. How did that go?
I couldn't find it in me to like the mechanics, so I simply stole the setting and ran it under different set of rules.
The most difficult part for me was to manage the "reflections" PCs cast on different boards and the disassociation aspect, but I simplified both - I didn't keep any track of where the "reflections" are or what they do, until it was vital to the scenario.
My players were pretty happy with the result, if I may say so. One decided to replace me as our next GM and he ran a few sessions in similar way. I liked his GMing more than I like mine. ;)
1794 Revolutionary France ...
... for my Renaissance-tech fantasy game.
See, when I was playtesting Scarlet Pimpernel, I put my two fantasy campaigns on hiatus for a few months. My players were very good about doing this strange milieu, codes against killing and the whole nine yards, even when I asked them to run through the same damn scenario twice each, only with completely different approaches and tactics.
So my present to them, at the end of it all, was one last run through Paris: with their regular fantasy characters, and sod anachronisms. I gave them free rein to do whatever they liked, and they went on an orgy of killing and destruction, highlighted by one enterprising group wiping out most of the National Assembly in one swell foop. ;)
A massive undead/larval host manufacturing plant under a pyramid where clockwork zombies were being put together for brain bugs to ride in. These were then sold off auction style in lots to bidders for their own armies. Add to this the massive interlocking clockwork of the place, testing arenas, tram ways, and magical essence batteries to reanimate the dead and fill them moving machine parts to 'enhance' them.
Ya, I kinda went places in that game.
Their pants.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;907018Their pants.
So you were a playtester for SMT? :eek:
aheh.
Another weird place visited was in the only play I did of d20m GW. A dead city inhabited by toys and appliances. Many still tending the homes, and skeletons, of their families. Others setting up a weird cyber-fairy-tale society.
I have a kind of Post Cyberpunk Urban Fantasy game I run from time to time called Hachi: Blue. It's set on an island which formed from a volcanic eruption in the late 40s after World War 2. This is fortunate because the island is located where the Midway Atoll is in our world. Subsequently various corporations and government interests made the island into a city state called Mirai. Flash forward almost 70 years, the city is ahead of it's time. It is run by an Artificial Intelligence called Maitreya, though not very many people know that. Certainly not the general population. The city state is a corporatocracy, openly run by corporations whose executives hold important offices. The President runs the company which provides much of the defense technology for MirSec (Mirai Security). In the middle of the city covering the entire caldera of the volcano is an Arcology. The wealthy and much of the upper middle class live there. Since this is a corporate state, that means executives and upper management. Mirai might be a little inspired by RAM from the Buck Rogers XXVc RPG. The arcology is a megatall structure of over 600 meters high. It's not nearly as tall as other megatall skyscrapers but the base is near a mile in diameter, which makes it quite imposing.
Underneath the cities are an extensive sewer system which eventually links up with lava tubes. The city harnesses the energy of the volcano and there are ways to vent lava flow. Yes I've seen Fire and Ice way too many times. There are also not so human denizens living down there. A few years back Maitreya had to vent a lot of steam away from the city. Those denizens did not fare so well.
The weirdest place though is that one of the neighbourhoods kind of exists in a perpendicular space which can only be accessed by psychic entities and Maitreya. The universe in this setting is a 12 dimensional space, with two of the dimensions being time dimensions. One is the one we are familiar with, and then there is another one which runs perpendicular. The zeroth neighbourhood runs along the second time dimension. Maitreya used certain technologies to give the place form. It is deadly to most supernatural creatures. By deadly I mean they explode in a big gooey mess. As Maitreya is kind of a benevolent dictator who sees herself as being responsible for protecting her citizens, she doesn't take kindly to supernatural beings messing with humans. So she does stuff like build androids and gynoids who can physically tear the creatures apart, or recruit player characters by manipulating them to give them psychic powers.
I initially ran the setting using Mutants and Masterminds 3e. I later ran it with a hack of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying with some borrowed elements from Fate Accelerated (replacing Affiliations with Approaches and adapting the formula for making stunts to SFX) which probably lasted the longest. I think when Ultramodern5 by Deus Ex Machina comes out, I'll probably use that and D&D 5e.
