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It was, funnily enough, my introduction to table top when I was around 4-5 because it was what my older brothers had, and its not like I understood why I needed to do whatever Rifts wanted me to, much less know that there could be better. Here is the thing about Rifts, it is a lot like the movie The Room, or any other it is so far past bad it becomes good movie. Depending on how you approach it, and the group you play with, it can be hilariously fun. Trying to play it straight though is probably going to end up with an aborted campaign and a sour taste for everyone involved.
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Dec 28, 2017 15:41
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One of my players asked to bring his nerd fiancee into our campaign to fill a slot left by a player who didn't have time to play with our group anymore. This isn't her first D&D rodeo, and I figured that we'd be over at that guy's house enough, so she may as well join us. At our last session, she drank too much and completely lost the plot. She got bored by some narrative poo poo that the founding players have been working toward for years and just started pickpocketing party members to entertain herself, including her fiance's character. She didn't succeed the second time she tried, and was all "Whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do?" to him in the middle of Rewarding Story Advancement. To his credit, he just sort of quietly said "Don't" in one of those moments when the player and character are saying the exact same thing in and out of the game, and the rest of the table collectively pretended that none of this was actually happening for game purposes. On the way home, MY GIRLFRIEND said "You know, maybe she just isn't that good at role playing." D&D would be great if it wasn't for the loving players.
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Dec 28, 2017 17:39
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Beelerzebub posted:Is it really that bad? I'm still only on the section with all of the lore. I'm a slow reader and I'm on vacation with extended family, so it's gonna take me a while. It's worse than you think. Here is an archive of the writeup that Alien Rope Burn did about RIFTS in the FATAL & Friends thread. It is informative. That doesn't mean you shouldn't play it - if you think it'll be fun you should absolutely play it - just that you should go into it with your eyes open.
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Dec 28, 2017 17:54
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I'm a brand new GM, running 13th Age for a group that had been doing D&D 4e and 5e for years until our usual GM needed a break on account of having a baby. It's pretty overwhelming, but skimming this thread is helping some. Anyway, the old GM never really did dungeon crawls but I'd like to put our group through one. The problem is, not having played through a long dungeon myself I'm having difficulty with ideas for constructing one. I put the party in a small dungeon for the first session, but it was kind of unsatisfying because I found myself padding out the dungeon with more or less empty rooms to keep the players from clearing it too quickly. What I want to know is, what are the basic elements of a good dungeon crawl? Also my players have grown accustomed to getting a long rest/full heal whenever they want thanks to the old GM, how should I cope with that when putting them into a situation where it should be unfeasible for them to rest at will?
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Dec 28, 2017 18:19
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Sexual Lorax posted:D&D would be great if it wasn't for the loving players. It's always upsetting when tone isn't established between players but thems the breaks. I'm guessing this is a rant post rather than asking for advice, but I find laying the tone out beforehand helps a LOT.
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Dec 28, 2017 21:55
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Moriatti posted:It's always upsetting when tone isn't established between players but thems the breaks. I'm guessing this is a rant post rather than asking for advice, but I find laying the tone out beforehand helps a LOT. Oh, that was 100% a rant post. The campaign's tone was long established with the founding players, but the new player just...whatever? She pulled some wacky hijinks sober during our first session together, now that I think about it. The details don't matter, but if she had succeeded her character would have done a great job of never being with the rest of the party ever. All her character had to do was take the approach of "Well, we just met, and I don't entirely trust you guys, but I'll cautiously go talk to your boss with you" instead of "I don't have any loving idea who you assholes are, and no I won't go with you, help help I'm being kidnapped" which torqued me off as a DM, because I put some work into writing her character into the story in a more organic way than "You meet in a bar and an old man tells you of a great treasure". Like, meet me halfway, here.
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Dec 28, 2017 23:52
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Yeah, that's kind of annoying. Some people are incapable of taking elfgames seriously though, I know MY GIRLFRIEND couldn't get into our 2e game until she made a fighter named Selena Gnomez.
