80s Hair

GRAVEYARD KIDS!!

so basically the graveyard kids are a group of fucked up teens that get bullied by others and seen as outcasts or freaks they hangout in a graveyard and do drugs they have fucked up families and backstories the first kid named kayari his family neglects him and his father is a drunk he gets his habits of drinking from his father he mostly never sober pin.it/13TJUqKEp him on Pinterest just search up that link and it will be there next kids name is sumori he does a bunch of pills like Xanax and Prozac he has insomnia and he hallucinates he's obsessed with the being in a relationship if they don't show affection or treat him wrongly he just gets high to forget here what he looks likepin.it/3feDWgh0p the next ones are twins katari and kentaru they usually aren't with the group they spend time in the woods smoking ciggaretes they used to get beat up by their abusive parents here's what they lookpin.it/1cQGwJ1oB the next ones are best friends jesse and Pam don't really have trauma they just smoke heres what they look likepin.it/7953CwEkt and the ring leader is tenki he smokes and takes Xanax and Prozac he like cold weather here's himpin.it/1VifcKQoa the last one is crow they call him that because the reason they started hanging out at the graveyard is because they found him there he smokes a lot here what he looks likepin.it/FTM1THQAP and for the the character thats me is called dusty a kid who does drugs and hangs out in the woods he's my pfp but I'll still show you him with the link pin.it/5BAHqfMqI

@DRUG ABUSER

What´s the story? Maybe include zombies who stumble onto the teens while they have a party at the graveyard. Although the zombies don´t eat the teens because the undead are too busy watching Youtube videos on their smartphones.

Do You Have RP Pet Peeves?

<Snipped quote by AnakisutoYT>

Ai art I not always mind as at times you never find a image that matches your mental picture of the charceter / situation.

Not everyone is a skilled artist.

@PrinceAlexus

The solution would be to task the program to come up with a few dozen pics for a character. Also an adjustment of the prompts works wonders in achieving a good result. For my Vietnam War/Shadowrun [1st] session I created pics for the six protagonists. The random players who showed up at the event appreciated the art.

LOSER!!

So...you are living the life. This would make you a winner.

How to resolve a wrestling match during a RPG setting?

There was approval from the people about the Vietnam War/Shadowrun [1st] session "Jungle Hike" in general as I explained in the corresponding thread. And now I have a question of how to resolve the following idea for a probable next session in a month:

One of the characters has a background as a professional wrestler (Medusa: very long cyberhair, cyberlegs and dermal armour) and still is able to work for a company which features enhanced talent to entertain the troops in Vietnam just like the WWE did in Afghanistan. So my decision as GM is to feature a wrestling match with this character. To avoid the other two characters having nothing to do during that time I have planned to let them take the role of the two colour commentators during the wrestling match. As those two players are absolutely not familiar with wrestling and it´s terms I have come up with the idea of writing approximately two A4 pages (maybe more) of dialogue for the two commentators to tell the audience, and ultimately for everyone at the gaming table, what is really going on in the ring. Of course there will be many instances of funny comments and insults as one of the commentator would be pro-Face and the other one pro-Heel.

Would this be a good idea to resolve it in such a way? Or is it unfulfilling for a RPG player to read a text and not come up with his own ideas? Commentating a wrestling match in an entertaining way is a task which not even former wrestlers can do very well so, if I would just assume they could somehow manage it I might set them up for failure and it will sink the whole session and the mood at the table.

Crossover of Shadowrun & Vietnam War

So after several years of not doing a RPG game my Vietnam War/Shadowrun (1st) session "Jungle Hike" has been played with complete strangers over at a youth centre. The resonance at the end was pretty good. The session was peppered with Vietnam War references and the player characters went through a two-year boot camp to make them ready for Vietnam in 2050. And there a certain notorious drill sergeant gave them nicknames just like in "Full Mithril Jacket":

- Fortunate Son

- Medusa

- Movie Monster

- Tranquility

- Valkyrie

- Wrecking Ball

There were a few moments where PCs could earn tokens to avoid future encounters via answering questions via a quick quiz which would present itself via an encounter with NPCs. Those questions referred to the Trashmen, Paint it black, Surfin Bird and We gotta get outa this place. There were also easter eggs hidden in the true names of some of the characters.

Crossover of Shadowrun & Vietnam War

Here is a clip for those of you who never heard of Shadowrun:

youtube.com/watch?v=8GPGQoR6f6w&t=9s

Crossover of Shadowrun & Vietnam War

So there hasn´t apparently been an outcry against introducing goblins to represent the majority of the Vietnamese population in the 2nd elevator pitch. This means we can discuss another topic: The tone of the setting. Here are two suggestions but honestly there could be more or anything in-between:

1. Grim, gritty and/or brutal.
This means the session would lean more heavily into a simulation and for lack of a better term the DM would try to create a more "realistic" environment. Players would need to be more cautious when making decisions in dangerous situations as things can and will go south pretty fast, if a gung-ho approach has been chosen. Characters need to be no nonsense career soldiers or go home early in a body bag.

