About my RPG project... (info and requests)

[Martin]

Thanks! Oh, just a hint about how the Harpy prestige class is gonna look like, in just two words: "Dragon disciple".

[Martin]

Big news! I've just been asked to stage a session of "Vixine: the RPG" at a gaming con next month! Is that cool or what?

[willip]

By the way if you still want the book of erotic fantasy, check out frp games at www.frpgames.com they have it stock as well as several more titles to choose from.

[willip]

I just thought of doing this, how would you go about using some of the races from your other online comic/manga paws for thought. The question in general concerns the felitaurs, the spyder mages and Alar Khar's clans in this?

[Martin]

Already got it, thanks... My favorite store placed an order for a limited quantity, and the store owner kept one for me. He was astonished! He said they vanished like ice under the sun! But then, given the quality of the book, I'm not surprised

[Martin]

Well, I'd probably have to build a new FLF to accomodate the four legs of the Aths (the felitaurs)... the Shikaar (the spyders) can be built using the Multi-limbed monster FLF and the Massive and Armored everycreature FLFs, and for the shapeshifters of clan Nekhat one can just use the same FLF that is used for the doppelgangers... they're similar enough.
Only problem I see in using the three races is that they come from a different planet; that's gonna be one long travel

[Martin]

As the message title hinted, in about 22 hours from now I'll be staging my first demo game of "Vixine: the RPG". If it goes well (and probably even if it doesn't), I'll probably put up Alpha version 1.1 soon after.
Frankly, though, people, I'm scared witless... in many years of GMing, this is the first time I do it in public, at a Con.

Wish me luck!

[Martin]

...it has been for quite a few days, actually. And the players LOVED the game! None of them had ever used furry characters, but they liked the concept nonetheless. You can just guess how I feel about that
Anyway, back to business: the revised Version 1.1 Alpha is ready, and will be up quite soon. It has a few extras that I hope you'll like... plus the little adventure I ran at the con: "Yet Another Rescue Adventure", an introductive game for 1st level adventurers.

[Martin]

A promise is a promise, as they say... so here it is, Alpha version 1.1, with quite a lot of extra stuff, for your gaming enjoyment.
Oh well... hope you'll love playing it as much as I loved creating it.
Who knows, maybe after a little extra work I'll declare it upgraded to Beta...

[RomLoneWolf23k]

Hiya, long time no post.. Love the latest page of the VT comic, but I had a question about the RPG: I noticed it explicitly states the "feel" of the Vixine RPG is meant to be light-hearted and "innocent" (as innocent as a comic focused on sex can be, at least). Which is why the villains are virtually all incompetant and threats are usually rather "weak"...

But what about those of us who prefer a bit harder "edge" to their comedy? What about those of us who find some of the jokes from comics like Slaine (where someone comments on the practice of decapitating the last man on the battlefield by saying "it encourages punctuality") where Gallows Humor is common? And what about those of us who prefer their comedy fantasy to be a bit more subtle, more "discworld" then "monty python"?

I think there should be an appendix, at least, which suggests how to make the Vixine RPG a bit more "serious" (but not depressingly so) style of campaign? Or do you think that should be left to individual GMs?

[Martin]

I could say "I offer the environment, then each GM uses it as he sees fit", and extoll the virtue of independent GMing... but I'd be feeding you a load of bull.
Truth be told, I'm no good at "dark humor", maybe because I don't find it funny... It's a quirk of mine, I guess. I vastly prefer the "Animaniacs" kind of fun to the "South Park" one. Anyway, I'd say that the elements to make that kind of humor are already there... one just has to discard the slapstick elements.
As for subtle humor... well, on that I can safely say that it's perfectly viable, although as of my experience offering subtle humor to the average player is like inviting a bull into a china shop.
Mind you, a reason for the style of the module could be that I tried to follow the kind of humor I placed in the comic itself...

[RomLoneWolf23k]

Been meaning to respond to this a long time ago: Been busy with my own homebrew campaign setting, but I love the setting of Auris so much, I'd love to set a campaign in it as well, although, as I mentionned, I'd make the humor much edgier, more Southpark and perhaps more like Internet cartoons then Saturday Morning fair with tits.. Wouldn't take too much work, to be honest, just dropping that "nobody gets hurt" rule.