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Dec 29, 2017 00:31
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Mountaineer posted:I'm a brand new GM, running 13th Age for a group that had been doing D&D 4e and 5e for years until our usual GM needed a break on account of having a baby. It's pretty overwhelming, but skimming this thread is helping some. Anyway, the old GM never really did dungeon crawls but I'd like to put our group through one. The problem is, not having played through a long dungeon myself I'm having difficulty with ideas for constructing one. I put the party in a small dungeon for the first session, but it was kind of unsatisfying because I found myself padding out the dungeon with more or less empty rooms to keep the players from clearing it too quickly. What I want to know is, what are the basic elements of a good dungeon crawl? Also my players have grown accustomed to getting a long rest/full heal whenever they want thanks to the old GM, how should I cope with that when putting them into a situation where it should be unfeasible for them to rest at will? Eyes of the stone thief is loving amazing, if you have any thoughts of playing for a while and dont mind dropping a few bucks. Just grab ideas and encounters even if you dont want to run the full campaign. In terms of ideas, having two or three competing races that players can talk to in uneasy equilibrium is always fun. Having to balance pushing forward with getting out with the spoils. Difficult choices.
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Dec 29, 2017 00:39
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Alright DMs, help me out with some ideas! We're doing 5e Eberron, and we came up with a creative starting scenario: The party is composed of upper classmates in a special academy, a refuge for children that are struck with an aberrant dragonmark. Other students, one year your junior, have encountered some danger on a recent field trip. A teacher has handpicked each of you to rescue them, knowing that you’re the best team for success. The school has its own countryside estate, and focuses on teaching students how to control their powers, and survive in a society that fears them. We don't want this to lean too much towards X-Men or Harry Potter, but it'll be hard to avoid those allusions altogether. Anyone have fun ideas to incorporate?
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Dec 29, 2017 02:39
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Mountaineer posted:Also my players have grown accustomed to getting a long rest/full heal whenever they want thanks to the old GM, how should I cope with that when putting them into a situation where it should be unfeasible for them to rest at will? Tell them up front 'In this game you won't be able to full-rest at will, it might trigger wandering monsters or you might have something even worse happen'.
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Dec 29, 2017 10:02
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Inescapable Duck posted:This is why the idea is so fun, there's so much you can do with it. Already got ideas for the Brothers D'Mario as Sicilian mercenaries wielding hammers and strange, varied powers from consuming exotic plants and fungi from a distant kingdom. The Green Knight idea entertainingly implies that England is the Dark World for this incarnation of Hyrule, and the elven knight is going about his own quest which may likely come into conflict with the players. (especially if one of them beats him to the Master Sword) Could you make an evil, faceless hunter with a vicious hound who challenges them to defeat him in a hunt and every time the player makes a mistake the dog seems to be mocking them?
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Jan 1, 2018 06:11
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I'm playing a 5E campaign and, due to burnout on the DM's part, I'm going to be taking over. This will be my first time really DMing outside of a one-shot I tried out. Between threads on here and some other DM tip stuff I've seen I'm looking into including some homebrews for rebalancing martial classes a bit. The main 5E thread mentioned Nort's Universal Martial Maneuvers so I'm looking into that. I've also heard a lot of good things about martial powers in 4E and was wondering if there has been a good comprehensive attempt at homebrewing in martial powers already and, if so, if it stacks well with Nort's. There's one on DMs Guild that I found pretty quickly but I noticed in the preview that it functions a bit differently, using a resource instead of the 4E at-will/encounter/daily division.
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Jan 5, 2018 23:40
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Are you starting a new campaign or picking up the existing one? I too have a million ideas for rebalancing, but do one thing at a time. You're going to have your hands full doing all the narrative stuff required of you. Encounter building if nothing else takes time and practice. Map preparation takes time even if you ain't drawing the maps. Get into a rhythm on that before you start also rewriting stuff stuff. If you aren't comfortable improvising all your NPCs, that takes time.
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Jan 6, 2018 01:38
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Are you starting a new campaign or picking up the existing one? I too have a million ideas for rebalancing, but do one thing at a time. You're going to have your hands full doing all the narrative stuff required of you. Encounter building if nothing else takes time and practice. Map preparation takes time even if you ain't drawing the maps. Get into a rhythm on that before you start also rewriting stuff stuff. If you aren't comfortable improvising all your NPCs, that takes time. Picking up an existing one. The current DM doesn't like DMing online so they are taking up a separate monthly campaign while I pick up the current one since I really liked the setting. My plan was to do a few sessions of something more contained to get a feel for any changes I'd be making, rather than diving headfirst into the main campaign with major changes. I can probably hold off on that for when I get my feet properly wet on the regular stuff though.
