Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

["V"]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Signs your Champions GM is now Thomas Harris:

 

1. The most interesting evil NPCs suddenly start only attacking morally bad people and acting like anti-heroes

 

2. The origins of those formerly interesting NPCs get retconned to include pop psychology excuses for all the bad things they did, even down to writing out some of their former activities which now don't fit with the 'poor misunderstood boy' tropes.

 

3. As soon as they realise their campaign is popular, their scenario writing skills turn to crap because they assume people will turn up to play anyway.

[sinanju]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Signs your GM is Prof. Farnsworth (from Futurama)

 

1) "Good news, everyone! You're being sent to some random place to perform an inane mission that seems totally mundane, but may well lead to the destruction of our entire space-time continuum."

 

2) Falls asleep in the middle of an adventure. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence.

 

3) Has you encounter duplicates of yourselves from a parallel universe. Even though these duplicates not only look like your party, but act exactly the same as your party, he insists that they must be evil, because everyone knows that all parallel universes are filled with nothing but evil duplicates.

 

4) The most scientificly advanced species in the galaxy are the Globetrotters, from planet Globetrotter.

 

5) All Master Villains have an army of Atomic Zombie Super-Men.

 

I think you mean Mutant Atomic Super-Men!

 

6) Occasionally lets slip that this team of player characters are far from the first set he's sent to their deaths in this adventure.

 

7) Occasionally gets distracted by perusing his Ultra-Porn!

[freakboy6117]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

8) would use deus ex to save the party from there own stupidity but he is already in his pyjamas

[Pariah]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Signs that your Champions GM is now Ayn Rand:

4) The only music allowed at the gaming table is Rush, but nothing newer than 2112 is allowed.

 

I could live with all-Rush background music, but no Moving Pictures? Out of the question.

 

5) Nobody will let you borrow their dice to make a roll unless it's clearly in their own self-interest.

 

Apparently I've played in this campaign.....

[Bazza]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Signs your GM is Zornwil:

 

1) Cyborgs

 

2) Pirates

 

3) Ninjas

 

4) Monkeys

 

5) In Space

you forgot 6) archvillain is death tribble.

[The Main Man]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

More signs that your GM is Big Brother:

1) He's constantly looking over his GM screen in a foreboding manner.

2) He changes the rules mid-game, and everyone is expected to comply.

3) If anyone says that his game stinks, he puts a mask that is connected to a cage filled with starving rats onto their face until they confess to liking it.

4) Instead of Mountain Dew, everyone drinks some store-brand drink called "Victory Drop."

[Hermit]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Dr. Destroyer as a GM?

 

1) He looks up his write up in CKC, and declares it 'Insultingly underpowered', and swears vengeance against this 'Steve Long'

 

2) Each Player is expected to make a character who works for Dr. Destroyer. If told they prefer to play good guys, the Doctor scoffs and assures them might makes right, and they'll end up working for him eventually anyway.

 

3) Telios suddenly has an int of 6, and a big bubble head, making Bulldozer look dignified by comparison

 

4) Similarly, VIPER makes the Keystone cops look competent.

[transmetahuman]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

More signs that your GM is Big Brother:

2) He changes the rules mid-game, and everyone is expected to comply.

...In fact, everyone is expected to act like these new rules are the way the group has always played. What new rules?

[Mister E]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

1) He looks up his write up in CKC, and declares it 'Insultingly underpowered', and swears vengeance against this 'Steve Long'

 

2) Each Player is expected to make a character who works for Dr. Destroyer. If told they prefer to play good guys, the Doctor scoffs and assures them might makes right, and they'll end up working for him eventually anyway.

 

3) Telios suddenly has an int of 6, and a big bubble head, making Bulldozer look dignified by comparison

 

4) Similarly, VIPER makes the Keystone cops look competent.

 

lol

[MilkmanDan]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

I could live with all-Rush background music' date=' but no Moving Pictures? Out of the question.[/quote']

 

Eh, the Ayn Rand influence pretty much vanishes after 2112. Which was a very good thing.

[Balabanto]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

It makes me thank the gods that these aren't the Wizards boards. One of their authors just started writing a trilogy that idolizes the work of Ayn Rand. Now, since I have a similar long running D+D gameworld to my Champions gameworld, I have to read these novels...

