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El Estrago Bonito posted:But what I really need is some American urban legend slash mythical creatures kind of poo poo. Does anyone know of some good ones? Especially music flavored ones? You could use "The Band in Hell" by Electric Six for something, I guess. It is less frantic than most of their songs and has some things that really match your story. The band in hell Plays all night long It's a sold-out show And there is only one song There is no rhythm And there is no rhyme It goes on forever Until the end of time Now the devil, he plays guitar And Hitler plays the drums I'm the man on the microphone This is what I've become I mean, punching Hitler is one option that could be fun if you are willing to make it a bit campy. Otherwise, if the Devil really is behind the festival maybe the lead singer is someone who tried to trick him, or almost beat him and is now forced to play forever as punishment. He was really talented and laments being able to only do this one horrible song while the Devil controls him through the guitar or is mocking him for no longer being able to make the music he loved? You can have the party fight the Devil, his henchmen or the other bandmembers to redeem the singer, Devil escapes and party realizes that losing the finale means eternal damnation as a puppet who can only play one song. Heck, maybe the text that their songs are always sold-out mean that people are drawn to the music like the Piper and they feed off their energy? By breaking up the show your party weakens the Devil enough to beat him in the finale? Or if he doesn't play himself he now lacks sufficient power to infuse his chosen band with special music powers and your party now has an underdog chance to defeat the band everyone thought would win. drat, now I really want to play an Electric Six campaign =( BioTech fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Jun 7, 2012 |
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Jun 7, 2012 13:18
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| # ? May 12, 2024 17:45 |
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Well in 1979 a kid named Johnny managed to beat the Devil in a fiddle playing contest. Maybe he's gotten involved in this in some capacity?
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Jun 7, 2012 13:49
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And he did tell the devil to come on back if he ever wanted to try again....
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Jun 7, 2012 14:48
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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Robert Johnson, the Blues musician, supposedly sold his soul at a Crossroads to be able to play as well as he did. Also, there's enough dead musicians- particularly around that time -who you could incorporate.
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Jun 7, 2012 17:29
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I can't think of a single American urban legend thing that is both related to music but doesn't also have the devil in it somewhere. However, I wouldn't let the opportunity pass to have ghost riders make an appearance in the sky.
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Jun 7, 2012 17:33
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Maybe one of the devil's minions could be a Gravedigger who buries people in shallow graves and the players can hole up in a hotel where the readerboard says __LI_OR__A with the plastic letters long gone.
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Jun 7, 2012 20:34
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Clearly there should be an alien spacecraft encounter in the desert of a guitar playing crossdressing stardust-spackled alien with screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo, and literal spiders from the red planet. And a record agent who mesmerizes you, shakes your hand and catches you on fire. Some sort of stairway in the desert leading high upwards to a massive battle of good and bad that mortals will never know. A band of sasquatches with very long hair but the drummer does not have any hair and his name is Harry. vumbles fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jun 7, 2012 |
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Jun 7, 2012 21:00
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You could have a Hotel California-esque encounter; that song was released in 1977.
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Jun 7, 2012 21:03
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Muddy Waters rising from the grave, clawing his way back from the depths of the underworld to find the band that truly understands the Blues. The PCs receive from him a pre-war Martin Guitar +3, +5 vs. pop stars and win the Battle of the Bands, becoming the first band in history to do s without an Infernal Pact, thus saving Rock from the forces of darkness and ushering in a new era of civilization first hinted at in the prophetic film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
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Jun 7, 2012 21:09
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Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" is a mythologizing of a serial killer, Riders on the Storm could be a neat set of mythological figures, The Ballad of John Henry is also excellent and based on a great folk hero.
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Jun 7, 2012 21:11
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John Henry would be great, yeah. And speaking of Nick Cave, maybe they could run into Stagger Lee or his ghost out there. Or hell, just give Murder Ballads a spin and take your pick. Tenacious D isn't quite in the timeframe of 1982, but the Pick of Destiny certainly is. And I also feel quite strongly that something related to Tom Waits and the Gun Club should come in there somewhere, but I'm having trouble pointing to any one thing. Fire Spirit and Ghost on the Highway by Gun Club sound like you could spin a decent story around then, and it shouldn't be hard to include a Waits-ian character. Oooh, or take a page out of Terry Gilliam's book and have the devil himself be recognizable as Tom Waits!
