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Boing posted:My PCs are raiding the ancient ruined tower-palace of The First Wizard which has been taken over by fanatical ninja cultists to stop anyone from getting to the treasure at its centre. I'm trying to think of cool obstacles and encounters for this session, a combination of wizard tower magic fuckery and devious ninja cultist traps/ambushes for them to get through. A pattern on the floor/ceiling of a corridor that reverses gravity depending on what color you stand on. Filled with cultists, naturally. Or a pattern on a carpet that makes ninjas invisible when they step on the black parts (a la Samurai Jack) Ninjas armed with smoke bombs that summon air elementals A bamboo forest indoors. With Pandas.
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Jan 18, 2018 15:37
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drat dude, I've seen some hosed up poo poo but I aint never seen a poisoned staircase
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Jan 18, 2018 17:06
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Boing posted:My PCs are raiding the ancient ruined tower-palace of The First Wizard which has been taken over by fanatical ninja cultists to stop anyone from getting to the treasure at its centre. I'm trying to think of cool obstacles and encounters for this session, a combination of wizard tower magic fuckery and devious ninja cultist traps/ambushes for them to get through. Have lots of decorative geometric scrollwork, but random bits of it act like a buffed hypnotic pattern if you allow your eyes to follow the lines (the PCs say they inspect them). Maybe have the body of a prior adventurer curled up near one, she looked at one and just sat there until she died of dehydration. Have random encounters with invisible stalkers, the wizard had cast invisible servant ages ago, and after he died they stuck around and were changed by the magical radiation from his experiments. A room of glamoured cloths with resistance to heat and cold, because why bother having your servants have to change and pack extra cloths when they go to the Elemental Plane of Fire or whatever. Any rear end in a top hat can have bound demons and whatever to serve him, but this guy liked having human servants. A room that's a greenhouse (English garden style) tended by a dryad/ent. It can be adjusted to be whatever season the plants need for optimal growth, and he has a lawn chair with an everful jug of cold lemonade. Floor tiles that'll change color to guide you to whatever room he would want his guests to be able to visit. Just ask to be led there. A room that contains a perfect recreation of his childhood neighborhood and home. When his parents got too old to live on their own he took them to his tower and had servants pretend to be townsfolk to keep the senile old dears happy.
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Jan 18, 2018 18:49
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A room with a floor made of massive tiles. Stepping or falling on certain tiles causes the tile to rotate upside-down with the person still attached to it, leaving them standing on the underside of the floor until they find another tile to flip them back to the top side. The tiles spin with enough force to crush body parts caught in between. Taken from Undertale, a room with beams of light spanning the whole room that turn on and cross the whole length at different heights. Blue ones hurt if you're moving when they hit you, orange ones hurt if you're not moving when they hit you. Once the players have figured out the solution, throw an entire wall of beams too tight to slip through so they're all forced to freeze or move at the right time to avoid damage. There are 4-dimensional time-shifting gears covering the floor of a room, which leave shadows on the floor where they are and cause you to progress in time at the same speed as the gears. Some are so slow that a bullet passing through is frozen, some are so fast that you rapidly age and wither to dust if caught in them, and some are in the middle of those extremes and cause you to move like a video on fast forward or at half speed. Going off the 4D gears, a 4-dimensional spinning blade that moves through your dimension as it approaches. Because only parts of the blade are present in your dimension at any given time, the size shifts back and forth from large to small as it moves. A Pac-Man maze where along with the ninjas, a huge rolling boulder moves randomly through the maze. There are no alcoves to get away from it but there's also no dead ends, so the fighters are constantly running from it when it approaches or trying to fling each other in its path. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jan 18, 2018 |
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Jan 18, 2018 19:17
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Whybird posted:One of my favourite moments was watching how my party's fuckery gradually turned Reasonable But Well-meaning NPC With Prejudices into Murderous Instrument of Vengeance. No no no, thats the wrong way round, they have to be so reasonable that the well meaning PC with prejudices turns into a murderous instrument of vengeance.
