On 16 Jul 2004 at 8:02, Jane Williams wrote:
> Yup. I love when they reveal to me that the main villain is
> > not in fact the leader, but his
> > witch assistant who is secretly planning to take over. Which
> > I didn't know about until then. :)
>
> But it's so obviously true!
> And then you can either do a D&D "but it doesn't say that in the scenario",
> or say "yes, but...."
Oh, it was. This was a Buffy campaign, played using the BESM rules (the Buffy system hadn't come out yet). Set in Montreal, where two groups of vampires, one French, one English, had been feuding since the British take over. The witch (Morgan) was on the English side, and in one adventure kidnapped the group's crazy girl with visions. She bit her but did not turn her into a vampire, since doing that without losing the vision power was delicate. From that point on the players could care less about the Vampire war, it was ALL about getting Morgan.
So naturally, she tricked her leader, got him killed by the Players, all while escalating the war so that it took out both sides in furtherence of her own plans.
Oh, and the one-fanged muscle Christophe (who was from the French side) never matched the level of hate Morgan had, but proved such a thorn that he was also high on their list. So naturaly he was the tool Morgan used to infiltrate the French side and ended up as her bodyguard.
In the end, Morgan was destroyed, but Christophe survived, and was going to appear in the sequel. (Most of the players moved west. I did find out that one of the Players is running a Buffy game based in New England. Oddly, the villain of his piece has hired a Vampire mercenary named Christophe, who survived the Vampire Wars of Montreal. No one in his game was in mine, it's just a nod. I was flattered.)
>
> It has to be said that it's easier to say "yes but..." these days, when you
> don't have to scrap a load of RQ stats and redo them. If I had to generate a
> D&D character sheet for my NPCs, I'd be sticking to pre-gen stuff, too.
So true. At least with BESM it was easy to improv NPCs. The guy who is making the merchant for my campaign is running a D&D game, and the NPCs are driving him nuts. (The fact we love to go off script isn't helping.) Just too much to keep track of.
I honestly think HQ is the easiest system to whip up an appropriate challenge for players since the old Marvel system. (Which took about 15 seconds half the time. "Umm.. he's a flying guy who can blast things. Remarkable speed, Incredible blasts, all stats Excellent. There you go." )
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