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Jun 7, 2012 21:44
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksutNW3HFT8 This is Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, with their song "The Donkey Headed Adversary of Humanity." It's basically some sort of evil spirit that thinks that humans are the worst plague the world has ever known and wants to destroy them.
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Jun 7, 2012 22:16
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I'm looking for a little advice on how I can challenge one of my players without completely negating the point of his build. He designed his Pathfinder PC to be a nearly immovable object, with a mind-boggling 34 AC at level 6. His Saving Throws are excellent, and his only real weakness is his 11 Touch AC. At this point, there is nearly nothing the Party is facing that can hit him consistently, which isn't really a bad thing, since that was his plan all along. I'd like some advice on how to build an encounter which can play to his strengths without taking the easy way out and giving everything Touch Attacks. His character is a Defender through and through, so I was thinking of a situation where he needs to protect a VIP or Hold The Line against a few enemies while the rest of the party tries to lock down an area. The point we're at in our Adventure Path has tended to throw large creatures with few attacks at the party, which he excels at, but is generally pretty boring for the rest of the group. For reference, the rest of the party includes a Sorcerer and Paladin. The Paladin is someone I'm worried about, since he also built himself as a strong tank, but much less optimized than the 34 AC Multi-classed living brick wall, so I'm afraid of him being overshadowed while I tailor the encounters to just this one guy.
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Jun 11, 2012 08:14
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Nevermind, find an in-game solution to what is an out of game problem. Give him a designated big tough creature separate from the rest of the encounter design to stand in front of and hope he doesn't catch on when it happens every fight.
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Jun 11, 2012 08:46
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Magic Rabbit Hat posted:I'm looking for a little advice on how I can challenge one of my players without completely negating the point of his build. Lots of Goblinoid rangers that have chosen him as their favored enemy. (all humans? No, just you.)
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Jun 11, 2012 09:14
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Magic Rabbit Hat posted:34AC Defender How can all of his saves be good? It seems unlikely he can pass Reflex saves from traps all the time. Without a Rogue he would be most likely to go in first, so if you want to make it a bit more balanced you could have him enter most fights with half HP after getting nailed by some traps first. Then again, if this happens every time it is very boring. Another way would be large enemies using bullrush to push him downhill or off a bridge. Good luck with those climb/swim rolls in full plate and with a tower shield. It is a bit of a dick move, but it does allow you to stress how slow and cumbersome he is. As soon as the fight is fought in another way than he is used to, it will end bad for him. You could also have some enemies use Acid Flasks, they ignore AC to hit.
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Jun 11, 2012 11:36
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Bad advice: Make all your enemies have a +24 to hit vs. AC. when your other players complain that the enemies never miss, blame the tough guy and say that when his AC comes down you'll lower their to-hit again.
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Jun 11, 2012 15:35
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Partial answer would be to increase the number of enemies dramatically, and give half of them some sort of ranged attack. That way he can bog down a cluster of enemies, while the rest swarm past, but without him the guys in the back would be overrun.
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Jun 11, 2012 16:51
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RPZip posted:
It's not really a problem, nobody else is feeling overshadowed by him at the moment -- he's aware that he's min-maxed to poo poo and has offered to tone himself down if it starts to become an issue, but with a largely melee-focused party (the Sorc is planning on being a Dragon Disciple), most combats at the moment end up being him in the front of the Fatty while everyone else moves into Flanking position. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just feels boring to me - I don't know if anyone else feels that way yet. But I think Veekie has the right idea - It's mostly big, frightening beatsticks at the moment and I think the best option is to shift the fights away from large, slow Bruisers and towards multiple, faster Strikers.
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Jun 11, 2012 17:35
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How is his CMD? Maybe a few enemies trying to tackle/trip him or shove him around might make things more exciting without directly going against his AC.
