Yes, Friend Computer only has our best interests in mind. Trust Friend Computer.
What I love in Paranoia is that the players start as Troubleshooters. As in their job is to find trouble and shoot it. As an IT professional who’s usually the go-to for the hard problems, I appreciate that.
Spoilers Season 2 Episode 35 Dockside Diplomacy
spoiler
The party's search for a guy named Marius lead them to the Nicodranas dockfront at night. Marius was parleying with some pirates, which of course led to a fight. A fireball and Thunderstep later, the city guard joined the fight too. Not an the player's side (or pirates).
Noticing they were starting to get overwhelmed, the party decided to retreat... by stealing the pirate ship. Which sent the campaign in a completely new and fun direction and allowed them to wear pirate costumes on-stage for the next episode.
It was also mostly Tavis's doing that locked them in that direction of "escape", but also made sense as Fjord (his character) had a whole sailor background. It ended leading directly into Fjord's individual story arch.
I believe Matt said later during a Talks Machina or something that he did not think of that option when we was setting up the fight before stream, but that it's exactly the kind of crazy player decision that he loves.
I just love the: oh, we need to retreat. I know! Let's steel the pirate ship.
My players did something similar in one of our campaigns. Though in their case the ship they were already on was attacked by pirate and I'd REALLY underestimated the difficulty. My players slaughtered the pirates and decided to take their ship instead of just ride on someone else's. The core plot of that campaign was really location agnostic, so I didn't mind at all.
My fav Matt surprised moment isn’t the party going into a fight they shouldn’t have, but how Travis decided to get them out of a tough fight in Nicodranas in Campaign 2. Totally sent campaign in a new but fun direction. Bonus that the next episode was live on stage and the cast got to play dress-up.
Not sure of intended purpose, but we used one for my son & my Hero & Baymax costumes one Halloween.
Play Battlestaions This was my last group’s actual fallback… that started to become our main game because it was more interesting than my campaign O.o
Changling College of Eloquence Bard. They were basically a con artist.
Came into the campaign a few sessions late.9 The party was looking for a healer to replace another player that had to drop. When they encountered my bard they were pretending to a cleric of Lathander in order to run a scam in the local village. The scam was played out and my character was looking for a fast exit.
I once started a Star Wars campaign with the players meeting in prison. Most arrested by the Empire for things they didn’t do. A couple for things they did.
First episode was breaking out. I planned out a few options and dropped hints. They of course chose brute force. At the end was a choice between a few different ships to steal and get off the planet and use for the rest of the campaign.
Had this happen in a Savage Worlds campaign set in the old west. My gunslinger Mark Reid was only 5’ 6”, slight of build, and appearance half hidden by their slightly oversized debt hat and tinted glasses.
They were actually Maryrose Caroline O’Shannon, from a semi-wealthy Irish family. She’d ran away to US to avoid an arranged marriage.
I’d dropped a few vague hints, but we were playing online, so they were easy to miss. I thing the GM was planning on her old life catching up with her at some point but the group broke up before anything was ever revealed.
(Mary/Mark Read was a real life female pirate who posed a man until she ran into Anne Bonnie & Calico Jack Rackam. The character was kind of a combination of Mary & Anne, visually leaning towards the pretty boy appearance of Leo from Quick & the Dead.)
I had a similar idea for a wholesome Celestial Warlock recently. Remembering a bit form some stand-up comedian in the 90s; with schizophrenics, why do the voices always tell them to do bad things?
Character is an low-key Aasimar, but tries to hid it by being all goth. They were mostly ignored by their family, like 90a latch-key kid.
They try to act all dark and edgy, but they constantly have their bright and chipper Celestial patron whispering in their ear to do positive things. Played like the Bowler and her dad in Mystery Men.
“You should really help that orphan find their real parents.” “You HAVE to rescue the princess!” “Hey, help that old lady across the street.” “You don’t need all their gold as a reward, you should leave them at least half.” “Hey. Hey! Tell [party’s druid] that she really looks cute in that outfit.”
Could also work with Divine Soul Sorcerer, with their angelic ancestor whispering in their ear.
Yeah, I hate that DnD is such a resource management game too. (More so that is is the ONLY game my group will consider playing.)
I tend to horde any limited resource. TTRPG or video game.
Is this group of mooks big enough to justify using power/spell/item X? Is there a bigger group around the corner? Is this just a lieutenant or the BBEG? Oh, this guy is monologueing, he must be the BBEG. But does his fight have multiple phases? OR is he just a puppet and the real BBEG is waiting for us to blow all our abilities.
Doesn’t matter how narratively I’m engaged in the plot. I’ve got a tactically aware mind and these thoughts are always there.
“… a strong poison created in Sicily around 1630…”
“It was a colorless, tasteless liquid and therefore easily mixed with water or wine…”
Vizzini never had a chance.
Opportunities like that are why my bard stocks up on potions of damage resistance/invulnerability _;;
MechWarrior: Destiny
BattleTech is originally a tabletop game, but MW: Destiny is their latest PRG ruleset and is designed to play like a narrative driven game like FATE system. No need for maps, minis, or anthing like that. The rules can also be blended with the various systems, Classic BattleTech tabletop, AlphaStike quick miniatures rules, and the various other MechWarrior RPG editions, to find a balance you & your players are looking for.
More importantly, the BattleTech universe has decades of lore development with hundreds of sourcebooks and novels spanning many, many, many different major eras of the universe.
One of the genius things the original authors did was write in many different mysteries into the lore. Many of those have been answered over the years of development, but some still remain and if you're players are not familiar with the universe, you can just utilize any of them as the center of a campaign.
And of course it has Giant Stompy Robots.
Off the top of my head I'd think a campaign where your players are MechJocks/Mercenaries for an Interstellar Expeditions team trying to track down the origins of the Minnesota Tribe in the deep Periphery would a good possibility.
The game also has ties art-wise back to the Macross/Robotech transformable Valkyries. They literally exist in BattleTech as the Phoenix Hawk, Wasp, & Stinger Land-Air-Mechs. They're not popular in universe, and generally poor units for tabletop, but there's nothing really holding them back in the MW: Destiny rules and I could see the flexibility they offer would make sense for an Interstellar Expeditions team.
“Scream loudly. Something will surely hear.” This could be epic while the players are trying to take a desperately needed long rest in a dangerous location. They encounter an otherwise harmless gnome or fey or kobold, that makes an outrageous demand. Like the players handing over one of their most valuable magic items. Otherwise they’ll scream.
I recently stumbled on the graph paper & colored pencil map my mom made while playing through the original Zelda on NES. One page per screen.