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I need some advice specific to the Dresden Files RPG. I'm about to start a game with a fairly experienced group that has never played a FATE game before. I have a fair handle on the FATE rules and the extra bits from DFRPG, and I'm not a newbie to GMing or to trying new systems. Specifically, is there going to be huge problem if one player wants to be a White Council Wizard and another player wants to be Mundane Dude who Investigates Stuff. As far as I can tell, the system deals with that kind of imbalance pretty well, but are there specific pitfalls to watch out for?
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Sep 20, 2012 11:01
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AlphaDog posted:I need some advice specific to the Dresden Files RPG. I'm about to start a game with a fairly experienced group that has never played a FATE game before. I have a fair handle on the FATE rules and the extra bits from DFRPG, and I'm not a newbie to GMing or to trying new systems. The biggest thing I've seen is that Magic aside from its actual power is a really big Justifier. A mage can do virtually anything, because its MAGIC. Its so much easier for them to explain any action they want to achieve through magic then it is for mortals. Does that make sense ?
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Sep 20, 2012 12:00
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Yep. I think I've got the "magic can do anything" stuff under control after 20 years of D&D. I'm more worried about how having Merlin, Dracula, and... Mulder in the group is actually going to work out if there's a fight. Merlin and Dracula can duke it out even though they don't quite work the same way, but how does Mulder compete? I know FATE is supposed to handle that sort of thing, but I;m not sure if it will actually handle it. For reference, some of the character ideas so far are: A werewolf who's a park ranger. A defrocked priest who's a White Court vampire. A wizard (twist to come when he thinks more). A paramedic who tries to investigate murders that nobody believes are murders. Fox Mulder (ie, government agent assigned to bullshit "investigate this weird poo poo and come up with a normal explanation" jobs). John Constantine. I don't want to say no to the paramedic guy or the Mulder guy, but I can't see them being as effective as Constantine guy or Werewolf guy.
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Sep 20, 2012 13:06
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The longer answer is that Mulder isn't going to be able to go toe-to-toe with Dracula. Mulder is going to need to do some serious prep work to get ready, which is going to be annoying for Merlin. It would be much easier to run a "Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense" type scenario where most of the players are humans and one or two "Freaks" for fire support. Here's the first things that fall out of idea bucket: -Mulder/Paramedic have some sort of initate powers that can even the odds, say sort degree of magic immunity. -Fate/Luck keep dropping tools and information into the laps of the mortals. -Mulder has some sort of trinket or talisman that basically fell off the back of the "Top. Men." warehouse. -Going along with the BPRD thing, Mulder has access to a wide variety of magical devices and counter measures that he can equip. (But then I guess he's basically Constantine at that point) -Paramedic has some sort of affinity with the dead/death. -More BPRD goodness, Special Agent Faux Mulder heads what he passes off as an FBI organized crime investigation which heavily utilization of insider informants, but in reality runs it as his own Paranormal investigation unit, hiring the rest of the characters (Maybe he also has some dirt on them?) Unfortunately I'm not familar with DFRPG or FATE, so my ideas are probably unworkable.
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Sep 20, 2012 15:44
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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I'd actually suggest if anything that the loss of those 2 fate points for bumping yourself out of the pure mortal category is something that should be avoided. DFRPG kind of has a go hard or go home approach on being a supernatural, people with a single minor talent are basically the weakest entities in the system on a per XP basis, even if they are flavoursome. Mortals will just straight up play differently. If the power level is high enough that wizards are possible to stat, then they will be loving rolling in Fate points. Can't give THAT much detail though since I've never run a full DFRPG campaign. Certainly, you need to allow for the greater freedom that mortal gameplay offers, and never stifle it. The paramedic and Mulder will be extremely reliant on drawing on their webs of contacts, compelling aspects, and various other stuff that may seem a little mundane by comparison but *that is what they are about*. lodoubt fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Sep 20, 2012 17:56
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Mundane people can (mostly) keep up with wizards just fine. Because their top tier skills aren't taken up with casting, they can put up their dodging/attack skills at the top, and a wizard isn't going to be able to get one or maybe two points higher. The downside in combat is damage - wizards can get conviction + focus item + specialization, and strong creatures get a bonus to their damage. In this case, when Merlin and Mulder are fighting Dracula, it's best for Mulder to use his gun as a distraction or knock over a bookcase onto Dracula or whatever maneuver he can do. Maneuvers in FATE are quite strong and stacking the tags from maneuvers and FP (which Pure Mortals will have more of) is the fastest way to take out enemies.
