Rusty and Co. Crossover, Part 1/5
For those of you who missed it, the Handbook of Heroes gang put in an appearance on the fabulous Rusty and Co. webcomic a few weeks back. Even since, Thief and her fellow inter-comic liaison—the luck domain cleric Dorilys Happ—have been hard at work planning out the rest of the crossover. Unfortunately, when you put Rube Goldberg powers in the same room with a bad luck elemental, things tend to go a little haywire. Expect some unfortunate pairings in the coming weeks.
This whole process has got me thinking about tabletop crossovers in general. I’m talking about guest players, overlapping storylines, and parallel parties. You know the sort of thing…. Maybe a gang of master criminals are trying to heist their way through Waterdeep, while at the same time a separate group of City Watch are dealing with the fallout from recent robberies. And because, in this hypothetical scenario, it’s the same GM running both parties in the same continuity, you’ve got plenty of room to mix and match. One week a member of the Thieving Crew shows up at the Watch’s game night as a detainee in need of interrogation. Then a patrol sergeant shows up in the Crew’s lair wearing a wire. Then everybody shows up for the grand finale gang fight where our con-men-with-hearts-of-gold help the cops take down the illithid mafia in a climactic shootout.
Ima be honest with you guys: I kind of want to run that game now. But that’s not the point! The point is that chemistry is hard to build. Most parties take a few sessions playing getting-to-know-you, and adding a new face to that mix can be a strain. To continue our cops and robbers example, imagine the the Crew favor a wacky chaotic-random playstyle, while the Watch prefer a serious-face drama. Maybe specific players don’t get along so good: Lance Constable Copperfuzz had a bad breakup with Handsy McThievesalot last semester, and now things are awkward at the table. And that doesn’t even take into the account the usual personality conflicts that PCs go through. All of the above leads me to back to today’s advice: If thou wouldst mix parties, make sure that they mix properly. Getting all of your friends together at the same table can indeed lead to cool moments. But just remember that chemistry is a fragile thing, and that it takes real work to build.
So how about it, guys? Have any of you ever been a guest-player? Was it a natural fit, or did you find that you were the odd-orc-out in an established group? Sound off down in the comments with your tales of travel to strange and distant tables!
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It wasn’t so much a guest player, but during my last campaign, two players joined with goblin characters. And we loved both the new characters and the new players. They were hilarious and easy to get along with during the game. Sadly one had to leave due to a schedule change, but the other stayed and became more involved in the campaign, playing several characters that were very important to the plot.
About a year later, another new player joined. The group played some extra sessions in the middle of the week that I wasn’t able to join so I don’t know exactly what happened. But when I checked the Discord chat the next day, this new player complained that she was being picked on. The next week, she wasn’t there and her character was dead.
What do you reckon? Knowing your group, was this person being overly sensitive, or do you think there may have been a little too much “good-natured” ribbing?
I think she was being overly sensitive. The few sessions before that kinda gave me the impression that she was the “It’s what my character would do!” kind of player and that she didn’t take criticism well.
Oof. Too bade. Here’s hoping she grew up a little.
I’m with Thief on this. In my various groups, I’m somewhat infamous as THE guy with bad rolls. Fighting vampires and just need to roll above a 5 to make a Will save to avoid getting dominated? Nat 1. Enemy is on its last legs and just need to hit them to get the kill? Nat 1. Rolling for hit points? Both the GM/DM and I will roll 1 or 2. You get the idea. It’s rare that a session goes by without me flipping double birds at the ceiling and cursing like a sailor at some point.
Just finished a Strange Aeons game, and Laurel was my destined bloodline bloodrager:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/bloodrager/bloodrager-bloodlines/paizo-bloodrager-bloodlines/destined/
It’s hard to pay that mess off when you can’t roll above a four in the final fight.
Her destiny was to instill false confidence into the BBEG, clearly!
Chemistry isn’t so much fragile as it is ‘volatile’ and ‘explosive’.
This comic’s dialogue is now having me imagine Luck being an NPC/Deity (think Discworld gods) with an iffy relationship (no not that kind, not in this comic at least) with Thief. Probably like a reverse Rincewind deal. Would the DM be Fate in that case?
