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FG-ziZxvoFRHduKepRbPGuFEb

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Everything posted by FG-ziZxvoFRHduKepRbPGuFEb

  1. I've heard the same thing, that's it's "kinda pulpy". The more I think about it, the less I think it actually matters. If I need them on the ground, or on a ship, then mechanical problems or bad weather or the scene just happening to occur somewhere they stop for fuel can always ground them. If I don't need them on the ground, then it doesn't matter if they go by ship or train or plane. They've gone through all of the short scenarios in the keeper's book, so they know what to expect as far as game play, but I'm having a hard time getting them to get into the role play aspect, so if something like this helps them to be more active and creative, I'm hesitant to say no. I'm trying to get into a less "rules lawyery" mode and say "yes, but..." as often as possible. And in reality, he's asked for the plane, but I don't know if he's going to try and use them to this extent or not. I'm just thinking through what I may want to do if I was a player, but I roleplay a lot more. His money has the same problem. In the "yes, but.." frame, I would let him say that he knew the original expedition playboy, at least peripherally, and give him an easy "in" to talking to that guy's contacts. That does require him to actually think about what his character's wealth means for his lifestyle and daily routines and such, and I don't think he's up to putting that much thought into it yet. But if he gets into his role enough to do so, I'm going to let him. Or if he decides that he's made all of his money by smuggling, then I'll let him use his smuggling contacts to get his friend's guns in easier and to maybe know of less-well-known networks of refueling spots or something. I still need to read through the rest of the campaign and work out where I need them to hit any given scene without the plane or whatever, so maybe I'll have to backtrack some of this by having some hard-to-find part breaking down, so he has to abandon the plane or something, but we'll see. I've played DND since 2nd edition, and have been DMing for 10 years now. I got thoroughly burnt out on d20 altogether just due to how constricted it gets, especially at high levels where we'd take 3 hours to run one combat simply because of all of the options all of the monsters and characters have for rolling dice. So I swapped to CoC to get back down to a more basic "theater of the mind" feel and am really liking it (but haven't been able to be a player at all, yet. 😞) But the players are a different story; one has only ever played final fantasy style video games, and the other only played a little dnd under d20 where it was all "roll play" instead of role play. So anything I can do to get them to envision the story from their character's point of view, even if it's a view skewed from what "reality" would be in the situation, I should probably try to go with. Basically, let them make it their story. After all, it's supposed to be me and them creating a story, and every group should have a different story from every other group anyway, at least slightly. If they don't, then it may be too much on rails. So if they want their story to involve flying around a lot, and that makes it more memorable and fun for them, even when they do eventually get wiped out by doing something stupid, so be it.
  2. 1925. The expedition they are following was 1919 or 1920. So only 2 years before Lindbergh's flight, and planes are probably a little safer and more stable by then (although only by aftermarket tweaks, since he may still be dealing with a WWI surplus plane). But yeah, still daredevil country. At the same time, I think I may do the luck/pilot average thing and give the chance for drama, but not to the point that they fail or crash into the ocean or something (not that I'd tell them that in the moment). It would kinda defeat the purpose to kill them off before the story even gets underway well. And I've realized that this player rolled a 10 on his d10 for the income roll (I knew he rolled high, but I wrote a character sheet app that pulled the value for him, so I hadn't actually looked at the table yet). So I think it will be more memorable for all of them if their rich buddy is able to fly them around and let them stay at fancy hotels and such. Maybe he even played racquetball at the country club with the playboy socialite that was running and funding the previous expedition, and a little publicity wouldn't be out of line just from that anyway. And as far as I know (haven't read the whole thing yet), nothing is expected to happen in-transit in this campaign, and I can always force an emergency landing to fix some mechanical issue if I need to set a scene up that expects them to be at ground level at some point. Basically, I need to keep reminding myself to not hold too much for "realism" as long as I have "verisimilitude", and if they want it to feel like an Indiana Jones movie, that doesn't hurt anything. I mean, we're not playing Pulp, so they're all probably going to die in the end anyway. 🙂
