Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

Post by Arkrite »

A lot of people around here already know about Seth Skorkowsky, but for those who don't this can be a bit of fun.
Seth is an author, and in his spare time likes to run RPGs for his friends. And, for those of us who have youtube, he also puts up reviews of the modules, the RPG systems, and sometimes just fun skits and stories about games.

I'll start with the quick and amusing ones.



RPG War Stories - The Scott Brown Incident

Most people here may have heard of the Scott Brown incident. If you haven't, it's worth the 11 minutes to just listen to the silly nonsense that happened. This kind of off the cuff inclusions to a game, and the lingering in-jokes are some of my favorite memories about playing these styles of games.



RPG War Stories - For Thor

A player goes to extremes to destroy magic items. For his god.
For Thor!!!


RPG War Stories - Have You Met Fred?

The players get an early victory, lose track of what the actual goal is, decide they've won and go back to town to celebrate.
Ooops.





Reviews:
These can tend to be longer episodes, especally for the RPG systems themselves, but for those interested in those games it can be really interesting to hear him go into it.


Call of Cthulhu: Part 1 - Introduction

The game of Call of Cthulhu. The only things I had heard of this game before this review was how the game was largely: you go insane and you die. Or: Monsters show up, you go insane, monster eats you.
It's interesting to hear how the game, while having that as an aspect, is not actually how the game is supposed to roll out.
My experience with investigation style games has been pretty bad, but hearing him talk about it so enthusiastically makes me wonder if maybe I should give it a shot.
But make no mistake, this is normal people in a horror movie world. If you're smart and prepared you can do well, but you are likely to lose characters.


Pulp Cthulhu - RPG Review


You know how Call of Cthulhu is like a horror movie?
Pulp Cthulhu is like "The Mummy" with Brenden Frasier. It's a two fisted adventure styling based on pulp novels that should come out feeling a bit like an action movie with some bigger than life monsters that might kill you if you're not lucky.
And my favorite aspect is the rules for turning deaths into "near-death" experiences, meaning your character has more survivability.
Make no mistake, you can run out and face the final curtain call, but you're not quite as weak and squishy as the standard version of this game.


Traveller: Part 1 - Introduction

Sounds like a Firefly style game set in a sci-fi universe of spaceships, aliens, and of course guns.
Shiney.


Cyberpunk 2020 -RPG Review 2.0

Welcome to the future, chummer.
It sucks. You'll love it.
This was the dark sci-fi future where corporations ruled, money was the only god worshiped, and life is cheap.
Unlike most RPGs your characters are very fragile. That hopped up junky with the shakes and a knife CAN kill your long running combat veteran if you give him the chance. The idea is to make sure you never give him the chance.
Remember: Do unto others, then get the hell out.
And do it with cybernetic implants, high powered weapons, martial arts, high tech cars, hacking, and most importantly of all? Do it with style, chummer. Or it just ain't worth doing.


Two-Headed Serpent: Part 1 - Bolivia (A Pulp Cthulhu adventure path)

Spoiler Warning: This is an adventure path, if you want to play it you might not want to watch this as it explains what happens.
An adventure path set for the Call of Cthulhu game, made even more fun because as he explains the adventure he also throws in what the players did in her version making it even more fun.


Delta Green: Last Things Last - RPG Review

Cult of Cthulhu adventure (spoilers)
One of his first videos he put up, and one of the ones that got me interested in his channel.
Cleaning up after an old "Men in Black" style government agent (Think X-Files, not MiB), the players discover the skeletons in the closet that the agent left behind... the hard way.





Kirk Versus Picard


The players are stuck in a tight spot, and the GM gives them five minutes to come up with a solution while he goes to get the pizza the delivery guy just dropped off.
With only moments remaining the players do what any reasonable geek would: Get into an argument over who the best Captain is.

It's Kirk. Kirk is the best Captain.
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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You know what never gets old these days? Making fun of Bethesda for their never stopping series of disastrous ideas.
And somebody with some pretty good talent put this parody song together:

Todd Howard Song — It Just Works (BETHESDA the Musical) ■ ft. Kyle Wright
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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If you've played the Outer Worlds you may find this parody song really fun and catchy.
Then again my wife never played the game but had the song on repeat for most of a day after I introduced it to her... So what do I know!? ;~)

THE FINE PRINT | The Outer Worlds Song
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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Yeah, I'm on a music spree at the moment.