 

Oh, god, it's like pulling teeth. Reading Ayn Rand is bad enough. Reading a fantasy imitation of it? Uck...uck...uck...

[teh bunneh]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

It makes me thank the gods that these aren't the Wizards boards. One of their authors just started writing a trilogy that idolizes the work of Ayn Rand. Now, since I have a similar long running D+D gameworld to my Champions gameworld, I have to read these novels...

 

Oh, god, it's like pulling teeth. Reading Ayn Rand is bad enough. Reading a fantasy imitation of it? Uck...uck...uck...

 

You're running a D&D gameworld, so you have to read D&D novels? That doesn't follow. Why do you feel you have to read the books, if you hate them so much?

[OddHat]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

You're running a D&D gameworld' date=' so you [u']have[/u] to read D&D novels? That doesn't follow. Why do you feel you have to read the books, if you hate them so much?

 

Quite right.

 

On a probably unrelated subject, a little less than twenty years ago I'd occasionally get a player who'd tell me that something I said about a setting was "wrong", because the ___________ source book said __________. At the time, I'd explain to them that the game world was mine, and that where my description differed from official materials, my description was correct.

 

These days, I'm lucky enough to get players who understand that without being told. I also only GM in other writer's settings at conventions.

[archermoo]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Quite right.

 

On a probably unrelated subject, a little less than twenty years ago I'd occasionally get a player who'd tell me that something I said about a setting was "wrong", because the ___________ source book said __________. At the time, I'd explain to them that the game world was mine, and that where my description differed from official materials, my description was correct.

 

These days, I'm lucky enough to get players who understand that without being told. I also only GM in other writer's settings at conventions.

 

To the best of my recollection I've actually run another person's setting. The closest would be having run some of the AD&D modules, but I bascially stripped out the overplot where appropraite to fit them into my world. Being able to run a world of my creation is one of my biggest draws to being a Ref, so I have no interest in giving that up to run something that someone else wrote. And even if I did, it wouldn't be without modifications, if for no other reason than because other people can buy all of the same things that I do, so can have all of the same "behind the scenes" info on the world that I do.

[Balabanto]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Because unlike running Hero, the Forgotten Realms has a ridiculously complicated timeline, so I need to know what exists and what doesn't, especially when you have different groups at different points in the timeline.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Signs Your GM is David Eddings...

1. All of the PCs are among the most renowned and noteworthy people in the world. Despite this, they can all up and leave, and traipse around the globe with apparent ease and anonymity.
   
2. Adventures leading up to major events consist of holding lengthy meetings discussing the pros and cons of various possible courses of action. The major events themselves are either not played out in game time at all, or are tremendously glossed over.
   
3. All NPCs use identical turns of phrase. Had you noticed that? I thought you might have.
   
4. Every villain can be defeated by finding the right magic rock.

[archermoo]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Because unlike running Hero' date=' the Forgotten Realms has a ridiculously complicated timeline, so I need to know what exists and what doesn't, especially when you have different groups at different points in the timeline.[/quote']

 

Yet another reason among many that I have no interest in running someone else's world.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Signs Your GM is Stephen J. Cannell...

1. All adventures feature a minimum of one car chase.
   
2. All such car chases will result in at least one car crashing.
   
3. All crashed cars explode.
   
4. All adventures occur primarily in either the quasi-desert country outside Los Angeles, or in run-down industrial areas of Los Angeles.
   
5. All problems can be solved by building a homemade tank. (Well, okay... that's mostly just in his The A-Team campaign. )

[teh bunneh]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Because unlike running Hero' date=' the Forgotten Realms has a ridiculously complicated timeline, so I need to know what exists and what doesn't, especially when you have different groups at different points in the timeline.[/quote']

 

Are you playing in Ed Greenwood's campaign, or your own? 'Cause if it's your own, why should you care what happens in the novels? What's the attraction in preserving the "proper" timeline (AKA the author's vision), rather than making the world and the game your own?