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Jan 18, 2018 19:39
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Dang Boing, that is one hardcore off hand comment! The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Traditional Games >GM Advice thread: (so the PCs can throw ninja cultists into the plane of fire and poo poo)
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Jan 20, 2018 11:54
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chitoryu12 posted:some are so fast that you rapidly age and wither to dust if caught in them How I'd change this is that the floor full of tiny grates large enough for anyone that withers to dust to fall through it, but the twist is that once they fall below the grates they're outside the time fuckery room so they unwither to dust and now have to solve a puzzle room to come back to the party. And then the GM is free to fill the room with whatever fantastical stuff that the PC can chat with.
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Jan 20, 2018 12:43
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This is another side quest I’ve written, but at the moment I’ve no idea how to deliver the information to the players that they’d need to enjoy it. Any advice on running a character-driven session, as opposed to combat, would be extremely welcome. At the moment it feels too much like I’d just be telling them a story. One of the rescued prisoners is worried about his riding walrus, which fled when he was ambushed. He can tell the party where they were attacked, and what walrus tracks look like. The walrus is being held by a circus sideshow troupe a little off the road in Neverwinter Wood. They intend to use him in their show and are unlikely to release him unless the party can offer a better replacement. If negotiations fail (they will) the ringmaster will invite them to sleep on it and discuss again in the morning. At night the animal cages are guarded by a trio of idiots but just about everyone else in the caste will also find a reason to be wandering about. - Ringmaster Glenn the Magnificent - The Beautiful Trixie Laroux - Incredible Keith, Strongman - Fire-Eating Pete - Neroth and Greylar, the elven acrobat twins - The goblin clowns x 3 - Ted, Ron and Sam. Normal humans who keep the stores, guard the animals, and act as night watchmen for the camp. - Trixie and Keith are in a relationship. She is having an affair with one of the elves. Keith suspects this. She will sneak out of their caravan, and he will follow. - Neroth and Graylar are actually both having an affair with Trixie but she doesn’t realise, they have been working together to take advantage of her. They have had an argument, and each intends to claim Trixie for himself. It’ll all come down to who can reach her first. - Fire-Eating Pete is a devil, owed a soul by Ringmaster Glenn. He intends to collect tonight, but he isn’t fussy. - Glenn sits in his caravan, poring over the infernal contract. He isn’t an evil man, he just wanted to be famous and doesn’t want to go to Hell. But who could he send in his place? There must be a way out of this. - Ted, Ron and Sam are simple men with simple needs. A quiet night, a kettle over the fire, no trouble and no fuss. Anyone messing with the animals or the stores is their natural enemy. - The goblins want to steal a chicken. There’s one in a cage, right on the top of the food wagon. They want it. In the cages are the walrus, an owlbear, a giant ape and a sabre-toothed tiger. The cages are locked and enchanted to keep the animals sedate. The ringmaster captured and subdued them with hypnosis; he has an enchanted pocket watch that he will use if threatened. TWIST: if the players get his watch, it’s just a watch. The power was INSIDE HIM ALL ALONG.
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Jan 20, 2018 14:12
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NachtSieger posted:How I'd change this is that the floor full of tiny grates large enough for anyone that withers to dust to fall through it, but the twist is that once they fall below the grates they're outside the time fuckery room so they unwither to dust and now have to solve a puzzle room to come back to the party. The 4D ideas come from an unused script for Cube 2: Hypercube that got posted online. Other ways they use the gears in that script are to have one guy with a sprained ankle put his leg in it and find that it's healed. Another one thinks "Wow, cool!" and puts his injured arm in it, but it withers until it's 80 years old because it turns out it's just advancing their body parts through time instead of healing them (so his sprain naturally healed as it aged). He finally dies when he gets caught in a gear that ages half his body too much to escape another trap.