Quote from: Ravenswing;906986My players were very good about doing this strange milieu, codes against killing and the whole nine yards, even when I asked them to run through the same damn scenario twice each, only with completely different approaches and tactics.
So my present to them, at the end of it all, was one last run through Paris: with their regular fantasy characters, and sod anachronisms. I gave them free rein to do whatever they liked, and they went on an orgy of killing and destruction, highlighted by one enterprising group wiping out most of the National Assembly in one swell foop. ;)
It sounds like you have a great group of players, and I love your reward for them.
Quote from: Edgewise;907039It sounds like you have a great group of players, and I love your reward for them.
I do!
I'm torn between a demon - infested cavern that was actually a part of said demon, with pulsating demon flesh all over the place, as well as rather odd traps, and nightmarish Scotland in Kult, with Fae highlanders hunting the tarpan - skinned workers in a bizarre maze of factories, steel and mountains.
My prostate. I had an colonoscopy and I used the resulting photos of a polyp as the basis of an Exalted encounter in Malfeas.
It's one of the few times the players took more SAN loss than their characters when they found out where those photos I'd turned into a hexmap came from.
Quote from: Future Villain Band;907214My prostate. I had an colonoscopy and I used the resulting photos of a polyp as the basis of an Exalted encounter in Malfeas.
It's one of the few times the players took more SAN loss than their characters when they found out where those photos I'd turned into a hexmap came from.
Sir, you're evil and twisted human being with a strange sense of humor, and I'm glad we had a chance to exchange a few comments. :cool:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdmzQlAUEAAua1E.jpg)
Quote from: JesterRaiin;907217Sir, you're evil and twisted human being with a strange sense of humor, and I'm glad we had a chance to exchange a few comments. :cool:
Thank you. It was a career high-note for odd gaming.
Quote from: Future Villain Band;907214My prostate.
I chortled out loud while sitting in my crowded teacher's lounge.
Inside the skull of a leviathan (where some mindflayers were taking a tentacles-on approach to controlling the creature).
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;907224I chortled out loud while sitting in my crowded teacher's lounge.
I have photos from a colonoscopy. Somehow, I don't think my players would appreciate my using those for a game map.
Quote from: Krimson;907243I have photos from a colonoscopy. Somehow, I don't think my players would appreciate my using those for a game map.
Today I'm gonna be your... GM... prepare your anu... I mean, charsheets. (http://i.huffpost.com/gen/4163208/images/n-COLONOSCOPY-628x314.jpg)
Quote from: JesterRaiin;907246Today I'm gonna be your... GM... prepare your anu... I mean, charsheets.
(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/4163208/images/n-COLONOSCOPY-628x314.jpg)
"You know how Githyanki like to live in cities that are corpses of dead Gods? Well, you guys are sneaking in... the back entrance."
Quote from: Krimson;907252"You know how Githyanki like to live in cities that are corpses of dead Gods? Well, you guys are sneaking in... the back entrance."
"
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Pinworms the size of a boat. I watched ancient fart gases burning in the dark near the Arsehole Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die."
(http://cor-innovations-web-marketing.com/maptools/People/Sources/Non-Token%20Portraits/Gith/GithMonk.jpg)
I love this thread.
Quote from: Future Villain Band;907214My prostate. I had an colonoscopy and I used the resulting photos of a polyp as the basis of an Exalted encounter in Malfeas.
It's one of the few times the players took more SAN loss than their characters when they found out where those photos I'd turned into a hexmap came from.
So the Starship Enterprise really DID explore Uranus?
In Barsaivian Earthdawn, I had a flooded kaer made just to use some of those water monsters I never get to use. It was really fun and interesting as they not only had to fight the monsters but also figure out how to maneuver around the kaer with all that water in the way of getting from chamber to chamber to eventually slay the Horror inside the kaer.
