One of my players has read the amazing things that can be done with Astral Quests and I was wondering what you GM's out there do for astral quests. Roll or roleplay?

And if Roleplay, what did you do?

depends. if the player is doing a quest to reduce karma costs for learning a spell, or something, i'll usually just roll it out. if the quest is important, you can do anything you want. astral quests are good opportunity to highlight a character's less-used skills and knowledge skills, or fill out details from his past, or just confuse the bejesus out of him (one idea i had involved a formal, 18th-century ball; the various metaplaces were expressed as different dances).

Astral quests are a great way to let your imagination go wild. I used to use some ideas from Planescape in mine. The key I found was in description and flavor text, otherwise why bother roleplaying the quest anyways?

So far, we roll them. Occasionally we roleplay the Dweller on the Threshold, but have not yet done the Quest itself as a roleplay.

Read Harlequin's Back & the last adventure in Survival Of The Fittest. Good examples of astral quests.

I'd only really role-play it out if the whole team was there. Otherwise I'd just do the damage resistance tests.

We roleplay them.

It is an excellent chance for the Game Master to add to his/her metaplot. Without being completely obvious ("Luke....go to the Degobah system!") the Totem or Avatar can guide the player into following the plotline more closely, or into investigating something that they missed previously. ("You think that's air you're breathing?")

The Dweller has 2 purposes in my opinion. 1) The Dweller can drop few clangers, and share dirty laundry with the team. This can make the group stronger, or kill someone off....either way, things get more interesting. 2) The Dweller can reveal something about a character that even the character didn't know. (I am not talking about the abuse of characters with "Dark Secret" and "Amnesia", everyone does that.) Rather, this gives you the chance to bring up something from the characters history, or to blab about something else that the character would rather forget.

I almost always RP them. I suppose that if they group was in the middle of a run, decided they needed the name of a free spirit, I hadn't thought of it ahead of time, then I might just roll through it. Usually, though, if a player is planning to go on an astral quest I know about it a little while ahead of time and we play though it. If I can't set up an extra session for them I try to have them come earlier or stay later than the rest of the group so that people aren't bored for an hour.

I've done both. If it comes up in the middle of the session, I usually just go to my Astral Quest Generator and then hand the laptop to the player and tell him to roll them. I'll choose appropriate knowledge skills etc. when necessary but in the interests of time and not boring the hell out of the other players I'll skip the RP stuff and move on.

However, as was stated above, if (a) more than one character is on the quest, (b) I know it's coming with enough time to come up with a good "plot" for it, or © I deem it important enough to put the time into it for a various of reasons that are up to me as a GM (I love option c ) I'll make them RP.

As for the dweller, I've never used it. I just use the dweller's test to determine extra pool dice the character has for the quest. I never liked the concept of the dweller, so I imagine him as a barrier between this plane and the metas. Depenting on how effective the character is at penetrating this barrier, they may gain dice to use later in the Quest.

Roleplaying them is best, I find.

My favorite Astral quest happened in a completely different game system =)

In one of my Fantasy Heroes campaign there was a highly mysterious immortal sorceror known as Evanke the Mad. His head was a big yellow happy face and the only thing he ever said was to cackle like a lunatic.

In the later years of the campaign they discovered he was searching for the 7 Skulls of the Master Thieves. They had one of them and this caused much mayhem for a long while. They eventually struck a deal with him, they would bring him the missing skull and he would then give them all 7, allowing them to leave with them.

They figured he was completely nuts and gave him the 7th skull. He stood in front of the gathered skulls and cackled...then vanished.

Turns out he was a Shadowrun mage on an astral quest and he was in The Place of The Gathering. His test was to gather the skulls. It took him over 2000 years, but as you know no matter how long an astral quest takes, in the SR universe, it appears to last mere seconds.

My PCs, who knew shadowrun, thought that was hilarious.

Sunday

Im completely against roleplaying them 99% of the time, imless the player doing it can get with me outside of the normal game session. I'm not going to take 4 hours to troleplay something cool that the 3/4 of the party that's mundane or an adept or not an initiate cannot take part in.

Furthermore, most astral quests are just for initiations and lowering karma costs anyway.

One way to include everyone is to have them all play parts in the Quest. And while their characters are not actually present, giving Karma for roleplaying can make it worthwhile. Maybe even let them make "the character they always wanted to play but never could" for it. I've also used riddles and the like for quick quests. Rolling is not discouraged, but I usually let the player decide how to do it and find something for the other to do if they want to roleplay it. Then again, we roleplay shopping for Christmas presents...

One setting I've just thought of for an astral quest is where you try to get to various sections of a nightclub. With the Dweller on the Threshold being the bouncer at the front door. What do you think?