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Jan 20, 2018 15:34
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Sanford posted:This is another side quest I’ve written, but at the moment I’ve no idea how to deliver the information to the players that they’d need to enjoy it. Any advice on running a character-driven session, as opposed to combat, would be extremely welcome. At the moment it feels too much like I’d just be telling them a story. I love the idea, but roughly 95% of all player parties will just kill the entire circus rather than try to deal with the characters unless forced to do otherwise. Hell, even super good parties are likely to just try to steal the entire cage instead.
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Jan 20, 2018 15:39
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Sanford posted:This is another side quest I’ve written, but at the moment I’ve no idea how to deliver the information to the players that they’d need to enjoy it. Any advice on running a character-driven session, as opposed to combat, would be extremely welcome. At the moment it feels too much like I’d just be telling them a story. The information to be delivered to players should consist of something along the lines of "hey guys who wants to get up to hijinks in a fantasy carnival?" If your players don't jump at that, get new players, these ones suck
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Jan 20, 2018 15:41
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Could I get some help for a session tonight? Starting a new campaign. The DM and I are sharing responsibilities (he has a kid and cant make it everytime) So every once in a while, the players, minus my character will be transported to an unknown location. They have been told that they are clearing these ancient evils. They are actually opening a prison which will be opened after say 5 of these adventures if they dont figure it out. Any ideas for a big bad to release? I was thinking Baphomet. Also, anything sort of escape puzzle would be very welcome as i think i only have about 2 hrs worth of stuff and to fill 2 more. These are like oneshots that will meld into the main story much later. ButtWolf fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jan 20, 2018 |
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Jan 20, 2018 18:33
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Why does ever fantasy rpg system ever made seem to designate what the price of a waterskin is? Has anyone here had a player explicitly purchase a waterskin?
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Jan 21, 2018 00:46
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Why does ever fantasy rpg system ever made seem to designate what the price of a waterskin is? Has anyone here had a player explicitly purchase a waterskin? Well, see, socks aren't on the list, and you can fill a waterskin with rocks for free.
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Jan 21, 2018 00:48
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Why does ever fantasy rpg system ever made seem to designate what the price of a waterskin is? Has anyone here had a player explicitly purchase a waterskin? When we first started playing a few months ago, one of my players with absolutely zero experience said in the first session “right, I put on this... [peers at character sheet] ...waterskin and get in the water”. We made him buy a new one as soon as they reached town.
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Jan 21, 2018 00:54
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Sometimes an equipment list is more to set tone than to be bought.
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Jan 21, 2018 01:02
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Why does ever fantasy rpg system ever made seem to designate what the price of a waterskin is? Has anyone here had a player explicitly purchase a waterskin? When I ran 4E Encounters at my LGS one party, and one player in particular, was famous for always spending gold on old school items like door spikes, flour and ashes, and even an empty waterskin each. Usually to fill up in the necessary magic fountain of every published dungeon. Some DMs would throw them a bone by putting an invisible minion in some fights or w/e so that crowd could use one of their silly trick items.
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Jan 21, 2018 06:58
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Razorwired posted:When I ran 4E Encounters at my LGS one party, and one player in particular, was famous for always spending gold on old school items like door spikes, flour and ashes, and even an empty waterskin each. Usually to fill up in the necessary magic fountain of every published dungeon. Flour and ashes, eh? Set on fire with a cantrip and you got a fuel-air IED.