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Jun 11, 2012 17:50
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Crudus posted:How is his CMD? Maybe a few enemies trying to tackle/trip him or shove him around might make things more exciting without directly going against his AC. Quite high, but he felt legitimately threatened when a Flesh Golem tried to punch him off a bridge. He's basically making the Lizardman equivalent to Heimdalr, which is pretty badass and I am A-OK with playing into that.
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Jun 11, 2012 18:06
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Can you explain exactly how his AC got so high? I know min maxing but what items?
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Jun 11, 2012 18:46
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My Lovely Horse posted:Oooh, or take a page out of Terry Gilliam's book and have the devil himself be recognizable as Tom Waits! Yeah, no, this is how I imagine the devil in all of my fictional universes. Tom Waits is the best devil, in Imaginarium and in Domino. Thanks for the idea's people. I ended up going with a more horror themed thing where they got stuck in a magical cornfield that changed your location randomly every few minutes without you knowing. Then they fought a murderous clan of Hillbilly's who had journey there from Appalachia in order to exterminate Rock n Roll so that Bluegrass could once again be king. There was a banjo fight, twas good.
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Jun 13, 2012 05:39
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Guesticles posted:poison tower stuff What about having the PCs discover a poisons workbench, maybe something magically automated? Something where they have three classes of reagents that they can mix to make their own poisons: State: liquid solid gas powder Vector: injection ingestion inhalant skin contact Effect: paralysis pain bleeding direct damage teleportation ability loss numbness etc.? This might fit into the security checkpoints idea.
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Jun 13, 2012 17:39
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Gilgameshback posted:Good Stuff I'm almost done with the tower in maptools. I think it might have been neat to do a "Security system requires a certain affliction when you are in a certain area to not go off", but hexagons are hard to properly segment. I think that would also work better with more active enemies (where you can push or slide enemies into the golem whacking zones), and I'm really trying to make this more puzzles/traps and less combat. I think I might make the party take mind-altering substances to navigate the tower of Illusions. Here's what I've ended up going with, regards to the poisoning: They're going to need to poison themselves in to get into the garden of mind controlling poisonous plants. A successful poisoning will leave them weakened and slowed, which will keep them from being siren called into the poisonous plants even if they get willed. I've not quite figured what effects I want to mate to each poison, but they will be color coded to flower beds, making it fairly obvious which flowerbeds generate what poisons. They'll have the option to collect the plants later to make After the garden of mind-controling poison plants level, there is going to be a lab past a room where I'm doing the 6 pipes, 5 are deadly poison but the 6th is actually an antidote trap that was suggested earlier. In the lab will be some poison removal and poison resist potions, and book of research notes about their creation; the party can't read the language yet, but there will be enough illustrations that as long as someone rolls better than a 1 on an Insight check, at least their characters will be able to link Plants in Garden => Pictures in Journal => make more potions. So they'll have to weigh the benefits of these potions and the risks of going back into garden to harvest the plants. I've caved in and gone with a note-on-deceased-adventurer route, since it can pave the way for some deeper political intrigues (the ones that are behind the current intrigues). He'll give clues by way of talking about how his entire party died to the various hazards, and he got poisoned and decided to die inside the tower instead of being killed by the undead outside. Something I wouldn't mind some input on: There's a "rest" level, which is the former humanoid test subjects holding area, which will give the players a safe place for a rest (but make them paranoid its not safe, because the last time they encountered such an area, it was inhabited with starving invisible demons), but there will be puddles of Deadly-to-Everything poisons laying around; the idea is that they're going up the tower, getting closer to the tower's arcane focus, and poisons are literally seeping from the tower. The poison is practically alive, and will attach itself to any object placed near it, but within 24 hours will completely pervade the object, rending the whole object poisonous. (Each round you wield the weapon, it makes a poison attack against you). I don't want to give any clues about this stuff/its nature in the adventurer's journal, but I do want to hint to them that the process might go further than they expect before they go dipping all their magic weapons into the stuff, and render them of limited utility. (The plan is, providing they notice the puddle, that they use some of the common weapons laying around, and not dip their main weapons into the sauce.) Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of giving players enough rope to hang themselves, and if they ignore the warning signs, that's their fault. I just want to make sure its fairly obvious you shouldn't be dipping important stuff in. I was thinking about maybe having them make an arcana check to notice the effect is continuing to spread, or maybe give them an extra dose or two of the Mega Antidote, which they could use to remove the effect? Or I could have a merchant/alchemist interested in the corrupted weapons who'd buy them off the party. What do you goons think?