The “reverse Rincewind,” on the other hand, does belong in the other comic.
Wait, when you say reverse Rincewind, do you mean ‘person who is loved by Fate but hated by luck’, or something to do with genderbending wizardry?
Why not both?
Sometimes you get a great session 0, sometimes you dont.
Some days, You quietly tell the gm, “I’m sorry, but I feel like leaving.” (as the party cleric.)
There are so many gamuts of inbetween’s that happen. But so much of this really is on the gm to filter things right, and be as up front with any issues that can arise, from pc to pc, and from gm to pc.
But a good mix happens because you both mesh, and you don’t at times.
When it’s the GM who’s the problem in this scenario, I think it’s a problem of trying to foist another friend onto an established group. This is exactly where the “DM’s girlfriend / boyfriend” thing comes from.
Can we start betting on who gets paired with who in what’s undoubtedly going to be a disaster scenario?
My first (and only so far, since I didn’t read the Rusty comic) prediction: Rusty & Fighter.
What? How did you guess that…? I mean… no. >_>
“Laurel, how fast can you re-draw next week’s comic?”
I’d let you bet, but you have insider knowledge. Assuming Laurel doesn’tgo rogue and starts drawing comics without a script, like a madwoman.
Heh. That could be a fun comic. Just let her make something up, then write a blog about flying by the seat of your pants as a GM.
Sounds not too far from a ‘switch roles’ plot. As in, Laurel doing the writing/commentary for one comic and you/Colin getting to draw it. Which the handbook can interpret as ‘every class has its weakness/strengths’.
What I do imagine is her sitting at a writing/drawing desk, lightning flashing in the background dramatically, laughing maniacally at her mad creation.
“Blood, Blood, Blood”
“… eat sword?”
They’re like fantasy gaming webcomic furbies!
Eyyyy, Dorilys! Wouldn’t trust anyone else to pull a name from a hat.
Indeed. Sadly however, Thief was holding the hat.
So the result of this comic will be sce-I mean, scripts from a hat?
Yes. But happily, the points don’t matter.
Which is good, because someone’s bound to get filled with a whole bunch of points.
There isn’t a “Reply” option next to spudwalt’s comment, but a crossover with Rusty & Co. means there will be 1d4-1 Doogans showing up to deliver those points.
I’m no mathemagician, but who would deliver the points if you rolled a 1?
My prediction for an ill-fated mix up is cleric with Madeline the paladin. I can just imagine him trying to reverse engineer her character sheet.
“Are ye even rolling dice!? Do ye have expertise?! Wha’ feats are lettin’ ye do all these crazy flips!?!?”
Heh. Cleric and the Princess.
“GM’s girlfriend is nae a real class!”
Or Paladin and Madeleine. Lawful Stupid vs actual Lawful Good.
On a side note: I hadn’t realised that Thief’s unluck was an actual, recognised thing in-universe. I know Cleric refers to her being unlucky (when the bounty hunters attack I think), but being contrasted with Dorilys makes it seem like a… uh… is there an opposite to a “feat”?
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterFlaws.htm
Thief’s unluck source is up to debate, but it’s very much real and tangible. On one hand, Fighter’s NPC cohort, Warrior, has an active aura of unluck, which manifests exclusively to bring Thief misery.
On the other hand, she seems to have bad luck even without his presence, stemming either from bad rolls on the player’s side, or a literal curse.
A similar kind of curse could be seen on Gunslinger as well, only instead of bad luck that would cause his gun to misfire, he instead has crippling, Yunyun-levels of loneliness.
I was a guest player in a campaign once, and decided to roll it as intentionally being the “odd orc out.” The party had some spellcasters in a land when casting was taboo and just returning to the world. They had defeated some demons that had been summoned during a gladiator game, but were suspected of being the ones who summoned the demons. I played a knight of the local church who was very suspicious of the players, but was tasked with helping/keeping an eye on them while solving this mystery. Unbeknownst to them (and himself) the resurgence of spellcasting also made him a paladin, leading the magic-is-evil templar to have a sudden crisis when his god rewarded him with magic powers, and gave the PCs a chance to make their case that magic wasn’t all bad and help the guest character, who’d been kind of a jerk to them, get through his sudden crisis of faith. He ended up departing with the party at the end of the session on good terms, and put in a friendly word to the church for them.