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Jan 21, 2018 11:46
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One of my players (in a Discworld game) is an elderly Medium who is trying to get a lecturing job at Unseen University. As it's his dramatic role to be pursued by misadventures, I've decided that the old holder of his position (Lecturer in Misplaced Spirits) doesn't want to let the job go, and uses him to deliver his old lectures - the PC blacks out and next thing he knows is the students leaving (and his handwriting on the board is completely illegibile). Other witnesses will report he gave a very animated lecture on a suitably evil topic (the breaking point of human morals; how to get alcohol when no rules apply to you; a dozen things to do with a corpse you just "found") How can I make it interesting (and not too easy) for him to get rid of his possessor? I'm concerned that if he decides it's all too much trouble and decides to just walk away, that's the end of the adventure.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:12
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Do what every proper Wizard at UU would, get promoted out of the problem, making it someone else's and then claim there never was an issue to begin with. Dude will poses the next guy. Then if the new guy pitches it right, the PC can help him end the possession and your PC can help you figure out the best way for your PC can solve this.
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Jan 22, 2018 23:34
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Any self respecting wizard would take this deal. Someone else does all the work, you do the feasting and office politics.
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Jan 23, 2018 00:36
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Tesla was right posted:How can I make it interesting (and not too easy) for him to get rid of his possessor? I'm concerned that if he decides it's all too much trouble and decides to just walk away, that's the end of the adventure. I like the idea that the possessor can only inhabit the body of whoever is currently holding the post. That way, if the player decides to just walk away, they're just shuttling the problem onto somebody less capable of handling it. That's bad enough if it's some other innocent wizard struggling to keep a possessing spirit from using their body to wreak evil. What if the player were to learn that one of the possessor's star students now has the lectureship in her sights? For her, being possessed by an evil undead spirit of untold arcane power isn't a problem, it's an opportunity. rumble in the bunghole posted:Any self respecting wizard would take this deal. Someone else does all the work, you do the feasting and office politics. That's the point at which they learn that the possessor also had enemies among his peers, who have been working day and night on a plan to stop him possessing whoever currently holds the lectureship. And that they're not terribly concerned about the well-being or the consent of whoever it is whose body he's in now. Also, the Bursar wants to understand why you've tried to claim for the blood of fifty virgins on your expenses form. Whybird fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 02:27
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Buy Pigsmoke, the Wizard College RPG, for dozens of ideas.
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Jan 23, 2018 04:33
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I'm not sure how it'll slot in there, but make sure a Bloody Stupid Johnson original featutes in either a foil of, or solution to your PC's plan.
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Jan 23, 2018 05:29
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Dameius posted:I'm not sure how it'll slot in there, but make sure a Bloody Stupid Johnson original featutes in either a foil of, or solution to your PC's plan. Both at once*
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Jan 23, 2018 11:54
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So i'm starting to tire of sending my troubleshooters to their deaths and am thinking of running a more traditional RPG. What sort of questions should I be asking them while i'm deciding what sort of game to do next?
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Jan 27, 2018 02:13
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Well I'd nail down a genre first.
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Jan 27, 2018 02:16
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Shrieking Muppet posted:So i'm starting to tire of sending my troubleshooters to their deaths and am thinking of running a more traditional RPG. What sort of questions should I be asking them while i'm deciding what sort of game to do next? In my experience I wouldn't ask the players anything Thing is, you've got to like the system, enjoy running it and want to run it for the players, so my advice is go out and find something you want to play Once you find something you like the look of, because of the genre, system or whatever, maybe you have found more than one thing. That's when you either A. Ask the players what the like more B. You run a one shot for each system and decide which all of you like the best Fact is, if you ask the players "what do you guys want" and they say "FATAL!" then you are gonna be miserable Do it the other way around and offer them something you want to do, maybe not everyone will want to play it but that's not the end of the world, and maybe you can compromise This is purely based off experience with my own players/friends, so I guess YMMV
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Jan 27, 2018 18:51
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Anyone got any decent teamwork puzzles for a dungeon entrance (current fluff is that it's a ruined house of trials).
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Feb 2, 2018 22:38
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Traditionally a hero of great strength would prove they were worthy of entering by ringing a massive bell at the gates. The striking mallet is long gone. A few hundred feet away a broken ballista has a few serviceable bolts. Int check to know about the bell. Str to hoist the ballista into firing position. Dex to line up the shot. Edit: loving up the entrance summons the gate guardian. Don't stone wall the campaign cause Larry rolled a 4 on his Dex check.