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Jan 6, 2018 02:06
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I've paid most attention to "balance" of things in my campaign - the biggest deal was conjure animals which is a really awfully designed spell that my druid also really wanted to use.
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Jan 6, 2018 02:12
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I've paid most attention to "balance" of things in my campaign - the biggest deal was conjure animals which is a really awfully designed spell that my druid also really wanted to use. 100% same. Those conjure spells are garbage, but I found limiting it to the fewer, higher CR creature options worked much better for balancing encounters while still letting my druid use it.
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Jan 6, 2018 02:16
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Trojan Kaiju posted:I'm playing a 5E campaign and, due to burnout on the DM's part, I'm going to be taking over. This will be my first time really DMing outside of a one-shot I tried out. Between threads on here and some other DM tip stuff I've seen I'm looking into including some homebrews for rebalancing martial classes a bit. The main 5E thread mentioned Nort's Universal Martial Maneuvers so I'm looking into that. I've also heard a lot of good things about martial powers in 4E and was wondering if there has been a good comprehensive attempt at homebrewing in martial powers already and, if so, if it stacks well with Nort's. There's one on DMs Guild that I found pretty quickly but I noticed in the preview that it functions a bit differently, using a resource instead of the 4E at-will/encounter/daily division. Hi there, I put Nort's Maneuvers together - if I can help you with it just ask. NUMM works by expanding the superiority dice of Battlemasters to all classes and generally operating as per those rules. As you may know the maneuvers refresh on short rest at a higher rate for fighters than other martials. At our (3rd - 4th level) game we use NUMM together with Beyond Damage Dice (with a couple minor tweaks). I've printed out both pdfs for player reference at the table and of course they have the pdfs to read between sessions (some do some don't). I've allowed players to just choose their known maneuvers at the table, at which point it's canon and they write it onto their sheet. I'll be expanding the NUMM pdf soon. I'd be stoked to hear more feedback. One other document you may find helpful as a newish DM is Optional Rules & Random Tables Indexes: A Guide and Toolbox for Expanding Campaign Rules - it does a better job indexing the DMG than the DMG and highlights a lot of optional rules about combat that are otherwise annoying to find.
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Jan 6, 2018 07:09
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For reasons I won’t go into my party are helping out a Druid who has three groups of ash zombies trapped inside abandoned buildings in an otherwise ruined town. He wants the zombies killed but in such a way that they don’t explode and spread “blight spores” across the local area. The party is all geared up to take this on, but at the last minute our wizard can’t make it. She wants the rest of them to press on, they want to press on, but I honestly can’t see a good way for them to contain these spores without easy access to fire or ice. Has anyone got any ideas? Hopefully they’ll come up with something, but I’d like to have a route in mind in case they need a hint.
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Jan 8, 2018 18:58
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Is there an ice-box in town? Alternatively, submerge them prior to defeat to contain the spores in water?
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Jan 8, 2018 19:04
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What's the rest of the party comp?
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Jan 8, 2018 19:20
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How fleshed out is the zombie lore here? Could they be plant-based zombies that the druid can stop the "growth" of somehow? Maybe they need the party to keep them in place while he conducts the ritual?
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Jan 8, 2018 19:28
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Without the wizard they are a rogue and two fighters, one an archer and one a wrestler. The zombies are responsible for the blight infecting the town, and the druid has fought them back enough to contain them in the houses by summoning twig blights to help. He can’t aid the party directly because he’s stopping the twig blights from attacking them while they’re here. Making sure there’s a pond nearby is easy enough, and if I let them know fire will work I reckon they’ll have the nous to build a giant bonfire before they engage. I like the idea of an ice house but the town has been abandoned for ten years so it’d be empty. I’ll include as much as I can but I’m still open to ideas - it has been clearly established that they hate problems with a single, obvious solution.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:01
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Is there any reason why it has to be fire and ice? You could have it be that the solution is water -- once a zombie is taken down the spores dry out and blow away on the wind like a dandelion clock, so they have to be kept wet until you can bury them. E: You could also have a reveal that this will lead to the ruined town being permanently corrupted, but the druid thinks that's a fair price to pay if it stops the spores getting out and corrupting the whole area.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:15
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Just because the Wizard Player can't make it doesn't mean that the wizard character coudn't spend the whole fight channeling the plane of ice into a building or somesuch.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:21
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The town is the archer's home town and it's his personal goal to drive out the twig blights; they've just discovered the twig blights are only there to contain the ash zombies. Water would probably work, or finding something to wrap the zombies in without killing them. Your description of how the spores work is spot on - a dead zombie's head bursts and the spores float off on the breeze. The reason I said fire and ice is because the party have come up with some really inventive ways to use Ray of Frost and Burning Hands recently, so my thoughts went down that route. Maybe I'm the one being railroaded, and I should just leave them to get on with it?