 

I guess I'm just confused about why you can't do as Oddhat suggested:

 

[...]I'd occasionally get a player who'd tell me that something I said about a setting was "wrong"' date=' because the ___________ source book said __________. At the time, I'd explain to them that the game world was mine, and that where my description differed from official materials, my description was correct. [/quote']

 

...especially given that you obviously hate the source material.

 

Bill.

(It's better to turn on the lights (IE claim the world as your own) than to curse the darkness (IE keep reading books that you hate)).

[OddHat]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Signs your GM is Mark Millar in his Marvel days:

 

1) Early in the campaign, many of the ideas are interesting.

 

2) Early in the campaign, his takes on some of the settings canon characters and tropes often draw a smile, even if the nudge-nudge wink-wink is starting to get on your nerves.

 

3) As he starts to get bored, NPCs start acting progressively more deranged.

 

4) As he gets really bored, random torture, rape and cannibalism by NPCs become the order of the day. Formerly competent NPCs become contemptible idiots, and formerly heroic NPCs become deranged villains.

 

5) Turning NPC heroes into villains has nothing to do with the plot. If called on this, he'll assert (possibly tongue in cheek) that they're still heroes, and this is the sort of thing heroes do.

 

6) As the adventure gets close to its climax, you realize he has no idea where he wants it to go.

 

7) As the game finally falls apart, he claims to hate the genre, and mocks you for participating in the campaign.

[OddHat]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

...especially given that you obviously hate the source material.

 

I never said what game we were playing, or how I felt about the source material. Are you mixing up my posts with someone else's?

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

In honor of the Urban Fantasy thread . . .

 

Signs your GM is Charles de Lint

1. Each game has at least one spunky, skinny female who believes in fairies, even if all your players are male. If no one will play her, you get a GMPC.

2. The spunky, skinny female turns out to be built on several more points, which, it turns out, come from disads. Namely: PsychLim: Dark Past, Hunteds and Distinctive Feature: bright aura.

3. All characters built with Extradimensional Travel capabilities.

4. Extradimensional Travel comes into play only toward the climax of the adventure.

5. You spend half your roleplaying time explaining to NPCs that there really are such things as fairies.

6. Just when you think you've nailed the tone of the game, the GM switches to a dark, disturbing one-off. It gives you nightmares.

7. After each session, you catch yourself looking oddly at ordinary things, like crows and tangles of computer wire, half-expecting them to have something to say.

8. The background music is folksy, and made of awesome.

9. Though his technological know-how is lacking, you can never look at search engines the same way again.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

I never said what game we were playing' date=' or how I felt about the source material. Are you mixing up my posts with someone else's?[/quote']

 

Sorry. These two statements were meant to go together:

 

I guess I'm just confused about why you can't do as Oddhat suggested:

...especially given that you obviously hate the source material.

 

I didn't mean to imply that you (Oddhat) hate the source material; rather, that you were offering good advice about not slavishly adhering to the source material. Does that make more sense?

 

Bill.

(Me am no so goodish with make-talk language of english-guys).

[OddHat]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Sorry. These two statements were meant to go together:

 

 

 

I didn't mean to imply that you (Oddhat) hate the source material; rather, that you were offering good advice about not slavishly adhering to the source material. Does that make more sense?

 

Bill.

(Me am no so goodish with make-talk language of english-guys).

 

Sorry Bill, looks like I misread.

 

Weirdly enough, when I was a teen I liked some of the TSR novels, and in my late teens and early twenties I thought that the Warhammer and Shadowrun books were pretty good reads. These days I think the setting for games like Aberrant, Godlike, Wild Talents, and Weapons of the Gods have a lot to offer. Even so, I always changed settings to suit my tastes. World building is a big part of why I play.

[Susano]

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank)

 

Sorry Bill, looks like I misread.

 

Weirdly enough, when I was a teen I liked some of the TSR novels, and in my late teens and early twenties I thought that the Warhammer and Shadowrun books were pretty good reads. These days I think the setting for games like Aberrant, Godlike, Wild Talents, and Weapons of the Gods have a lot to offer. Even so, I always changed settings to suit my tastes. World building is a big part of why I play.

 

I love the Greyhawk novels of Paul Kidd. They are utterly hilarious and a riot to read. And they don't take themselves seriously at all.