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Feb 3, 2018 01:03
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No offense and please don't take this as harsh criticism, but that's just functionally rolling some dice to see if you should have a fight. I would suggest a puzzle with more agency. So I'm going to suggest that the "teamwork" be that the players make up a story about some sort of pilgrim that passed 3 trials. You can then spitball some themed fights based on these trials. Add obstacles to the fight as appropriate. If he climbed a mountain and survived a rock slide, then they have to keep a rock golem busy while another player retrieves a gem at the top of a rocky pillar. If he had to seek hidden knowledge, the players are in opaque knee-deep water and they see a mechanism drop a gold hoop on the opposite side of the pool. There's also some water snakes or w/e between them and the hoop. And maybe one teammate can pull a lever that drains the water or makes the hoop shine. That kind of thing, they do a fight that simulates a part of the story that they made up themselves. Obviously you can't use this idea if you don't have a system that's easily reskinnable, so I apologize if this doesn't work.
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Feb 3, 2018 01:41
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Thanks but I'm not talking about the trials themselves, just a puzzle to get in. Currently thinking having them climb down via a rope to the sunken entrance proper but that's about it. Just looking for something simple that's more a result of this place falling to pieces over the ages rather than the trials themselves.
Terratina fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 12:21
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Terratina posted:Anyone got any decent teamwork puzzles for a dungeon entrance (current fluff is that it's a ruined house of trials). Can you think of obvious ones that are broken so that they have to be solved in a weird way? For example, the classic 3 levers bullshit trap puzzle, but it's hosed. There are three six-foot long metal handles in slots next to the door. Levers start up, up, up. If you move a lever so that it's in any configuration except down, up, down, then suddenly... there's a tortured grinding noise and 10 seconds later some darts gently spill out of holes to each side of the lever slots and fall harmlessly to the ground, where they crumble away. This will happen over and over again*, until... You get it to down, up, down, then... there's a rumble, a screeching as of ancient gears stripping themselves, and the doors slide about a quarter inch open before a metallic bang, twanging sounds, and the handles falling out of their slots. It's not a puzzle beyond this point and it can't be repaired, but you can easily use the broken handles to lever the door open, (maybe it takes two or three people work together at it to do it right). * Or come up with other stuff to happen in "incorrect" lever settings. Such as: A slot pops open near the floor, there's a noise like a ruler being twanged over the edge of a desk, and a rusty blade half-heartedly slides out and falls off. There's a grinding noise and the floor shakes before very slowly sliding aside (no need to save, it takes about 10 seconds) to reveal what was probably a pit at one point but the sides have fallen in making it a shallow depression. With a whooshing noise, shutters disguised as parts of the stone wall fall into the floor, revealing arrow slits. Nothing else happens. You can peer through them and see a small room with about an inch of undisturbed dust on the floor. This place was abandoned years ago. There's a creak from above. You look up to see a cauldron tipping forwards. It showers you with dust and harmless small spiders. A door slides open, and a living statue of stone takes one shaky step forward, says "FATAL ERROR" or "MAINTENANCE CODE 3B", and then falls to the ground, where it shatters. e: If you're evil, or if you're running the right kind of game, then most/all of the stuff inside the dungeon will work properly and the entrance bit will serve to lull them into a false sense of safety. Probably avoid that unless you want to kill multiple PCs with the first real trap. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:56 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 12:48
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AlphaDog posted:Can you think of obvious ones that are broken so that they have to be solved in a weird way? Holy gently caress, I love this It's like TTRPG styled lovely robots. This is something to include in a Paranoia game 
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Feb 3, 2018 12:52
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Didn't you ever wonder how the people who constructed the ancient Temple of Generica built all these cunning mechanisms that would still be functioning after 1000 years with no maintenance whatsoever? I mean, obviously some of it's gonna fall apart, and the stuff exposed to the outside is the most likely to be wrecked, right? E: If the answer is "by magic" then you've got unlimited scope to do whatever weird poo poo you like and handwave it with something like "the leyline that powered the place shifted and it's been running down for the last two centuries". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 13:01