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Jun 13, 2012 20:55
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Pretty soon from now, my party will meet with the Summer Queen at her bachelorette pad in the feywild and learn all about the creation of the world and its history so far, on a macroscopic scale. I like to think my creation story isn't completely boring, but all the same, it would probably be really good if I had something up my sleeve to make the whole process more interactive than "sit and listen to the DM vomit up a history lesson." Any good ways to make an exposition dump at least somewhat engaging?
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Jun 14, 2012 13:54
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Interpretive dance.
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Jun 14, 2012 14:09
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You need to make it relevant to something the players can interact with, or make use of. While some players may enjoy metaphysics babble, most would rather have SOME component of it relating to their objectives and/or loot.
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Jun 14, 2012 14:55
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That should work out okay. The whole creation story is the foundation for their main objective, and it was their idea to go ask someone about it. (Okay, they don't know yet that it's the creation story they're looking for, but it does all tie in with their current main quest.)
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Jun 14, 2012 15:48
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My Lovely Horse posted:Pretty soon from now, my party will meet with the Summer Queen at her bachelorette pad in the feywild and learn all about the creation of the world and its history so far, on a macroscopic scale. I like to think my creation story isn't completely boring, but all the same, it would probably be really good if I had something up my sleeve to make the whole process more interactive than "sit and listen to the DM vomit up a history lesson." Any good ways to make an exposition dump at least somewhat engaging? D20 Holodeck. The party in enchanted and gets to actually experience key moments in the creation myth as some of players.
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Jun 14, 2012 16:43
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I am thinking of having my PCs defend a farm from raiding orcs, and giving them xp for any goods they prevent the orcs from taking. Is this a good idea? If so, what's a good xp value for each crate? For reference, it's Pathfinder with fast xp, they are all level 2 and only 100 points into it.
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Jun 14, 2012 18:56
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Hello friends, I just started reading this thread the other day, and I'm only a dozen pages into it thus far; however, way back on page 8 someone linked the New World Primer by Role Playing Public Radio, and I have fallen in love with the concept. I've pitched it to my group, and everyone is excited. The only hitch in the plan is that my players really want to use the Iron Heroes source books, which to me seems like it would be pretty cool. I've skimmed the material, and the idea of a low-magic, low-technology world seems to jive really well with the "New World" concept. This sets the stage for the Old World characters to encounter a wondrous new world where everything is foreign and new. Herein also lie the problems. First, I am looking to balance encounters. My plan as of this moment is for the tribes in the New World to go ahead and have access to magic beyond the reckoning of the Old World characters, which isn't a big deal considering that none of my players wanted to roll a magic class in the first place. This presents an immediate challenge to me from a design perspective, since depending on which version of rules I choose to use for the New World NPCs, their power might seem virtually insurmountable. As an example of this, were I to use, say, Pathfinder rules for drawing up an enemy spellcaster, his ability to effortlessly fire infinite cantrips at the party would win out in a struggle of attrition that would not be possible were he limited as they are to physical weapons. As much as my players are looking forward to such challenges, I want to make sure that I neither smash the party to bits or make it feel like I am feeding them easy victories that should have been losses by somehow hamstringing their opponents. Any advice on this issue is greatly appreciated! Second, I am looking for a method by which to keep track of all the things that will be going on in the colony at once. I've never run a campaign centered on an established base of operations like this, so keeping track of how much food and water the colony has, its stores of various materials, the number of people capable of doing various jobs, and the day to day affairs of what could be a very political game are entirely new to me. I suppose the obvious solution is to just write things down in a text document, but I want to make things dynamic and show the players the effects of their efforts. I would love to hear some suggestions on easy ways to keep track of spergy little details! Or maybe I should just hand-wave the numbers and make poo poo up as it seems appropriate for the point of the story? I don't know. Finally, I am going to poll you guys for suggestions as to what set of rules I should use in conjunction with this campaign for creatures and NPCs that don't follow the rules of Iron Heroes, which is pretty much every NPC in the primer. We're all comfortable with Pathfinder, so that's my go-to choice, but the primer was written for 4E so... Yeah, that's basically the choices. If we go with 4E-generated NPCs, I am unsure how I would resolve mechanics differences in combat; and, if we go with Pathfinder-generated NPCs, I am unsure how certain elements of the setting (e.g. Feats, Rituals) would be resolved with the player characters. Whew! That was a post. Thanks in advance if you read all of it, and I'm looking forward to replies.
