Hello people,
over the last week I started three new groups, all of which using the ICRPG Core Rules. No homebrew except for Quantum Supplies (to make my life as a GM easier). Here I wanted to share some of the encounters that emerged from play. My players had a lot of fun during the sessions and that showed me the real beauty of ICRPGs simple and solid core rules. I am guilty of homebrewing a lot and more than I probably should Maybe you can take ideas from the encounters or have had similar encounters and could share how you handled them. I´m interested in hearing all your experiences.
The Infinite Key Chain: This moment emerged as my players woke up in a sort of asylum and tried to flee from it. They were chased by guards, which resulted in a wild chase through asylum hallways and past other guards and down into the basements. There I set a timer after which the guards would be arriving in the basement. Previously they aquired a key chain with lots of keys. This key chain became the center piece of the whole next encounter, because to get away from the guards, they wanted to proceed into “that evil looking door at the end of the hallway”.
I didn´t know if I should just let them succeed in finding the key, or if they should have to make WIS Checks to find it, or to just roll a timer and see how long it takes to check all keys. Therefore I ruled that everytime they tried, they could roll a d4 and on a 4 it would be the right key. I didn´t think to much of it, because they had like three turns until the guards would arrive. So I thought they would find the key quickly and this section would be over with little to no tension. But oh man did it take long to roll a 4 on a d4. They managed to find the right key, the moment before the guards would come into the hallway, and cried out in relieve.
Just today I could reuse the same method, when my Warp Shell group had to reactivate their broken Warp Shell, while it was plummeting through the athmosphere of an unknown planet and was going to crash. They took turns trying to “Turn the Ignition” and were really excited to do so. The whole group got anxious and excited to roll the d4 to save the Warp Shell.
They had previously started their campaign with the adventrue “The last flight of the Red Sword” and at the start of this session I had the whole planet explode, while they were still in range of its blast radius. For that I set up the following parameters, which due to the simplicity of ICRPG didn´t take longer than 20 minutes (so grateful for that):
- The Warp Shell had 3 HEARTS: This would serve as a passive timer, because when the Warp Shell is broken the encounter is over
- On the first GM turn, an asteroid would hit the Warp Shell and cause the following problems:
- Hole in the Shell - 1 HEART: Air was sucked out of it and everything and everyone was thrown around
- Engine Broke - 1 HEART: Someone would need to climb out of the shell to fix the engine
- Faulty Electronics - 1 HEART: Due to the radiation of the star the electronics would be faulty and needed to be fixed.
- On every GM turn I would hit the Warp Shell for another ENERGY damage, if the pilot doesn´t succeed a Check to maneuver the Warp Shell.
This whole encounter was a beautiful chaotic mess, because one PC had to climb out of the shell while asteroids would fly towards them, two PCs tried to pilot the shell to help the others, two PCs were desperately trying to fix the hole in the shell and ultimately one of the pilots fell unconscious. Said pilot tried to fix the electronics and rolled a nat 1. I gave her 1 damage and that was enough to put her out. So the others now had to try to revive her aswell.
The last Moment I want to share occured in the first game. They went into “that evil looking door at the end of the hallway” and there was basically the evil genius controlling the Asylum. He was a vampire, lying on a Frankensteinesque machine and things got out of hand real quick. Players were desperately running for their lives (NEVER HAD THAT HAPPEN IN A DND GAME), while the vampire awoke and transformed into a more powerful version of itself. It all resulted in one player being left behind with the vampire.
Her idea was to turn on the Frankenstein-Machine and stand in the lightning. I panicked because this would kill all her chances of getting out, ´cause it would logically kill her. But my brain fortunately halted any of my attempts to straight away kill my PC and I offered her a deal. She could stand in the lightning and do a HARD CON Check. Should she succeed, then a superpower will be granted to her character. But should she fail, then lightning simply strikes her and does what lightning does ^^ She didn´t make it.
But the others made their way back and helped her and with combined efforts, they were all able to flee the BBEG.
Let me know if you´ve had cool experiences and encounters or found oddly fitting mechanics and rulings during your last sessions and share some of that stuff