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Jan 8, 2018 20:27
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Aren't there a bunch of single-use items that inflict elemental damage? If the town's been abandoned because no one wanted to get near the blight, there could be leftover alchemical tools in one of the buildings that they could use to cobble together molotovs and the like.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:38
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Sanford posted:The town is the archer's home town and it's his personal goal to drive out the twig blights; they've just discovered the twig blights are only there to contain the ash zombies. In that case I would definitely have him realise that the druid's solution to stop the zombies blighting the forest will lead to them blighting the ruined town instead. Forcing characters to make difficult choices, and finding out what they're willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals, is what GMing is all about for me.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:47
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Give them an ample source of burning oil and some torches.
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Jan 8, 2018 21:05
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Sanford posted:Without the wizard they are a rogue and two fighters, one an archer and one a wrestler.. obviously if he power bombs them into the earth hard enough the spores would be obliterated. what is the wrestlers signature move? e: if it wasn't already clear, Sanford your game and your players sound wonderful. TheTofuShop fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 21:12
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TheTofuShop posted:what is the wrestlers signature move? Grabbing enemies under the armpits and tearing them in half. And then the halfling says "is that a wrestling move?" and we all laugh. I've just rewritten my notes to include a pond, an ice house, an alchemists shop, and a basement with torches, lamp oil and tinder. Plenty of options there. Thanks everyone!
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Jan 8, 2018 21:29
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They went for molotovs thrown down chimneys, and when they ran out they lured the zombies out one by one, manhandled them into open graves and the fighters held them in place with farming implements while the rogue shovelled the soil back in. Then they banged a steel stake into the head area of each grave, while listening closely for the tell-tale "whoomph" noise when the zombie head exploded. All sorted! Now they have to fight a dragon.
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Jan 9, 2018 16:34
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Sanford posted:They went for molotovs thrown down chimneys, and when they ran out they lured the zombies out one by one, manhandled them into open graves and the fighters held them in place with farming implements while the rogue shovelled the soil back in. Then they banged a steel stake into the head area of each grave, while listening closely for the tell-tale "whoomph" noise when the zombie head exploded. All sorted!
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Jan 9, 2018 19:27
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But what does the dragon horde?
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Jan 9, 2018 19:35
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Keeshhound posted:But what does the dragon horde? Ash zombie spores.
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Jan 9, 2018 19:46
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Keeshhound posted:But what does the dragon horde? Regrettable love affairs.
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Jan 9, 2018 19:47
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So in an effort to vary the game from smash & kill, I'm sending my group into a social encounter at an estate auction. One of the party has an invested interest in something in the sale, but the rest are probably going to be clueless and just there to see what sort of garbage they can pick up. Do you guys have any advice on how I can run the auction in a fun way? Any ideas as to what kind of other fun and/or stupid objects I could throw in it?
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Jan 9, 2018 21:26
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So I am DMing for a group and we are running Zweihander RPG. If you're not familiar its a d100 system based on WFRPG 1 and 2. It is fairly deadly and it is fairly low magic. Even being low magic I do want to give them the option of getting at least one item. The magic in zweihander and WF is powerful but also taxing on the user, chaos manifestations and corruption happen frequently. So the idea is a magical piece of jewelry that gives a bonus to a primary attribute for 1 minute. [Jewelry of boosting specific attribute] Use an AP to activate the jewelry. On activation you choose to boost your primary attribute by 5%, 10%, or 15% for 1 minute. After the 1 minute has passed take 1, 2, or 3 corruption and make a resolve test at 0%, -10%, or -20% on a fail suffer (physical or mental depending on the stat boosted) 1d10, 2d10, or 3d10 peril. additionally if you boosted a stat by 10% roll on the petty chaos manifestation table or if you boosted by 15% the lesser chaos manifestation table So the main question is are those drawbacks to much? I want it to be a good balance between risk and reward so they will be used but carefully.