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Sep 20, 2012 18:00
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Guesticles posted:For the solution, I'm thinking about giving the Bard and Cleric the option of skill challenge to alter the magical runes of the circle on the lowest floor so that it will take them further up the tower. It will take time, and during that the rest of the party needs to deal with the iron cobras. How about putting some teleport runes in the Cobras' chamber that they use to summon up any allies who want to visit them without having to slog through however many floors of poisonous awfulness? The PCs can use these during the fight to summon their allies, but doing so takes up a turn and requires a skill check. Or just have the baddies fight at full power, and have a reason not to kill the PCs off if they beat them. My favourite is to have them interrogate the PCs -- baddies need intel as much as anybody else, after all. Then midway through the interrogation (before or after a player has been killed for resisting, depending on how cooperative your PCs are) something more important than the PCs demands their immediate attention, and they go off after that -- completely unaware that there are two other PCs still lurking around the tower to set their friends free.
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Sep 20, 2012 22:44
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Whybird posted:How about putting some teleport runes in the Cobras' chamber that they use to summon up any allies who want to visit them without having to slog through however many floors of poisonous awfulness? The PCs can use these during the fight to summon their allies, but doing so takes up a turn and requires a skill check. The problem is there is only one teleport chamber in the cobra room (which is where the Ardent, Wizard and Fighter are) and they (or rather, their characters) don't know exactly where the Cleric and Bard got to. So they might turn on said runes, but have no real way of making sure the other half of the party would get there. quote:Or just have the baddies fight at full power, and have a reason not to kill the PCs off if they beat them. My favourite is to have them interrogate the PCs -- baddies need intel as much as anybody else, after all. Then midway through the interrogation (before or after a player has been killed for resisting, depending on how cooperative your PCs are) something more important than the PCs demands their immediate attention, and they go off after that -- completely unaware that there are two other PCs still lurking around the tower to set their friends free. The first problem is that there is no mastermind behind the events in the tower (or I guess there was, but they're dead), what they're encountering is the remnants of the building security system. Its all golems and homunculi, completely mindless constructs. Second, I'm trying to give my party a better class of villain than "I could kill you now... but I won't." Acererak levels of taunting are about as far as I want to go down that road. There is one bad guy who might come and bail the party out if they're about to TPK. And keeping the party alive (for the moment) is easy construed as being in his best interests, and that would solve the issue of letting the party know he and his group actually exist. I'd need to work out a non-conflicting reason for them to be aware of the party's movements, and show up in the nick of time.
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Sep 20, 2012 23:40
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Guesticles posted:The first problem is that there is no mastermind behind the events in the tower (or I guess there was, but they're dead), what they're encountering is the remnants of the building security system. Its all golems and homunculi, completely mindless constructs. Have it be the local friendly king - why do 400 year old constructs all have his court's insignia on them? Just because there's no mastermind present doesn't mean there's no story.
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Sep 21, 2012 06:21
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Looking for some broad-strokes campaign structuring advice! I'm currently running a game in Ryuutama, a Japanese system that's light on combat and heavy on travel and exploration. My party mostly consists of characters who are wandering the world with no immediate goal, or with very general goals (lift a curse, find a place to eventually set up shop as a carpenter, get a whole lot of money), and are mostly cohesive as a party because none of them has anything better to do. I've got a bit of long-term structure in place. The party's decided that the capital city is their current big destination, and I have a pair of powerful behind-the-scenes NPCs at work, one vaguely benevolent to the party and one vaguely malevolent to them, but neither doing much to directly intervene. I don't have any particular overarching plotline planned, just a world and a handful of personal goals specific to individual party members. My question is this: What can I do to get the players feeling more like the adventure is unfolding as a result of their own actions? With the heavy travel focus inherent in the game, the structure seems to tend towards being a series of episodic scenes, interesting locations visited on the path to their next destination, then moved on from. How do I shift from the PCs being tourists in the world to the PCs making real, meaningful choices that have a lasting effect on the storyline? If this seems vague, it's because I don't really 100% know what I'm trying to figure out.
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Sep 21, 2012 18:47
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ProfessorProf posted:My question is this: What can I do to get the players feeling more like the adventure is unfolding as a result of their own actions? With the heavy travel focus inherent in the game, the structure seems to tend towards being a series of episodic scenes, interesting locations visited on the path to their next destination, then moved on from. How do I shift from the PCs being tourists in the world to the PCs making real, meaningful choices that have a lasting effect on the storyline? When players are involved in making the world, they have a vested interest in how it turns out.
