h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think you should definitely include the video games... the history is much smaller, and you could definitely knock it out far faster the DandD (that horribly addictive game)...

Did anyone bring up MAGIC?

Don't think that we have any card games yet... BTW, welcome, Sporky!!!

Thank you... don't I feel it!

Well, as for when to start, when do we want to? I think that we can start whenever we're all ready. Next question: Who wants to GM? I'm willing to give it a try, if I can get a little more info from kats-eyes on how it worked before... And how about this one: What system do we want to run in? I can do AD&D, Shadowrun and Earthdawn right now... Input?

I'm not fammilliar with Shadowrun or Earthdawn, are they very different from AD&D?
I'm always *game* to try something new.

Not very familar with 2/3 of that .... I think I played a game, once, called Shadowrun; a very confusing RPG, futuristic- loved it, but a bit too hard for me to play

Shadowrun *is* futuristic and first edition *was* confusing, but second edition is much better. It uses only six-siders, to cut down on the "Which die do I use" confusion that many folks associate with role-playing. (The undereducated fools! Bwahahahaha!!!) Okay, sorry 'bout that. I'm better now. It is set, for the most part, in the 2050's. Magic is in the process of returning to the world and technology has progressed to the point of allowing cyber-enhancements. If we decide to go with that, I can write a basic forum on the rules, character generation and basic equipment. Earthdawn is similar, except that it uses ten-siders instead of six-siders and takes place in the *last* resurgence of magic. It's all happening on Earth still, though. I can do the same general write-up for this as I do for Shadowrun. (I think that I might do them anyway, just for fun!)

Whatever way we decide to go - and I am by no means limiting them to my suggestions - I think that we should look into a more political game, rather than the traditional hack 'n' slash. I would think that it would lend itself better in here that way. Once again, input?

I'm curious how 'political' you would have it be. The traditional 'hack'n'slash' does have its attractions, although I wouldn't insist on the game being just that. But seeing it removed completely isn't going to be very exhilarating either, IMO
Especially for some of the 'non english born' people some of the intricacies of a too political game might be just too hard to grasp.
And me, I'm not into political strategies at all, to be honest

Only my two cents worth of input

~Skelly

Never played Earthdawn, don't have any of the rules. Now that's I've said that...

I'm up for either AD&D or Shadowrun. I think they lend themselves better to a combination of Hack-N-Slash and actual role-playing. As for a political game, I'm not much for politics. What I would like to play is something along the lines of Gothic Horror, or a Renaissance Setting (if we play AD&D, that is.)

Has anybody played the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game? It's set in the Palladium Universe, and looks like it work pretty well with rules from Ninjas and Superspies. (I've always wanted to mesh those two games together.)

TMNT is a great game! I played a mutant cheetah. Had lots of fun with it. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the books any more.

In addressing the "political" suggestion that I made, I'm not at all saying that we would entirely eliminate hack 'n' slash - I love the stuff too much. What I was meaning to imply was more of a puzzle game - perhaps similar in concept to Riven or Myst - where the players would have to figure out what was happening; with, of course, violence worked in as well! And in either ShadowRun or D&D, it would have as little to do with actual politics as possible, so there would be no problem with this game crossing country borders. (Thanks for the concern, Skeleton! And don't worry - if you guys *do* decide to have me GM, everyone will be given exactly the same information about the world to start with. )

Also, is anyone else interested in running? I certainly don't want to stomp on anyone's toes here. Let us know...

Ok, you've completely satisfied my curiosity here. I've played Myst on my computer, and was fascinated by the puzzles. I actually solved it without any help or hints or cheats (I hate using those in general), and that was the first ever adventure style game I reached that result with.

The only AD&D game I ever played, was hosted by a guy who was a master in creating great puzzles. I enjoyed the puzzling intermixed with some slashing around. I didn't play a Fighter-Mage role for nothing Both the Cleric and the Big-Bully Fighter (18/98 for strength without any magic) that were with me, weren't really the smart guys, but they were fun to play with, and could play good characters. anyway, our DM knew his stuff, and succeeded in putting up some puzzles where wits were needed to coordinate each players strengths for the right effect.

Imagine being trapped in a room, where a huge rolling stone door just closed behind you. And the only things you see, are four large iron rings on the ground. These rings where attached to some underground system, and were so hard to pull that only two of our three players were capable of pulling them all the way out. However: the rings were too far apart for one person to pull two rings (let alone all four), even though our strongest character would have been capable of it.

Can you imagine how to get away?

Hmmmm... That's a good one, Skeleton. Gimme a little time to think about it...

It sounds like you had a fabulous GM! That's the kind of campaign I had in mind, simply because it makes the most sense, given our forms of communication in this situation. Anyone else have comments/suggestions/jokes/etc.?

Hey! Have the two stronger characters pull the rings into the center and have the third bind them together. Then repeat the process with the other two. Does that work???

That's precisely what I came up with myself!

But there was one problem... We had to pull diagonally, because the sides of the square these rings formed the corners of, weren't long enough to pull the chains out completely, and that was essential!

Luckily I carried some very strong rope, and with some magic I could make it strong enough to hold. The first attempt failed because the rope just snapped The others weren't as well prepared as I was.

Anyway, the bully and I each pulled a rope towards the centre, where the cleric tied them together, and then we dealt with the others.