TWRP - Starlight Brigade (feat. Dan Avidan) [Official video]

How do I describe this?
Well to rip a line right from the comments: Starlight Brigade was the best anime show of my childhood, that never existed.
The video of this just gives me kind of a Voltron vibe (though no giant robot), and the song is pretty catchy.


TWRP - The Hit feat. Ninja Sex Party (Official Video)

And this is the "WTF?" video in case you were waiting for it. A old 8bit pixalated video with an odd cast of characters saving the main character's love interest after they're kidnapped by the bad guy. With a bit of a twist.


TWRP - Phantom Racer (feat. The Protomen)

Sadly no video for this one, but I'm a big fan of the Protomen, and it's kind of catchy.
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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I like D&D stories, and there are tons out there.
But I always prefer ones where the players come out ahead against the odds, or a really cool story was told rather than the "That guy" stories, or the "horrible DM stories".

So here's a few fun ones:
Narrated D&D Story: How The DM Sowed Seeds Of Deception To Completely Fool The Party
Narrated D&D Story: How The Shrewd DM Lured Clueless Party To Destroy A Town

The titles are pretty misleading in this one, at least that last one.
This is a fun story about how a DM planned out a campaign which took multiple character's histories into account, and worked to tell a story from the prologue oneshot he ran for the players.
And how he slowly built up an extreme amount of tension and paranoia in the players in the second video as they start to realize what's going on, and realize that they don't know how to stop it.



Narrated D&D Story: How Farmer Brown Buried The Goblin Horde With His Lethal Shovel

If you ever plan to run a game, ANY game, you need to be prepared for a few things. One of the most important skills is how to improvise when things go completely off the rails.
Because they will. You'll forget something. Or the Players will do something you weren't expecting.
Or, sometimes, the dice just have a mind of their own. (Thinking of you, TM. :D )
This is a fun story of how the players were thrown into an unwinnable fight as the first part of their adventure, how the plan went off the rails, and how a no-name NPC became the team mascot and legendary ass kicker.


Narrated D&D Story: How The Sniveling Cowards Left Me, A Paladin to Die

Bad decisions, bad rolls, and bad allies wind up with a low level Paladin doomed to die.
And then the dice start changing fate....


Narrated D&D Story: How My Players Learned What Chaotic Neutral Means

This one teeters on stuff I usually don't like, but the GM basically just decided to run with the the PCs were doing. Unfortunately the PC's were acting pretty evil and didn't seem to realize it...
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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The Correspondents - Fear & Delight (Official Video)

This song, while having a catchy beat, kind of falls apart halfway through when they change the music dramatically for about twenty seconds or so.
But the video is really neat to watch.
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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Shoot Him Down by Alice Francis

A lady sings about how her boyfriend is cheating on her.
And how she's going to rip him to shreds! :lol:
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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Arkrite wrote: Narrated D&D Story: How Farmer Brown Buried The Goblin Horde With His Lethal Shovel

If you ever plan to run a game, ANY game, you need to be prepared for a few things. One of the most important skills is how to improvise when things go completely off the rails.
Because they will. You'll forget something. Or the Players will do something you weren't expecting.
Or, sometimes, the dice just have a mind of their own. (Thinking of you, TM. :D )
This is a fun story of how the players were thrown into an unwinnable fight as the first part of their adventure, how the plan went off the rails, and how a no-name NPC became the team mascot and legendary ass kicker.
It's true, I've been a victim of all 3, especially the last one.....

You guys wouldn't believe how much of the FORCE OPs game is me running with a solution the group came up with I didn't expect.
Jabroniville wrote: Tue Jul 13, 2021 11:45 pm
LOl- "The Tattooed Man"? What kind of ABSOLUTE DILDO would refer to himself as "The Tattooed Man" :P!?!
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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Tattooedman wrote: Tue Jul 07, 2020 10:25 pm It's true, I've been a victim of all 3, especially the last one.....