Figured if I play a guest character, I’ll play one that supplement the party and adds to the session (the party also had no tanks, so paladin filled a mechanical role as well as a story one.)
“Don’t play a jerk” is a good way to think of it. Sure you come from an opposing faction, but that doesn’t mean you’re trying to force your suddenly-a-paladin’s worldview (or story) down anybody’s throat. You added to their story rather than insisting on making it your own. Sounds like good gaming to me.
Rusty and Co crossover! This should be fun!
Out of curiosity, how are crossovers like on the creator’s side? From your comment in https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-03 I’m guessing you didn’t know about the Handbook characters showing up in Rusty until after the comic was made and went live, but that case was more of a reference than a true crossover. When doing a crossover like this what’s the background stuff of creators working with each other’s property? How much collab is there between creators? How much research do you do into Rusty to get characterization, lore, etc “right?”
There’s no set way to do it. I’d actually reached out to Mike months ago asking about the possibility. He replied that he was swamped with projects, but interested. The idea was to circle back around in a few months’ time.
When I first saw the Rusty and Co. comic featuring the Handbook gang…
http://rustyandco.com/comic/level-9-13/
…It had been long enough that I’d forgotten about the initial communication. Embarrassingly, my first reaction was, “Holy crap! Unsolicited fan illustrations! Cool!” It was only when I saw the follow-up from Mike in my email that I remembered what was going on, lol.
In any case, Mike’s version works creatively since Handbook has a very loose plot, and throwing the gang into the background at an adventuring hotel works just fine. No need for elaborate setups.
As for my end, I wound up bingeing Rusty and Co. once Mike’s half of the trade happened, reading it over the course of a couple of weeks. I wound up putting lists of each comic’s characters side by side and trying to figure out who would have chemistry. (Or at least a cheap gag.) Once I had scripts, I sent them on to Mike for review. I might have gone a little overboard with a five-part mini-arc, but it’s not every day that you get to play with a whole new cast of characters. I was inspired and stuff.
The results should play out over the course of a the next two weeks.
As it happens, “Dorilys Happ” is an anagram of “holds papyri” – no wonder she needed to choose a number of pieces of written-on paper-like material. She’s also worth kissing as “Rhapsody Lip” is another anagram…
Alright then. What have you got for “Colin Stricklin?”
Licit Scorn Link?
https://new.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=Colin+Stricklin&t=500&a=n
Meanwhile, Laurel Shelley Reuss spells out “Healers Yell Lures Us” which gives testament to her clerical ability.
Good ones XD
“Click in nostril”
It’s allergy season. Believe me, I got it covered.
“Rot links clinic”
I have not been a guest in any game and my group is invitation only. Kinda like the Wildwood Club 🙂
We can, and have, done lots of crossover games but more internally. In-game crossover. Not so much with other people. There isn’t that much people that want, or can, play these games in our city. Then there is fewer people who would want to play with us. It just isn’t worthwhile. We keep our games, we keep our stories 🙁
By the way, when are we gonna get a crossover with Oglaf. These Rusty and co. guys are not interesting 🙁
The disadvantage of an Oglaf crossover is that only ~110 people get to see it. Patron tiers and whatnot.
It could also be SFW o_O
But where the fun would be? 😉
Wait a minute, is Dorilys Happ confident/smug because she assumes the result of the hat draw will be good and appropriate…
…or because she’s hoping for it to be as big a disaster as it can get, going as far as to accidentally (or intentionally, if her luck can lead her to desired results) pick Thief to hold the hat and produce chaos her power alone can’t accomplish?
Ummm… The first one.
Looking forward to this series. I like Rusty & Co. (Though I’m not even nearly caught up yet. I’m still on the circus one)
The finale of the circus arc is my favorite so far.
I’ve actually overseen a couple of guest player situations as a GM.