We tend to use a combination unless its plot-important. If its reducing karma costs or for inspiration or what have you, then we try to come up with a short encounter appropriate to the quest and the Place the character is in, and resolve that Place with a dice roll from the books, but we might adjust the target number based on how well the character played the encounter, which may well involve other tests as well. An example of one that happened recently, to reduce karma costs for invisibility, was where each encounter involved concealing something, be it the character's true beleifs (Charisma), or playing hide and seek with your astral self (Destiny) or sneaking a weapon past some security in order to have a duel with someone, then forcing the spirit that lived in the area to hide the body and escaping (respectively Battle and Spirits). Each was ultimately resolved with a test, with the damage manifesting appropriate to the place (the character beat the spirit, but it swiped the player for an L in the end).

Keeps it reasonably short, challenging and generates a feeling of accomplishment not present when its reduced to dice rolls. We also go into more detail the higher the quest. Harlequin's Back is I beleive a rating 12 quest. We tend to rule that its its a rating 6 or higher quest it must be roleplayed. this stops players just deciding to take off on highrating quests relying on their karma to keep them alive, because fully roleplayed quests are usually much harder than simple dice roll ones.

Well, if the dweller appears however it wants, couldn't it appear as a room with a guy in it? The players don't need to know they're standing in the dweller, talking to a piece of it.

Rather than floating in a dark void, my best dweller appeared as a Judge in a Courtroom, holding Trial over the entire team to determine if they were Acceptable (i.e. could overcome the Quest Rating) or were to be found Wanting (unacceptable rejects unable to continue). The players did not yet know they were going on an astral quest, and the Judge got to bring up their faults (and birth names, for the record) and could determine if they were guilty of their faults (of course they were).

Lessee... I've had the Dweller appear as a doppelganger of the characters, a poker dealer, Harlequin, and a used-car salesman. Among others.

I'll roleplay out Astral Quests if there's time, and it's not too inconvenient for the other players. If it involves the entire team, I always roleplay it out-- things like HB or the end of SotF, for example. If it's just something that comes up, like tracking down a hidden ritual link, I just roll it out.

If it's an initiation, I always try to roleplay it out in a 1:1 session. I try and put a lot of thought into these; I actually have one or two standards that I like to run. In these cases, I only offer one challenge for the entire thing. For example, for a hermetic mage, one of my favorites is to put him on a street of houses. Each house is identical to the others, except for the numbers: 4, 21, 16, 1024, 7, 63, 121, and 45 are some of the standards. The challenge is to find out which house to go to-- opening the doors of any of the wrong ones sends him right back. Should he open the right one, someone will be standing there, demanding to know why the character knocked on his door. (A cookie to anyone who can tell me which house is the right one, and why.)

Cain, although I really like the idea, but do you think that may be unfair to do a puzzle that way because the character may be smarter than the player?

This is kind of a tangent but I always disliked things that required the player to solve a puzzle in character, when realistically its something the character may have been able to do in his sleep.

A lot of GM's do that, am I alone in this logic?

That's why you combine the two aspects. The PC may be able to Negotiate in his or her sleep, but we still give target modifiers based on player performance.

Ouch Cain, you're harsh! Every failed Astral Quest results in Disruption of the magician's astral form, and since disruption in astral combat results in a test for magic loss, many GMs have characters roll for Magic Loss whenever they fail an Astral Quest.

I've never seen a magician use Astral Quest as an initiation ordeal beyond grade 2.

and on a different note...

Out of:
4 (2*2)
21 (7*3)
16 (2*2*2*2, 2*2*4, 4*4, 8*2)
1024 (fing lots)
7 (Prime)
63 (7*3*3, 7*9)
121 (11*11)
45 (3*3*5, 9*5)

7 is the only base prime number, making it unique. 121 is the only number produced by a prime number squared making it unique. 1024 is the only number with more that 4 combinations of base possible numbers making it unique. 121 is the only number that shares no base factors with any other number, making it unique, which is getting less and less unique.... The list can really go on and on without knowing what youre looking for.

4=4
21=3
16=7
1024=7
7=7
63=9
121=4
45=9

I choose 21.

All the numbers have an odd digit in them, except the "4". Obviously that's the unique one.

Wow OurTeam, I completely missed that, that's a good one!

Edit:
Also 16 is the only number that's both the product of a whole number squared, 4^2, and a whole number cubed 2^3. So that must also be it!

nit: 16 is a whole number to the fourth, not third.

All the number can be typed with the left hand on my Microsoft Natural Keyboard, except the 7. That's obviously the unique one.

To spell out each number you'll need at least two different vowels.
Except for "seven" which can be spelled with only "e" for the vowels.
Obviously 7 is the unique one.

(Both 4 and 63 require an even number of letters to spell them out. All the others use an odd number of letters. I'm sure most people would think of this, but it's not what differentiates one from the rest.)

/Edit: oops, I just lost my last Magic Point.

Ooo, speaking of the length of the words, 16 (Sixteen) is the only number that has the same exact number of letters as Citadel, 7. Since the citadel is the goal in an astral quest, my magic point is on 16. Big money Big money!

Does anyone besides me feel like Vizzini right now?