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Old 03-04-2008, 10:00 AM   #1
Shrale
 
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Default Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

I bought IOU when it dropped to $9.95 and it's pretty neat.

Tell us about your experiences with gaming it from either the GM or player perspective.

Anyone tried to make it a bit more gritty ? (less wacky)

God I hope Kromm sees this, I'd like to know his take on IOU.
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Old 03-04-2008, 11:02 AM   #2
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

Hmm. My IN-IOU crossover was a little less over the top, overtly. The con game I ran was highly over the top. (War and Peas or something -- a food fight (veggies vs. meats) in the cafeteria provided the opportunity for the tunnel rats to kidnap the PC's familiar cat, who was then placed in the middle of what looked like a ritual sacrifice situation. It was an attempt to summon the ArchDean, so she would fix the Elder God Incursion problem that Madam Curry had tried to seal (and failed, getting herself trapped instead) -- which is probably what animated the veggies and meats in the first place.

The witch kept getting her clothing torn, as a running joke because the player was giggling about her black lace undies. At the end, they were shown an exit from the tunnels that was, of course, right near the frat houses... And the witch was in essentially nothing but black, lace undies. We ended with that situation, because we were out of time, and the implicit humor there was more than any explicit humor woulda done.
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Old 03-04-2008, 12:33 PM   #3
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shrale
Tell us about your experiences with gaming it from either the GM or player perspective.
I've only run it once, as a single-day one-off event, but it was a lot of fun. We had 150pt PCs:
  • A were-bat. He actually turned into a fruit bat, but thought vampires were cool so went about in evening dress with fake fangs.
  • "Thingy", an animated hand like her cousin Thing (from the Addams family). The player communicated entirely with hand gestures - obviously a method actress in the making!
  • A souped-up version of Og the Eidetic Caveman.
  • Vincent (the creepy kid from the Tim Burton short film of the same name), now grown up and a Lodge mage (from GURPS Voodoo).
  • The TI-2000, a time travelling gardening robot sent back to kill Mrs Asimov before Isaac could be born and invent the Three Laws of Robotics, dooming robotkind to future slavery. He had enormous pent-up frustration because of the "robots cannot kill a human" bit, and took it out on everything around him. Sadly the player couldn't make it on the day, so I decided he'd run out of gas.

The plot was based on "One Card to Rule the Mall", but that was little more than an excuse to nudge things along every now and then. The only player who'd read the book (Thingy) acted as the student assigned to show the freshthings around.

Some of the more fun moments included:
  • A Bill & Ted moment when, on finding they couldn't get into Dr What's TOILET, they decided they must have got in and left themselves the key "under this rock". Sure enough, when they lifted it, there was something underneath. Unfortunately, it was just a note which read "PREASE TO PUT BACK LOCK".
  • An Animal House moment when the shapeshifted bat passed a party in De Sade, and heard them chanting "Toe-CRUSH! Toe-CRUSH!"
  • Everyone in the steam tunnels, with one half of the party running away from terrifying noises which were actually the echoing sounds of the other half, who were trying to follow the noise of the first lot in an attempt to find a way out... [note: all the players were in the same room]
  • Og thinking a ballet performance was a contact sport, and joining in. He won.

There were more, but I can't think of them now...

Quote:
Anyone tried to make it a bit more gritty ? (less wacky)
Not me - and not more Politically Correct either! 8-)

John
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Old 03-04-2008, 01:11 PM   #4
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shrale
I bought IOU when it dropped to $9.95 and it's pretty neat.

Tell us about your experiences with gaming it from either the GM or player perspective.
Loads of fun. I love it. 'tis on my Top 5 list of all time favourite settings.

Mine starts with a Forgotten Realms dryad landing in a WUSE basement, meeting Swami Tift, having a conversation with the Botany building and a Tolkienian elf in the College of Metaphysics where she discovers coffee. From there she decides to enroll as a Housemaking major and has a scholarship because she seduced one of the guys in the administrations building.

Various intersting things happened and the last time we played I was at a party that also contained the Archdean and when asked what I was doing by the GM I replied that I was going to seduce the Archdean -- I was 1 away from the critical success the GM ruled I needed to get. Good times. Good times.
Quote:
Anyone tried to make it a bit more gritty ? (less wacky)
~blink blink~ I think that'd be missing the point.
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Old 03-04-2008, 01:32 PM   #5
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shrale
Tell us about your experiences with gaming it from either the GM or player perspective.
I was the GM of the IOU game Dravenloft played in. It was some of the most fun I've ever had gaming, and the only problem I had at all was a player problem (He seemed to not get that I was running it in Silly mode and was using too much real world logic.), not a setting problem -- which I can't say about any other not created by me setting I've ever used.

Highlights included the PCs finding a ghost in the steam tunnels and the "slightly off kilter" scientist (He wasn't mad. He said so.) deciding to grow her a new body, Dravenloft's character attempting to seduce the Archdean at a party, and the PCs meeting a cult worshipping Nikola Tesla in the steam tunnels.

I have some quotes and a write-up of at least one session here.. I can't guarantee all of the quotes are suitable for minors, but I'm pretty sure none are worse than PG-13.

Quote:
Anyone tried to make it a bit more gritty ? (less wacky)
One of my players seemed to be . . . personally I like wacky though.
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Old 03-04-2008, 02:38 PM   #6
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shrale
I bought IOU when it dropped to $9.95 and it's pretty neat.

Tell us about your experiences with gaming it from either the GM or player perspective.

Anyone tried to make it a bit more gritty ? (less wacky)

God I hope Kromm sees this, I'd like to know his take on IOU.
Our campaign got off to a great start - we were not freshthings (decided in character creation), so we were a group of marginal acquaintances who had rented a house just off campus. We had John Quest (all grown up), the great-grandson of Dr. Moriarty, an aspiring Indiana Jones, Carmen SanDiego's niece, a rabid gun-nut, an eco-terrorist rock star, and a Babylonian love goddess.

We spent the first two hours of the game moving in, getting the roommate situation ironed out, figuring out where John could put his lab, etc. Around that time, the GM finally showed up (he'd been unavoidably delayed, and we hadn't felt like waiting for him.)

Then things really got hopping...

Arne

PS No, really, they got hopping. Campus was overrun by evil bunny rabbits...
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Old 03-04-2008, 03:08 PM   #7
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

More of a LARP version:

On the day I started working at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, I noticed that the faces on the campus clock tower all read different times. I had the opportunity to venture inside when the electricians went to re-set them, but unfortunately the ArchDean was not in her office.
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Old 03-04-2008, 04:12 PM   #8
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

My game didn't last that long. However, it was fun. I made everyone list their classes. It was an actual college setting, where they were having to deal with things on campus based off what they were taking.

They had to deal with "it" getting out of the fountain (and if you read the book, you know what it is). They had a major mundane come to campus, etc.

It was mostly just a bunch of goofs and fun scenarios.
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Old 03-04-2008, 06:20 PM   #9
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

Quote:
Originally Posted by thrash
On the day I started working at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, I noticed that the faces on the campus clock tower all read different times. I had the opportunity to venture inside when the electricians went to re-set them, but unfortunately the ArchDean was not in her office.
Austin's UTx campus clock was frequently similar -- furthermore, if you took the elevator up? There were many levels where the elevator doors opened on... a (locked, I believe) regular door.

Not to mention various other buildings with quirks...
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Old 03-04-2008, 06:37 PM   #10
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Default Re: Tell us about your IOU Setting or Experience

Here's my IOU adventure. Not as over the top as others, but I think that's more a result of my personality than any actual attempt at "grittiness".
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