2. Cinematic, cheesy and/or silly
Players have more leeway when being in tight spots and here and there is also room for comedic moments. The player character themselves do not need to be as serious as in the above version. A valid example could be the following: A cast akin to the Charlie´s Angels (2000 version with Cameron Diaz) make up the player characters. They are all in a punk band, obviously with big 80s hair, entertaining the troops in Vietnam and boosting morale with their gigs. They constantly move from base to base via chopper to play for the soldiers. Although they can´t always evade danger and when things get tough they themselves can lay down the law as they are also loaded up to the gills with cyberware just like their more serious counterparts.

Crossover of Shadowrun & Vietnam War

Apparently I am on to something. Somebody else made a NAM crossover too. Here it is:

youtube.com/watch?v=2DK714V3Grw

Crossover of Shadowrun & Vietnam War

I have started RPGs in the 90s and had several groups of which two were the most important ones as we played multiple years roleplaying games. In the first group we played quite a few different systems and the DM changed each week as we took turns. Later in the other group I took the permanent role of DM for a D&D Ravenloft setting which ran for a couple of years. I introduced a single crossover session in the current campaign and the two of the three participating players were not very fond of it to put it mildly. That´s why I am asking here on the forum how people think about crossover games in general.

I searched on the interwebz first for dedicated Shadowrun forums only to find out that I found a single German one which had died as traffic was pretty much non-existent. In addition to that I wanted to find out what people would think of the second goblinization event mentioned in "elevator pitch #2" which turns the local populace into goblins. This idea was stolen from the Freebooter´s Fate pirate tabletop skirmish game in which former plantation workers/slaves are being represented by goblins. The reason for this is obvious. The developers didn´t want to face accusations of racism so they turned this group into the goblin faction.

I intended to do this too in version 2 as some people might take offense, if I just do a reenactment of the Vietnam War. This might turn out in the end to be a case of overthinking and making it more complicated than it needs to be but that´s why this thread is for after all. I just want to hear people´s opinion on these takes. Another thing would be the choice of the ruleset. Hardcore fans of any franchise have their favourite editions and Shadowrun is not an exception. In my case the retro bug bit me and I could not resist buying the first edition (35th anniversary). On this decision alone people might not want to try it out as it pretty much represents retro sci-fi where characters plug themselves into machinery with data cables and the mere mention of wifi would sound like forbidden black magic. In case of clothing and fashion in general the 80s are very present in this edition. This also helps to differentiate Shadowrun from the later Matrix movies where everyone walks around in sunglasses with black trenchcoats.

Crossover of Shadowrun & Vietnam War

According to my brief intro in the respective subforum I am currently on the fence, if I should put in effort to create a session of Shadowrun which may or not be turned into a full campaign. Because of this I have joined this forum with the intent of using it as a sounding board as it won´t be a run-of-the-mill Shadowrun experience but a crossover which in this case would be the Vietnam War. So I want you, the reader, to give me an honest opinion, if you or your RPG associates would deem my idea interesting or if it would be too niche to have large scale appeal.

And now to the details. The game system would be Shadowrun 1st edition because of nostalgia and the fact that only the earlier versions of this franchise honour the 80s and thus retro sci-fi in a proper way. And it doesn´t stop there. I also have interest in the Vietnam War and have read various material about this era from the perspective of people being right there at the time (e.g. Peter Scholl-Latour and American helicopter pilots). Currently I am reading "The Vietnam War" by Geoffrey C.Ward and Ken Burns.

So how would these settings now mesh together? There are in the moment two possible ideas, which are not set in stone, for such a "Weird War War/Cyberpunk" setting which would take place in an alternate timeline to not mess with the current affairs of Shadowrun:

1. Humanity reverse-engineered cyberware directly at the end of WWII with the help of downed alien crafts scattered around the globe. The aliens themselves take no part in the forthcoming events. There is no magic and thus no metahumans, no matrix and no rise of corporations ruling the world. The players would be American special-ops soldiers loaded up to the gills with cyberware and sent on various missions during the Vietnam War. Most missions would occur in the wilderness but quite a few would also take place in larger cities such as Saigon or Hanoi to have the experience of an urban area covered in neon lights and the ever present rain.

2. It´s 2050, as it is the case in Shadowrun 1st edition, and a second wave of goblinization hits the area of Indochina. This time humans in this region are suddenly turned into goblins and the turnover rate is about 99%. The idea of turning a group of people from history into goblins was stolen from the Freebooter´s Fate tabletop pirate game in which former plantation workers are represented by goblins. Various mega corporations who intend to profit from the sheer chaos which such an event creates have the intention of claiming territory in Vietnam (Cochinchina, Annam and Tonking). The mega corporations take the place of the USA, French, China and Russia who were the main players in history. The players would be individuals working for an American mega corp.

I am looking forward to your suggestions. In the meantime I am enjoying this new fantastic Vietnam War book on my balcony with a cool drink. See ya, chummer!