[Martin]

Well, you're the DM, so do as you see fit... the "Nobody gets hurt while having fun" rule was just a guideline to send things in a cartoon-like way (although many players I know would surely abuse it... do something horrendous, then do a funny gag to avoid being utterly annihilated, if you know what I mean). My only suggestion is to keep the "nut-kicking" rule... some "high 'n mighty warriors" deserve it anyway
By the way, I'd like to ask you a couple of things:
1)So, did you like the "harpy" prestige class?
2)As a beta-tester (you offered, right?), do you have some observations or comments about the game as it is?
Oh, before I forget: I have a third version of the game ready. Nothing major, just redesigned the geography to fit within the map that was posted in the message board... Only difference, mainly, is that Aura is now surrounded by mountains, Faerun(i.e. Forgotten Realms)-style, and that the eastern lands are actually WEST! Oh, and the oriental dragons are called T'ai Dragons now (occidental dragon sounds pretty fishy )
Well, that's it. Hope you'll be able to put in some suggestions...

[RomLoneWolf23k]

Thanks for reminding me of the beta-testing.. Been caught up in my own campaign and a few other games with my gaming crew, but we've agreed to run a play-test session for the Vixine RPG when we get a chance sometime soon. I'll let you know how that pans out.

[Martin]

Thank you!

[Gavinfox]

Out of curiosity, is this RPG project free to distribute yet, as long as we dont alter the files in any way (thereby showing that it is, in fact, your work?)

[RomLoneWolf23k]

Well, last night my players and I conviened for a character creation session that went rather well, aside from one player who left in a huff after I told her she couldn't give her bat psion/rogue gestalt free prestidigitation and the ability to use Control Object to pick locks without tools. I was sorry to see her go, but I ain't letting a player get the abilities of an Arcane Trickster without playbalance.

Anyways, other then that, things went well. The PCs are as follows:
-Rel, a Bunny Cleric with Bootylicious, Cute and maxed out Looks. Essentially, she's Too Good Looking to Hit.
-Whiskey's playing a Fennec Fox (former Dominian Black Mask) Bard with the Cute FLF; his concept is that he's a very cute fox who doesn't like being treated as such.
-Shauntea's playing an Orc female cleric of Gronag, who, in spite of her beauty, hates being treated as a sex object and reacts violently at any attempt at "picking her up".
-Silkis is playing a Doppelganger Sorceror from Daatplash
-Finally, for Fenrys, I made a Barbarian Wolf Ranger with an Int of 9, focusing on the Stamina Combat style (He's Rel's boyfriend, so I figured I owed him that much.) When he got back from Anthrocon a day early last night, I handed him what I made of his character and he said he'd finish the rest, tinkering a bit.

All in all, things went rather well, and almost everyone made the character he or she wanted, and within playbalanced rules. And all characters were designed true to the spirit of the world of Vixine, to boot (complete with a bunnie with the Lapine Oath).

Some notes:
-One of my players asked if Body Language and Performance: Sex were Class Skills for any class. We finally all house ruled that on Auris, they'd be Class Skills for everyone.
-Secondly, I'm still concerned about ruling that the Barbarian Class is only for the Wolf tribes of Barbarian. How about renaming the class Berzerker, saying that Wolf Berzerkers are Barbarians, and that Berzerkers of other nations have different names? After all, I could see the She-Hordes of the North, the Nomadic tribes of Caryda and especially the Orcs develop "Berzerkers" of their own.
-Finally, I'm also building the party's first enemy, a Jackal Cleric/Sorceror with a necromancy theme (based on a familiar old enemy of the party from another campaign. I figure they'd like seeing him again). So far, I've built him by making him a typical jackal, then adding some pretty icky feats from Book of Vile Deeds: Evil Brand and Lichloved. Mostly because I didn't notice any FLFs that would've been appropriate. How about adding villainous FLFs like "Evil Laughter: When you laugh, you cause those around you to shudder in fear at the sound of your voice/get a +4 Bonus to Intimidate when laughing maniacally" or "Gothic Look: you have a definetly dark, gothic and villainous look to you, and you look good in dark clothing/get a +4 bonus on social skills with Evil beings, and +2 to your looks when wearing dark leather, spiky clothing, or anything else that looks like S&M fetish clothing...

Well, that's it from me now. Next report will involve the first play session: I'll spend the week designing a small five-room dungeon full of undead for them to explore..

[Martin]

[Martin]

Well, Rom... Happy to to hear you were able to put together a few cool characters (pity for the bat lady, but sounds like you were just fair.)
As for your proposals:

[RomLoneWolf23k]

Ok, quick update: spoke with the bat's player again, and she explained to me exactly what she wanted. Turns out it wasn't as unbalancing as I thought, since she's willing to pay psychic power points for the use of those abilities, rather then just get freebies. So she's back in: a Bat female Gestalt Rogue/Kineticist, level 4 (+1 for the Gestalt), with Winged, Blindsight, Cute and Foil.

