u/BrutalBlind

Playing System Shock 2 for the first time, the OG deslisted steam edition (not Anniversary). Loving the vibes, but I'm not sure if I should be relying on saves when dying or if I should use the Ressurection Stations and only save when stopping a play session. What do you guys think? I'm intentionally looking for the most challenging option. I don't like save-scumming and enjoy dealing with the consequences of failing hacks and combat encounters, but I'm not sure if Res. Stations are too punishing or too lenient.

So last Sunday after much preparation and asking around I finally ran my first session with three other players. It was an absolute success! Players loved it, I loved it, everyone had a blast, and we're all wanting to run it again as soon as possible. Naturally, a few questions were bound to crop up during play.

1. The line between when to ask for Fear/San checks and Panic checks was a bit blurry. I kinda went with "fear and sanity are for building tension, panic to release it". They we very lucky overall, we ended the session with each PC's stress total at around 8-12, and two failed panic tests total. Are there any solid groundrules for when to ask for a Fear, Sanity and Panic check?

2. Loved using dynamic combat rounds, with the players having to decide on a course of action together before the dice hit the table, and then interpreting what the combination of results meant together! One thing was left a bit unclear though: the wound and death rules. When gaining their second Wound, players immediately roll a death save; does that mean they also get to roll a second (or third) wound, or does the death save replace the final wound roll? And then, what exactly happens when you roll a death save? We don't know until someone checks their vitals exactly how badly they've been hurt, but what's going on with the PC before that? I assumed they're just down and out, but I can't seem to find any clarification on the PSG.

That's about all of it, nothing really got in the way of play and I quickly ruled things as I saw fit. Overall things went incredibly smooth. Now I'm left wondering what to run next.

So I'll be running my first session of Mothership this Sunday, using the Haunting of Ypsilon 14, and I've written down some notes and ideas for inspiration. I won't be using everything as I'll be reacting to what the players do, so these are mostly just random ideas and guidelines. I've tried to stick as closely as possible to the pamphlet as written.

- SONYA greets the characters and tells them that they'll have to wait a bit for refueling and unloading, as her two loaders [KANTARO, MORGAN] are down in the mines looking for Mike, who disappeared last night (the elevator is down in the mine level, so this will force players to stick around for a while, and gives us a cool 'elevator arriving' scene later on)
- DANA and JEROME are in the workspace, checking their tools and getting into their vacsuits, waiting for the elevator to return so they can start their shift.
- ASHRAF and ROSA in the mess hall, bantering and drinking, strike up a conversation with the players if interacted with
- RIE is in their bunk, using narcotics
- Sometime after she returns, MORGAN will go around asking people if they've seen her cat, (eventually ending up alone in the washrooms)
- PRINCE will show up eventually near one of the players, and one of the NPCs will prompt the players to take it to MORGAN (if they do so, they get to witness her disappearing into nothing in the middle of the creepy badly lit showers)
- KANTARO will be shaken by what he found in the mines, and at some point will be taken to the mess hall to sit down and calm down. Someone will offer him water to calm him down, and he'll violently refuse it, swatting the cup away and backing away nervously.

I figure this is enough "pre-baked" scenes and ideas to get the ball rolling. I imagine once a few of these have trigger I can just react to what the players are doing and disappear NPCs as things develop. What do you guys think? Does any of this sound potentially problematic? Am I overlooking anything? Any general tips for the module are also very welcome.

So I'm a completely new Warden, about to run my first game this Sunday. Have aready read through the PSG, and about to go through the Warden's Manual.

I managed to wrap my head around most concepts, and fully accept and embrace the vibe the game is going for, but one thing kinda bugged me, right at the end of the PSG: Shore Leave sanity rolls.

I absolutely love the idea of turning stress into save points, it's an incredibly progression system and I was genuinely surprised at how cool of an idea it was. Which is why the very next part of the procedure completely deflated my enthusiasm. It seems overly sadistic to have the players need to roll under their sanity, which will in most cases be less than 30, to be able to convert their stress.

I can't imagine a player wouldn't be frustrated when rolling a fail, or even worse, a critical failure, when this happens, especially if some of the other players in the group manage to pass their save. It's not really enforcing the horror vibes, or the kind of fun "oh shit, I died" moments that we're all here for. It just seems kinda unnecessarily punishing and unfun.

But then, in the very same page, the example of play has the Warden giving out stress conversion using a completely different procedure than what is described in the chapter. He offers his player a straight "1d5 stress conversion" for each day he spends carousing, but there's nothing in the chapter to suggest this is a valid alternative. I know, I know, OSR, rulings not rules, etc, but you'd expect the example of play to reflect the rules it is trying to exemplify.

Does the Warden's Manual give more insight on handling this? What's your guys experiences with handling Shore Leaves? Do you call for sanity rolls? Ignore them?

So, if I'm reading this right, cover is completely ignored until your next action if you choose to shoot. Wouldn't this make cover kind of useless in a firefight? Is this intentional or am I reading the rules wrong?

This was such a hard episode to watch. Out of the gate, the premise already feels super contrived, like the writers just thought one day "oh, what if there was a race that can't be remembered!" and then did the very bare minimum to make a screenplay out of it.

And then they don't even know what to do with it! So the whole episode is about this alien who fell in love with Chakotay, but he doesn't remember her. Shouldn't she be used to this? Isn't this what their whole species is about? Why would she be frustrated that he has no feelings for her? She is the one who explained to him how this works! It's so infuriating.

And then her backstory, that she met him while hunting down one of her own hiding in the shit. This is never touched upon again by the crew; what the hell? So someone ELSE was trying to get asylum on the ship and they... denied it? But then gave it to her? How does that work?

And then it just kinda... ends. There's nothing here, probably one of the most forgettable Star Trek episodes I've ever seen, ironically enough.

Basically what's in the title. If I'm going to end up watching both versions of a Super Sentai season, should I start with the original, or the adaptation first?

So I'm experiencing a weird problem. I'm watching a show, and all episodes are subtitled, and the subs work great, as long as I don't mess with the playback in anyway during the episode. I can pause and resume as normal, but as soon as I change the time-code, either by going back or forward in the episode, no matter by how much, the subtitles start to get desyncronized and it's impossible to resync them manually again, required a complete restart of the episode.

Has anyone ever experienced this? Any idea what this might be?

First time watching Sentai, and I went with Zyuranger, since I wanted to see just how much MMPR changed it.

I'm enjoying it, especially how much more serialized it is, and I also like how more brutal and dynamic the fights are, especially the out-of-suit action segments, but the amount of children-related gimmicks and childish plots is kinda bumming me out a little. I enjoy the main cast's lore and the villains, but in a lot of episodes they're just randomly hanging out with some never before seen kids, going to birthday parties and stuff like that, it just seems a bit... forced?

Is this a Super Sentai thing, or more of a Zyuranger thing? I get that Bandora has a thing against kids, but I don't know if this her thing or if it's a Sentai trope that the villain is always going after little children.