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Jun 14, 2012 19:33
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Our gaming group tried out Star Wars d20. It was fun, all in all, but the module demonstrated that space combat was an utterly over complicated crock of poo poo. We might continue into an extended campaign, but right now the DM is leaning towards a ship as plot device type deal. I really enjoy the image of flying Aces in space, but don't want to deal with poo poo like ship facing and directional shields. Can anyone suggest any alternate systems or fixes we could use for spaceship fights?
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Jun 19, 2012 16:02
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Guesticles posted:D20 Holodeck. The party in enchanted and gets to actually experience key moments in the creation myth as some of players. This is a great suggestion. I forget which module it is, perhaps Scales of War, but the PCs keep hearing about this other Adventuring group, and how great they are, and then they suddenly find out that they're all dead and oh poo poo you have to pick up where they left off. I read a post somewhere about how instead of just telling his players they were dead, the DM made each of the characters and handed them out, and gave them all little cards that had orders on how to play them. Like, the leader had, "Though normally competent, this is a horrible day for Jon-Bob. Try to make very convincing, but very tactically unsound decisions." Etc. Basically this group just had a poo poo day and they all died, but the players still got to experience it and it introduced them to some key characters/concepts. So if you could do something like this with your creation myth/struggle, it might really engage them.
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Jun 19, 2012 16:40
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Funny thing is the plot the creation story ties in with really does concern an ancient evil sealed centuries ago by an adventuring party, and the PCs have to follow in their footsteps. And I modelled that party after their classes. And the party warlock is quite literally the reincarnation of one of them. I doubt they'd go for straight up "hey play this character for a bit" but something like it might work very well.
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Jun 19, 2012 16:47
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I was thinking more along the lines of the party is enchanted. So your player are not suddenly playing Zanthes, God of the Rivers. You're still Bob the Dwarf. But Bob the Dwarf is now being addressed as Zanthes by everyone, and has ideas and words pop into his head (and maybe is magically compelled to act on them). Summer Queen is playing Narrator/Guide. You could also play with the idea a bit, too. Maybe, instead of a completely realistic magical recreation, the Summer Queen has set up like a bare-bones community theater stage, and the Summer Queen acts as the nutty director.
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Jun 19, 2012 17:21
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Guesticles posted:You could also play with the idea a bit, too. Maybe, instead of a completely realistic magical recreation, the Summer Queen has set up like a bare-bones community theater stage, and the Summer Queen acts as the nutty director. Make it a ritual reenactment of the events to strengthen the world or something. Basically a form of unguided Mystery Play.
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Jun 19, 2012 17:32
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Or like... a form of improvisational collaborative storytelling with the Summer Queen narrating the general story and the PCs dictating what the heroic adventurers do?  Nah but seriously the theater/reenactment idea is pretty rad and fits my idea of the Summer Queen really well. That could be something. Think I'm just gonna stat each of the four legendary adventurers of yore up as a high-level companion character, hand one to each player but let them use their own powers and abilities as well.
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Jun 19, 2012 18:49
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Well basically the mystery play would be they, as their characters, carry out the roles of the original beings, BUT, entirely in their own way and with their own capabilities(the scene being scaled so their abilities have suitably epic visuals regardless of their actual capabilities). The results would impact the world, depending on how well they performed.
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Jun 19, 2012 18:57
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I like that. History itself influences the characters' acts while reenacting the events so they reenact what happened, but the players have free reign so anything they come up with becomes that history. If they catch on to it they can even insert a few details that might help them later on. Pretty ambitious and the last time I tried something like it it didn't work very well but what the hell, it sounds fun.
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Jun 19, 2012 19:05
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