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That's pretty much exactly the vibe I'm going for, a broken down ruin where living statues do nothing but bark TEST YO...UR MIGHT or A N...EW CHALL...ENGER APPR...OACHES when people walk up to them - way back when the ruin was just pretty much a fantasy escape room or Crystal Maze kinda deal. Might nick the three levers idea but the challenge is thinking up things that fit. The race that left it behind thought they were awesome and went to this palace to confirm and celebrate their awesomeness so I don't see why the entrance would have any traditional mechanical traps. Could just be the actual entrance has fallen to dust and only the first challenge room (and of course it's a teamwork challenge) remains. Or am I thinking too hard about this? Also AlphaDog, of course magic but going for a wrecked theme park kinda vibe - it's D&D so bring on the pulp. Terratina fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 13:08
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If you're going oldschool with mapping and everything, gently caress with their map. For starters, compasses don't work here. They just slowly rotate counter-clockwise. Don't even mention this unless you're asked. (edit: See the edit at the bottom, if you're gonna do that, mention the compass thing immediately when they enter). There's a teleport "puzzle", but it's broken. Three of the four teleporter locations caved in. The remaining one is in an x-junction of passages. It very obviously teleports you somewhere. What it's actually doing is teleporting you right back to where you already were, but facing a different cardinal direction. A set of funhouse mirrors, all but one of them are broken. The remaining one displays your image upside-down. You can't realise until after you backtrack (and maybe not even then), but since you looked in it, you've been standing on the ceiling with the floor above you. It won't revert you on its own. Breaking the mirror resets everything to normal. After stuff like that... A very gradually sloping passage, the slope only obvious if you pour water on it. Following it very far leaves you thinking you've messed up distances or directions, but really you're above/below the part of the map you think you should be intersecting with. (If you're evil, it matches up exactly with another room as it dead-ends. There's no secret door, you're just at a different level. Works great if you're tracking time/resources, otherwise it's just a waste of play-time). e: If you're messing with the players and not just the characters, when someone inevitably checks their compass again, it's either rotating much faster/slower, rotating in the other direction, or pointing unerringly towards a different PC than the one who's checking it. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 13:26
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The “name of the Lord” puzzle from Last Crusade, but the contractor was illiterate and just put the breakaway tiles in a predictable, repeating pattern.
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Feb 3, 2018 13:47
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echopapa posted:The “name of the Lord” puzzle from Last Crusade, but the contractor was illiterate and just put the breakaway tiles in a predictable, repeating pattern. That's gold. Never thought what the lost temple of whatever might look like if it was built by a collection of sub-sub-sub-contractors with the lowest bids. Poison dart traps installed at 90 degrees to the plan. Flame traps that sputter a bit and go out, then turn on full blast for a half second once you push the reset button. Magic mouth stuck in default language setting, never got reset because the manual is more lost than the lost temple it's installed in. Spinning crushing blade trap at bottom of stair case is just escalator machinery without the covers on. Sudden-reveal arrow slits point the wrong direction, allowing invaders to easily and safely fire into the guardroom. Portcullis stuck halfway up. Drawbridge stuck halfway down. The one guy who knows how to un-gently caress the windlasses when this happens got fired two years ago. The windlass company is out of business. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 14:02
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Terratina posted:Might nick the three levers idea but the challenge is thinking up things that fit. The race that left it behind thought they were awesome and went to this palace to confirm and celebrate their awesomeness so I don't see why the entrance would have any traditional mechanical traps. Then you should probably do at least one Ozymandius reference.
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Feb 3, 2018 16:20
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