In Cathayan Earthdawn, I had an old ruined area with tons of ziggurats devoted to the Cathayan passions. It had a ton of pit traps and slavers had placed slave pens underneath them all to capture people who wandered into the area. It also had many other traps not set by the slavers including guard towers with crossbows automated by pressure plates for people going outside the confines of the worship areas by the people who made it originally. The slave traders had an operation of mining and blacksmithing below this level (they used the slaves they captured to mine and captured blacksmiths to forge weapons to arm an army to overthrow Tiet Dei. The PCs got in through a back door from Taolin. They followed an underground river that ran underneath the inn of Taolin to the mines and avoided most of the stuff on the first floor (This was how they got their food and water to the mine). In a later adventure they wanted to disarm all the traps and brought in a drunken thief to disarm them. They also faced terra cotta animated statues of Passion Guardians when they approached the ziggurats. So I ended up getting two adventures out of the set up.
But of games I've run, Earthdawn, D&D, Shaintar, and Necessary Evil have been high fantasy/supers, but not too high on the weird scale.
Oh, that reminds me of something cool. I ran an Earthdawn game where the player's home Kaer used to be an island city before the Scourge, but the leaders had decided to build an underwater Kaer by sinking the island. I ran the game at the end of the Scourge. Everyone who had business outside the air-dome of the city required the "breathe underwater" blood-charms and we had 4-5 sessions of play exploring the kelp fields and coral reefs that served as the city's food sources. Tense moments were getting jumped by the enemy Ork Beastmaster and her 2 giant stingray companions (Shadowmants underwater, lol), and also interrupting the ritual that was summoning a living vortex (a minor Horror) onto one of the outlying Watch Towers to weaken the city's magical protections (the watch towers having their own air domes connected to the city's for circulation).
In my DCC game the PCs visited a twisted parody post-apocalyptic version of the city of Buenos Aires. Uruguayans love mocking Argentina, and especially Buenos Aires, so it was well received, especially because they didn't realize this in advance, and it took a bit for it to dawn on them that this was where they were.
They also visited the Island of the Party Pandas.
Oh, and currently they just finished an adventure in a Minotaur Underwear Factory.
Quite enjoying reading about that zany DCC game. Can't wait for the recap of that latest adventure!
I ran a heavily mutated Traveller/Gamma World mashup where the PCs were mutated microbes inside the spacesuit of a dead astronaught drifting in the void. That was pretty weird.
Quote from: slayride35;909668Quite enjoying reading about that zany DCC game. Can't wait for the recap of that latest adventure!
It came out yesterday (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com.uy/2016/07/dcc-campaign-update-chicken-is-now.html).
Yup read it. Chicken for the win!
...Yeah, I knew it. Not really original on my part, but the weirdest place I had my players in a D&D game explore was the inside one of the Gith's Dead Gods in the Astral Plane.
Tame I suppose, but the most juvenile moment I had was when they got 'expelled' from the Dead Stone God's anus.
Quote from: slayride35;910940Yup read it. Chicken for the win!
Sadly, the chicken is no more! Find out how in the next update, coming out within the next day or two.
Well the chicken had a good run, one session. About as long as the chicken vs. Peter gag was funny in Family Guy.
Cursed underwear on so many minotaurs!
Quote from: slayride35;911718Well the chicken had a good run, one session. About as long as the chicken vs. Peter gag was funny in Family Guy.
Cursed underwear on so many minotaurs!
The chicken was only meant to last a few minutes; it only lasted the whole session because not even one magic-user was at the session where the chicken arrived.
Right now it looks like they're getting their asses kicked by the minotaur police-state; but my Players are pretty sure that it's all going to end with them killing everyone. We'll see!
It was looking pretty bad at the end of the last recap with their hideout revealed. Gotta hand it to the minotaurs, they are a persistent foe.
Quote from: slayride35;912771It was looking pretty bad at the end of the last recap with their hideout revealed. Gotta hand it to the minotaurs, they are a persistent foe.
The latest update came out this weekend. The minotaurs killed Ack'Basha (the second longest-running and 2nd most powerful PC, and tied for biggest asshole of the party).
Yup two entered, and now only one remains, Bill the Elf, but the Halfling cannibal/trophy wearer is a contender. Reminds me a lot of an old D&D fighter I had in my first edition DnD game circa 1993. He did similar things with his dead opponents in terms of trophies.
As to "strange places", I don't know if any of my DCC players are likely to read this, but it won't be massive spoilers anyways: in a future adventure, they will eventually be going to a region colorfully named "The Shit-hole".