You're a clever gal indeeed, Gwen!

And now I remember one other important detail: the fighter was strong enough already, but I had to make special strength-rolls (18/65 strength just wasn't good enough on its own ), and I succeeded twice (both needed for the first set of chains). But for the last chain I just couldn't do it... Luckily, by then we had something in the middle of the square to tie the third ring to.

The cleric didn't even need to try, his 16 was absolutely useless in this case

Yeah, our GM was absolutely great. He had another great problem for us once. There was a temple-like structure in a desert-like terrain, and no matter how we searched, there seemed to be no entrance. We found a kind of diagonal bridge that we tried to climb, but it was so rotten, we ended up biting sand.
We already guessed the entrance would be somewhere on the roof, but throwing ropes and grapling hooks didn't work either... there was nothing for the hooks to cling to.

What do you suggest?

I'm afraid this might have me... All I can think of is creating a dune somehow and walking up it... That's a toughie, Skeleton!

The dune would have taken us too long, because the wall was very high... about 20 feet! Does that tell you enough?

Anyway: the bully stood agains the wall, I climbed up his shoulders, and with some hard work we managed to get the Cleric up, and he could pull himself up the roof. (Any other sequence would have failed)

There he found a small building in the middle of the huge square (too far away for the grapling hooks) and he tied some lengths of rope around it, and then we could blimb the ropes to follow him.

Then we wanted to enter the structure on top of the building, but there was a fringhtening MAGICAL darkness placed by a very high level caster. Neither the cleric nor I could undo it, and infra-vision (as an Elf I did have that) just didn't cut it. The darkness was absolutely impenetrable for us... Does that scare you enough?

Anyway: the fighter and I just couldn't get ourselves to enter that building.., the cleric was the only one to overcome fear (a roll was needed for that) and I insisted he would tie a rope around his waist, so we could pull him out if something happened. He found a chest, which was far too heavy for him, so we had to FORCE the fighter in

At that moment a huge skeleton appeared, and the fighter got the fright of his life! We couldn't trust on his strength, and my magic was useless. The cleric really had to control himself to get rid of it... and he left us an ugly ring! The cleric and the fighter both refused to touch it. So I wore it.

And when the chest came out at last... we needed to open it ofcourse. The Cleric insisted on doing that (his venture into the dark had made him a bit too brave), and he forgot to be careful... He got some nasty stuff in his face (never open a chest with it front towards you )

In the chest we then found a lantern, which didn't work. The cleric held it, and didn't know how to turn it on, the fighter was much too stupid to even talk straight , but when I suddenly WISHED there were light, a very strong beam of light appeared from the thing, and it cut through the darkness. Later we learned that the ring was needed for that light to work

Very cool solution! I like the way he linked the treasures, too. Very creative!

My GM gave us a Crystal Ball-breaker once. One of the players had been harrassing him over and over for a crystal ball, thinking that it would solve all of our problems. (Yeah, right!) So finally Zippy (the character) found his crystal ball. He asked it, "Show me the gem we are looking for." The crystal ball showed him a close-up of one of the facets. "Pull back." It showed the entire gem. "Pull back." It showed the gem and the pillow it rested on. "Pull back." It showed the planet. "Get closer." Close-up of the gem again. It took Zippy 20 minutes to come up the the exact combination of directions for the crystal ball to show us how to get to the gem. And he never begged for another magic item again!

Cool!!! That teaches the player a lesson Such a GM is one to my heart! I like to be pushed to the limits, and when it's a live game, the GM must learn to ignore my complaints, because when I'm complaining, I'm actually driving myself to do better!

Our GM knew how to push me... actually it was inside this temple that the door-puzzle came in. And more like that. It was the longest ever session, filled with one mind-breaker after another. And when we were at the bottom, we found this strange character: Fate!

You'd LOVE to hear that, I'm sure!

Skelly, I'd love to hear it too

I apologize deeply, I know I have abandoned this thread most frighteningly.... I hope nobody casts a spell on me *shivers*
weeeeell:
shadowrun sounds fun, I read a bit but couldn't find anyone to play So I'd be happy with Shadowrun and Gwen as GM in a plot as she devised, love lots of mysteries
As for online-playing:
well, the e-mail game went on for quite a long time. The GM send out his bit, requesting a receipt-when-reading, and each player had to send one move to the GM instantly (10min after reading the GMs mail).
THEN the players discussed what to do via e-mail, and only when no compromise of ALL players could be found at deadline (changing, from 2 days to 1 week), the GM picked the move from the first e-mails by default - first in was taken.
on rolling dice we took the "trust me" approach - there really IS no good tool for that available on the net so far as we looked. ANd the GM was allowed to change what roll lead to which result (logged it into a online-calendar, though).
This could work with us too, I guess, when we can agree on a schedule of sorts.

The game via chat was easy, we all were in the same time zone - same "rules" for rolling, with a private chat room and not sending private messages for discussion, but marking this as "whispered" with ~*~ - who forgot those three keys got in biiiiig trouble, our GM spotted every "careless move".

(like when being in a vault in front of heavy door, hearing sounds behind said door and someone saying "why don't we ask who's there?" for a joke.... ohoh, mistake).
Rules and settings in both were basically AD&D.