The first was one where the session for the game I was a player in got canceled a week in advance, so I invited the GM from that game to be a guest player in my campaign. The party was about to engage in a heist, so I had him make a character who was heisting for the same treasure (okay, it was a person, whatever) but with neither side knowing about the other. The plan was for the party to run into him, they’d team up and then once they all escaped he’d betray them and they’d fight and kill him. Unfortunately/fortunately, stuff happened and the guest stole the MacGuffin (person) AND charmed one of the PCs into escaping with him, all without the party ever noticing that he was there (he was invisible whenever they were around him). So I had to call the guest back for the next session, and figure out how the PCs were going to track down a man they had not seen and knew nothing about. (Turned out a shopkeeper the PCs knew saw the Charmed PC and the guest character together, and her description of the guest character allowed a PC who met him briefly at the party the heist took place at to realize it was him, which got them a name and they picked up the trail from there.) Then the guest played that character as a combat boss and the party mercilessly beat the stuffing out of him so badly that when the police found his body, it started rumors of a crazy serial killer. (The acid and fire burns were excusable, but the PCs really shouldn’t have taken his head with them.)
Later, that game I was a player in got canceled again (it was a three-player game, so if one person couldn’t do it we really did have to cancel), and I brought in one of the other players to guest-star in my campaign. He just played an alternate-universe version of his regular character, whose backstory actually fit pretty well as a good man working for the questionably good government (as opposed to the regular campaign, where he was a good man who USED to work for the questionably good government). The party found him tied to a chair inside the house of the psycho kidnapper lady with mind control powers, and once they untied him, he teamed up with them to clear the house. They got along well enough that the PCs have made the guest character their go-to contact in the government (though the guest player has not returned). So a fun NPC was born from this!
We also had an unplanned guest player when one player had to bring his girlfriend to the session. The party had a GMPC that I controlled half the time and the party collectively played the other half of the time (I’d ask the players what they want her to do in combat, and if a PC is disabled or absent for some reason, their player could take over the GMPC), so I just handed the GMPC sheet over to our guest and she ran with it. At the end of the session, she said that that was a lot more fun than what she had expected, which was to sit in the corner on her phone for four hours. (Hard to argue with that.)
So I’ve had a lot of fun with guest players!
Nice! What the girlfriend GMPC an experienced gamer, or was this a first time thing?
She seemed to have done tabletop games before. I don’t think she’d specifically done 1e Pathfinder.
She got at least one cool moment when she jumped onto a speeding cart, grabbed some plot-important vials and then leaped off. (Okay, she rolled a 1 on Acrobatics to dismount, but it still looked cool!)
You know, I’ve been reading so much Rusty & co. that I didn’t even realize Dorilys wasn’t a Handbook of Heroes character
Heh. Looks like we have a crossover audience. Good call teaming up. 😀
Just binged the whole comic.
Now I REALLY want Thief and Madeleine teaming up the most.
I’m all for luck vs anti-luck any day.
Wonder if she can detect curses also?
Gotta wonder what curses smell like to paladins. I’m guessing black licorice figures in there somewhere.
With the quarantine, people are getting bored, and one session of D&D a week ain’t cutting it. Currently, I’m playing in a small group, and DMing a slightly larger one; two of the players from the smaller group asked about rolling up guest characters in my campaign. One player did well; he played a character that interacted with the other PCs well, and had a good reason to follow them around. The other player, though… most of his D&D experience came from 3-player groups. When he found himself in a 7-PC table, he wasn’t able to adapt to this, and so would often end up talking over other people and over their turns. He also did end up engaging in a single instance of PvP, but that wasn’t actually too bad, due to it being a natural escalation of two PCs interacting, both players consenting to an honourable duel, and the guest player surrendering. However, this did pose an issue to group dynamics given how the PvP was immediately after the guest player’s introduction.
So our party of adventurers is hap(p)less no more?
Sorry, I had to.
Well, now I’ve come full circle; I originally found the Handbook thanks to Rusty&Co. And an amazing few weeks it’s been, laughing myself silly and retelling stories from my RPG-ing, in between hectic days of pandemic-fighting.
The handbook has definitely won its place on my regular reading list – I only wish I could contribute on Patreon, but someone decided to rescue our economy by freezing my salary. Fun times.
Anyhow, thank you Colin and Laurel for your amazing work this far, and I’m sure you’ll see many of my highly opinionated comments in the future! 🙂