[RomLoneWolf23k]

[Martin]

[RomLoneWolf23k]

Ok, Playtest update: My bat-thief player decided to trade in her bat for a male ram/half-ogre barbarian from Duh (son of a She-Horde warrior who got kicked out of the village at adolence according to old tribal law).

Our first session was a roaring success, in spite of the fact that, as always with me and my PC group, I never seem able to give them a capable combat challenge... One Flamestrike from one of the cleric PCs managed to dispatch many of the Ghoul guardians I'd placed for the dark temple that served as a dungeon; the rest were scared off by the illusion of a carrion crawler.

So afterwards, they entered the temple and found the main villain, Baron Dorn Laguare, a jackal and necromancer priest (Cleric3/Sorceror4), and his 9 zombie minions. In spite of a good bit of talking and Dorn getting in some good hits, he was nevertheless dispatched quickly by a combo hit of Shockwave (to knock the villains all down) and Bahdax the ram barbarian charging in to chop the prone jackal... dealing 39 damage to the 27 HP villain. Poor guy... His last words were "Gaaah... geez... this hurts... even more... then it... loookssss... ....""

The remaining zombies were kept pinned with Grease, so I ruled they'd have no problem dispatching them (it was getting late for me anyway), and ended the session by having Dorn's girlfriend, the black fire dragoness, walk in through the front door and seeing the carnage...

...to be continued.

All in all, my players loved the game, but they agreed they didn't use near enough innuendo as they could've. Also, they went and used up their big guns right from the get-go... I just might surprise them later...

Some ideas I had:
-Ghouls; Instead of having ghouls be the standard creepy, vicious corpse-hungry monsters from the Monster Manual, I figured on taking advantage of their good intelligence and give them some decent speech skills.. ...and making them into a bunch of nasty, foul-mouthed perverted wretches who've mastered the art of the "Paralyzing Grope", using their paralysis attack with a Grope touch attack instead of a clawing or biting.
-Male Dragons; speaking out of experience with other rps in the past, I think it's a disservice for all male dragons to basically be a bunch of nigh impotent doofs more interested in a good book then in a piece of tail.. It'd be interesting if some others were sexually active... Only as Gay Males, and for a rare few (not just Cutsies) to be attracted to females as well; only the ones attracted to females woule be damned rare, and thus highly sought after...
-Grope Attacks. I'd figure this would make an interesting battle option, basically a Touch attack intent on grasping a firm, desirable piece of warm flesh. I figure the result would probably be equal to a stun attack from shock.

All in all, everyone had fun, which is the point of the game, really, and next session, I'll be playing the encounter with the dragoness, and perhaps with some other surprises as well...

[Martin]

Well, well, well...
Sounds like you all had fun! Of course, there are a few things to say...

[RomLoneWolf23k]

[Martin]

[RomLoneWolf23k]

Ok, here's the situation update for my playtest campaign.. And it took a rather bizarre turn early on...

The dragoness who was Laguare's girlfriend walked in after they killed him, and just as she was ready to attack them, one of the pcs grabbed her legs (she'd went Large, he was Small) and started arousing her.. the other PCs ran with it and soon she was tied up on the floor, squirming in extacy as some of the various players tried fondling and groping her in various ways, our ranger actually tying her up...

And that's when the necromancer's ghost reappeared and tried the villainous routine again after berating his girlfriend for "cheating on him while he wasn't dead more then 15 minutes". Now, while that alone would've been truly sick a situation, the player playing the half-ogre ram battlerager went beyond the call of duty and actually started raping Laguare's corpse as an insult...

I had all the spellcasters preparing spells (including Laguare) make a Concentration check because of that horrible sight, and only one managed to keep her cool, and blasted Laguare with Searing Light.. He faded off in pain, cursing the heroes, leaving them with the now recovered religious icon and a tied dragoness to "tame"...

All in all.. a bizarre, disturbing and very amusing game session...

Addendum: Oh yeah... they want to keep going with this campaign.. I guess they're really enjoying themselves..

[Martin]

Whoa.
Well, that's one weird situation...
All in all, I'm happy they like the stuf (although I suggest you check the BattleRager's alignment)!
A few things:

[RomLoneWolf23k]

[Martin]