Road Trip Session 11 – Smile (Part 3)

As the night rages on, Doug, Charlie, and Max have a very “fun” car ride on their way to complete the ritual to seal away the Grinning Man.  Additionally, the kids continue to see more and more “friends” along the way.

Everett stays with the less able members, but quickly finds that her friends are not all that surround her.  As party members continue to vanish, the kids really start to lose their cool.  The sky grows red, but the sun still does not shine.  Will the kids reign in this new hell, or will they simply vanish like the others?

PLAYERS

2 Comments

  1. Another great story by Nate, but I’m starting to wonder if it something more. Back on you other podcast, The Drunk and The Ugly, someone talked about how they like MaoCT for the interactions but not exactly the game play (Alex I think). Someone else commented about how he would prefer to play the game in the same system but not the Road Trip Campaign; something more personalized by the GM (Nate maybe). With that I mind what other stories (Non Road Trip main campaign) have y’all done on the Monsters system? I know Mrs Frieda’s (which is awesome), the BattlePet side story, and Carl’s Dinner (Monster’s Trial Run thingy).Are there any others y’all have done and will we be able to listen to them? It seems to me that the more “original” (stuff not taken for another writer) the story the better its played out and told. Not saying that Road Trip is boring or bad just that there is something missing from it other plays have.

    On another note I commented on an earlier post about trying to talk people into playing tabletops. I got people interested in playing and now am writing the story/campaign (Its a one-shot with opening and ending but can become a long running thing if they want to keep playing). Are there any websites you guys would suggest? I’ve got giantitp.com, your Drunk and Ugly podcasts, and Role Play Public Radio podcasts. I think I have a good idea what to do I just want to make sure there isn’t something I’ve missing or overlooked.

    Thanks for the help. Your podcasts have save me from killing myself studying Heat Transfer this summer.

    1. Author

      Thanks for commenting again, Travis. We always appreciate input from our fans.

      In response to your first question (regarding other MaOCT games we’ve played), there are a couple we’ve played that aren’t directly related to Frieda’s or Road Trip, but not many (since we’re running these two campaigns simultaneously). They will be posted in the coming months. There are also a number of other original stories in Road Trip, and more personalization on the scenarios from the book.

      As for the comment about “more original” scenarios, a scenario written and planned by the person who’s running it will almost always play better than a module for both players and GMs. On the GM side, a module is written by someone who doesn’t think like you. It will be filled with paragraphs upon paragraphs of notes for contingencies, but it can never really capture the full mentality of the person who wrote it. On the other hand, a scenario that you have written yourself will flow more smoothly because if nothing else, you know where you want the story to go and how characters will act and react. On the player end, a scenario you have written yourself will probably tailor itself to their specific goals and will allow them a lot more freedom because you, being the scenario writer, will be much more capable of playing the story off the cuff than you would be if playing a scenario from a module.

      As for ideas for your campaign, there aren’t a whole lot of resources for MaOCT. As much as we love the system, it’s still a pretty Indie game. However, the resources that do exist are pretty strong (because they’re mostly from Arc Dream):
      Arc Dream Publishing has a list of pretty much every MaOCT AP on their MaOCT products page
      The Cult of ORE is great for advice on MaOCT, Wild Talents, Godlike, or any other ORE game

      As for actually writing a campaign, what we’ve discovered in Frieda’s is that this game really lends itself well to a lot of RP with an occasional monster fight here and there. If you’re using something close to the core scenario, enemies don’t have to be totally overpowering or challenging to a Monster because needing to bring out your monster in combat tends to cause more problems than it solves. And just because it’s on my mind, The Iron Giant is basically the perfect example of what a more lighthearted MaOCT game should be like: Full of Vin Diesel.

      But in all seriousness, the main character has a 100-foot tall robot built for combat, but is still completely and totally powerless against any authority figures. His giant robot is getting him into trouble fairly regularly, and there’s no one he can turn to because there’s G-Man patrolling his neighborhood looking for it. It’s a great story with an epic finale, and violence tends to cause way more problems than it solves.

      And hey! Thanks again for listening! I’ll try to respond to any and all comments left on our site.

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