You guys wouldn't believe how much of the FORCE OPs game is me running with a solution the group came up with I didn't expect.
It was always fun playing in your games, TM.
Albright was always my favorite, and I will never forget the gladiatorial combat where you just couldn't seem to roll higher than a 1 for the bad guy's toughness saves.
Nothing like theoretically one shoting the PL12 team killer NPC in his first appearance! GM Fiat to save the day! :lol:

Thanks for the fun, man!
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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I have always held a love of Medieval and Fantasy... and Medieval Fantasy.
So I've always been interested in learning about swords, bows, armor, you name it.

And I found this fun video from a guy who provides the armor/weapons to movies and TV series who explains why some of the stuff is just blatantly wrong. Is it because they don't know what they're talking about? Not as often as you might think, sometimes it's about lighting, cameras, and just making it so you can actually tell the teams apart just by looking at them.

Why are movie swords always wrong? (An armourers thoughts)




And because I'm always interested in these things, the effects of a 160 pound longbow with metal tips vs a breastplate. It might not be a perfect test, but it's probably the closest I've seen so far, and if nothing else I've learned some interesting things. Like why the french wore fabric armor over their metal armor.

ARROWS vs ARMOUR - Medieval Myth Busting
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

Post by Jabroniville »

That sword thing was terrific. Very much in the vein of "this is practical for the film, and why X works like Y". Much better than the usual smug "I WAS IN A SWORDFIGHTING CLUB SO I KNOW ALL OF THESE ERRORS! I WATCH THE MOVIES GOOD!" types.
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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I think you'd get less smug people if somebody as willing to cop to this stuff more often.
Of course on the other hand there's a lot of TV shows where the people writing it have absolutely no idea of how these things work, and just write them in, or throw in props that make no sense.
My mother in law was an x-ray technician which leads to hilarious results almost any time an x-ray is thrown up on the screen.
"As you can see from the fractures-" -TV
"That bone is fine, it's never been broken." -Mother In Law in bored tone as she reads her book

As a computer tech I get to laugh at how many times computers are MAGIC!
We need to hack into the White House? Sure, that'll take a couple hours.
You need that crappy VHS recording from a 7-11 cleaned up so we can see a reflection in a door that we can reverse engineer into the killer's face? Of course! Zoom and enhance! Zoom and enhance!

Don't get me wrong, I get why they do it. A funny episode of Stargate SG1 has them working as advisors for a scifi show that is based off of their classified work.
And they constantly point out how silly SG1 is and reasons for why some things work the way they do in the show.
All aliens speak English? Why? Because spending time every episode to learn a new language is boring and people would rather get right to the story.
Why do the stun guns disintegrate bodies? So we don't have to have extras laying around as corpses for hours on end.

Honestly I just love learning more about what they do and why they do it on TV shows, it's always interesting to find out if they had a reason for it and why.

Though my pet peeve, besides magic computers, is the "lightsabre" swords in almost every fantasy or medieval show which can cut through platemail.
Because I'm a smug nerd, dammit! ;~)
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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So onto something a little heartbreaking.
Grant Imahara from Mythbusters passed away on Monday due to a brain aneurysm.

Adam Savage put up a video talking about his friend, and I just found it nice to hear some stories about the guy.

Remembering Grant Imahara - Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project - 7/14/20

I always loved Mythbusters, and everybody on the show seemed like they'd be fun and interesting people. It's nice to hear that Grant was a nice guy outside the show as well.
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Arkrite
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

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Now for something more upbeat:

When a Costumed Person Destroys The Drums At Children’s Music Concert - NyangoStar -
If you can make it 30 seconds in, everything starts going crazy ;~)

The costumed person is NyangoStar who apparently has made a bit of a career of wearing said costume and doing some impressive drumming, so no worries, this guy wasn't ruining some kid's show, they knew exactly what they were getting when they brought him in.
It's just the audience who might have been a little surprised ;~)



SAX BATTLE IN NYC SUBWAY
A silly short video.
Some guy playing the Sax on the subway, and another guy is like "Oh yeah? I also have a sax. Game on!"
For some reason this video just makes me smile.
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Re: Arkrite's Odd(s and Ends)

Post by greycrusader »

Hey Arkite, I just wanted to say thanks again for posting these. Financially and emotionally the past few months have been tough, and I'll take any pleasant little distractions I can find. All my best!
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