  3. I don't know enough history to know whether fuel would even be readilly available even through canada and greenland, etc. Several of the historic crossings landed in islands and such, and the Faroes look like they are about the right distance, but I have the same problem. Wikipedia says they had a fishing fleet, but I'm assuming that's going to be coal-fired steam ships at most. This article talks about "With the arrival of cars in the '70s...", for the Faroes, so I'd assume no readily available fuel in the 20s, And I don't have any sense of history, so I don't even know if they could find enough fuel to cross the us without setting up fuel drops ahead of time. So my thinking in general is that the only reason to go through that much trouble is if you are trying to make headlines by "crossing the atlantic". Otherwise, the logistics and everything else probably make it more realistic to just ferry it across, and the same goes for any trip down into africa or anything. Honestly, though, if he decides to fly, I'll probably just pull up google maps and assume that any decent city at about the right range had fuel reserves of some sort. Maybe for farmer's tractors or smaller gasoline powered boats (don't know when those started). And maybe let him get maps of some depots out in the desert or something where a camel dealer has a truck and his own tank, maybe with a week layover because "I just put the last of it in the truck. Delivery guy won't be out for another week with a load of camels and a refill." I think this would be fine, and possibly even expected. They are tracking down the route of a previous expedition that did have a lot of newspaper coverage and such, so they coiuld probably handle the publicity that way. But I was thinking that may make it harder to smuggle the weapons in. It may justify some of the guns, although may start rumors of some sort of revenge mission or something. But I still don't think they could justify the grenades. And the customs officials would be less likely to take bribes if their under a lot of international scrutiny. What about weather? Skill rolls aren't necessary under normal conditions, and flying should be normal barring weather or mechanical failure. So I was thinking the chance of something going wrong that requires him to make a pilot check may be an average of luck and pilot skill? His skill as a pilot makes him better able to determine whether it's a good day to fly and whether his plane is up to par and such, and then his luck augments that for the random thunderstorm or loose bolt. Does that sound reasonable? If he succeeds at the roll against the average, then he has an uneventful flight. If not, then I get to add some drama and force some skill rolls.
  4. That article says it carried 10 passengers. Also, 6 went for 10k, but that's still within his budget, but he's going to be getting wicker chairs strapped to a military deck. That price was before conversion, according to the article, and Aeromarine were going to have to convert it for civil use themselves. The article talks about the crew being the pilot and his "mechanician". Any idea how important that mechanician post was on these old planes? Masks calls for 6 investigators, and I only have 3 players so they are each running two investigators. Realistically, Is he going to have to adjust his other investigator to provide some mechanic skill level, vs. me getting to add drama with losing oil pressure or something in flight? I suppose the pilot skill could cover it, and then just have the untrained copilot roll < 100% for just holding it flat and level while the pilot deals with any routine things. I don't think I'd consider "here, hold this still" to force a 1% roll, but it's got to be stressful enough for someone who's never been up before to at least require a "don't fumble" roll.
  5. We're just starting Masks of Nyarlathotep and one of the players ended up with $80,000 personal property. He wants a plane big enough to carry all 6 investigators (I would think him as pilot, one other investigator serving as untrained copilot or oiler or whatever the other crewman is, so only would need 4 passenger seats) and I can't find anything that keeps him from having it. It looks like the price based on modern planes and adjusted for inflation is around $6000 (and right now, I can't remember what modern plane I looked up for that price). I'm sure he's going to want to try to get that to Europe and Africa; is that realistic? What added cost would he have to ferry it across? I'm guessing that even if he does, fueling sites are so few and far between that it would be useless without sending someone ahead by train to set up makeshift landing/refueling sites? Also, he chose pilot as his occupation and has civil prop at 71%. Is that enough to reliably fly himself across the atlantic, and is there a plane of that period that would do that with 6 people that he could afford? Another of the investigators is a former soldier and wants a box of grenades, a tommy gun, a 22 rifle, and a luger. If I'm assuming that he got all of that black market or something, what are the realistic chances of getting that into europe or africa? How do I handle customs checks? I haven't read enough of the campaign yet to judge the preponderance of mythos entities vs human cultists. Is there enough mythos involved that this much artillery isn't going to make a big game-balance difference anyway, and I just let him take it, if he can think think up a reasonable above-board justification for the authorities, like planning an african safari or something? I'm assuming if they go to africa, the guns may pass off that way, but would the grenades? Elephant grenades, maybe?
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