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Jan 9, 2018 21:53
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Malpais Legate posted:So in an effort to vary the game from smash & kill, I'm sending my group into a social encounter at an estate auction. One of the party has an invested interest in something in the sale, but the rest are probably going to be clueless and just there to see what sort of garbage they can pick up. Do you guys have any advice on how I can run the auction in a fun way? Any ideas as to what kind of other fun and/or stupid objects I could throw in it? Don't just think of the auction as a series of transactions -- it's a social event for the rich and powerful and there will be hobnobbing and schmoozing and so forth in advance. Think about who in your setting is important, and whether they will be attending in person or sending an agent, and who else might have an interest in the things that the players want to buy. It's also worth throwing in some miscellaneous magic items -- some of which might have important sentimental value to other buyers who want them for themselves -- and a couple of items that the players can try to get rival buyers to waste their money on in advance.
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Jan 9, 2018 23:11
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My group is coming up to an event at a casino where they will be playing in a tournament for an item that they desire most or some other vague prize description as we pass over a display case filled with various magical items. I'm trying to personalize them for each player (both in and out of game) and use them as part of their character arcs going forward. Those items that aren't won now will probably get tweaked/buffed and added later. The party is level 4. The Rogue/Fighter is a power gamer and loves playing other traitor mechanic games - for him I'm giving a lucky ring that after a certain number of activations is going to start trying to lead him on the path of becoming a lich of some sort (yes, I know they're primarily wizards, just go with it) through out of game notes appearing in his stuff. This potentially is a campaign ending storyline if he kills the rest of the party as part of his ritual. The Bard is the shyest/least gamery at the table and was going to give a pick of destiny to boost their performance checks and pretty much encourage her to try doing weird bardy things outside of combat, but critical fails will summon a demon (tbd if its repeatable and just a moderately difficult fight, or give warnings before summoning a deadly one-off encounter). The Wizard is going to get a magic hat that acts a +1 staff, but is an intelligent hat with a weird side story/distrust of people who don't wear hats. Mario Odyssey meets Minish Cap meets The Odd Couple. I have no goddamn idea what to give the frenzy barbarian who is the group's sort-of tank and whose attitude is that all problems can be fixed with a great axe. Every idea I have for this one just feels boring, straightforward, or OP. Anyone have any ideas to help here? tl;dr what is an interesting frenzy barbarian item that isn't necessarily good, but is at least interesting, helpful, and has a downside/sidequesty nature?
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Jan 10, 2018 00:02
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Hi thread. I'm running D&D 5e this week for a group of friends who are almost all entirely new to D&D and tabletop RPGs in general. 4 newbies and 1 vet. I've run other systems with brand new players before so that aspect isn't so worrisome, but I've only ever played 5e as a PC and never DM'd it. In our first session I figure I would go over the basics with them, spend some time creating characters, then jump right into an adventure. I figure it's better to kind of explain rules and minutae as we go through the adventure instead of just info-dumping on them for an hour, and I also figure creating characters will take a good chunk of time. I'm looking for advice or suggestions on an adventure to run that will take 1-2 hours, since I'm estimating the setup and character creation will take at least an hour or two as well. I'm DMing a Strike! campaign with my turbo-nerd friends and the setting is an entirely homebrew Cyberpunk/Space Opera type of thing. I love doing it but creating whole worlds and adventures from scratch takes some time, and I want to have something a little more concrete for these players. I've been looking at low-level adventure modules available online to use and have come up with these: Harried in Hillsfar - "Part of the official D&D Adventurers League organized play system and the Rage of Demons storyline season." Free, seems straightforward. Has 5 "mini-adventures" so it will probably be able to cover the next session or two. Introductory PotA - Wizards has special introductory adventures for their published books, I just used Princes because that's the first link I found, but I'd be down to run the intro from Strahd, Storm King, Out of the Abyss, or whatever isn't hot garbage. Anyone who has used these, would we be able to seamlessly transition to the full adventure book after completing the intro scenario, or are things re-used or levels dont line up? Am I better off just buying the full module book and starting from there? I also found this handy list of published modules, but I'm just afraid of picking out a dud. https://merricb.com/dungeons-dragons-5e-adventures-by-level/ Which have you run? What would you avoid? Any favorites? Free stuff online is good, but I also don't mind dropping a few bucks. Also if this post is better-suited for the D&D 5E thread I'll move it there.
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Jan 10, 2018 00:19
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