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Sep 21, 2012 19:08
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Guesticles posted:Second, I'm trying to give my party a better class of villain than "I could kill you now... but I won't." Acererak levels of taunting are about as far as I want to go down that road. Oh, there are lots of actual good reasons for a competent villain to want the PCs alive other than gloating -- are they high-level enough to know things like how the kingdom's defences are organised, the kind of encryption its messengers use, that jazz? Because if so, they're far more use alive than dead. Failing that, maybe he hopes to use them to lure his other enemies into a trap, or maybe he's just so convinced in the rightness of his cause that he's confident he'll be able to talk the PCs over to his side once he has the opportunity to sit down and explain things to them. Equally, an obsolete security system might have had its last instructions be to take prisoners alive, not kill them. (Or it might have somehow gained sentience in the meantime, be bored with guarding, and be looking for people it can somehow install as a replacement for itself so that it can go out and do whatever newly-sentient iron serpents want to do. Or it's crushingly lonely and wants some new friends to play with to while away a few millenia.) Hell, if I had a security system that wasn't capable of making a decision on its own I'd set it to incapacitate and imprison, not kill, just in case the ally who was a vital component to my schemes managed to wander in by accident.
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Sep 21, 2012 19:11
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Whybird posted:Oh, there are lots of actual good reasons for a competent villain to want the PCs alive other than gloating -- are they high-level enough to know things like how the kingdom's defences are organised, the kind of encryption its messengers use, that jazz? Because if so, they're far more use alive than dead. Failing that, maybe he hopes to use them to lure his other enemies into a trap, or maybe he's just so convinced in the rightness of his cause that he's confident he'll be able to talk the PCs over to his side once he has the opportunity to sit down and explain things to them. The PCs are essentially shipwrecked, and they are pretty close to the least informed people on the island about what is going on (leading to them being charged with murder at one point). The island is geographically isolated, surrounded by a ring of storms which are all but impassible, so there's no "neighboring kingdom" to exploit or deal with. There's enough internal poo poo going on that outside forces really weren't needed, and the party hasn't yet allied themselves with any of the factions to the point anyone would think they'd have any good information. Definitely not information worth following them into horrible 400 foot dead black crystal spire that radiates poison energy, anyway. In fact its their ignorance and habit of meddling that would make one of the BigBad's interested in keeping them in play. I'm just working on a plot-consistent reason for him to show up at the right time. quote:Equally, an obsolete security system might have had its last instructions be to take prisoners alive, not kill them. (Or it might have somehow gained sentience in the meantime, be bored with guarding, and be looking for people it can somehow install as a replacement for itself so that it can go out and do whatever newly-sentient iron serpents want to do. Or it's crushingly lonely and wants some new friends to play with to while away a few millenia.) Hell, if I had a security system that wasn't capable of making a decision on its own I'd set it to incapacitate and imprison, not kill, just in case the ally who was a vital component to my schemes managed to wander in by accident. They're at the end of the tower, where the security system hasn't shown any signs or hints of intelligence yet, and in fact, its been made very clear things are running on mechanical autopilot. So this would be a complete 180 that would fly in the face of several insight checks.
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Sep 21, 2012 19:47
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I've had a crack-headed idea for my 7th Sea campaign and I'm not sure if it's worth pursuing because it might upset the narrative a little but I think my players would dig it. Here's the skinny, spoilered as some of the players are goons.  The PCs are being enticed to visit some very old, well guarded crypts that likely house something incredibly powerful, incredibly useful, or possibly both. They'll have to sneak by/fight official guards, unofficial guards, and monsters before they find out just what's in the heart of this place. The idea is to create entirely new PCs for the entire group and hand them out at the next session. I'll set the scene as 50 years before the current game timeline as a flashback and have this new group of PCs trying to do the same thing as the 'real' PCs. Once enough action has happened I'll end the flashback, jump to the present, and incorporate what happened with the 50 year old party in the current adventure. Is this dumb as hell? Would you find it fun if your GM did something like this?
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Sep 23, 2012 09:40
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BlackIronHeart posted:Once enough action has happened I'll end the flashback, jump to the present, and incorporate what happened with the 50 year old party in the current adventure. I think you need to link the two parties together in some way. Either a magical artefact that imparts memories or ghostly shared minds or something that lets them know about the previous+future group. That way they can do stuff like smash doors or disarm traps or leave clues and stuff without it just being a kinda bizarre meta-game episode.
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Sep 23, 2012 09:58
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I was planning on the present group finding evidence of the past group (Smashed/broken stuff, discarded items, dead bodies, etc) but I didn't plan on a MacGuffin. It's definitely something to consider though! Thanks!
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Sep 23, 2012 10:11
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Actually, what are people's opinions on prelude/prequel scenes in general? For example: The main campaign is based on restoring the rightful king to the throne. Before the campaign starts, there is a one-shot game where pregen characters must get the baby prince out of the besieged castle. As the PCs succeed, the baddies burn the castle, and the PCs flee into the forest with the prince, the sword, and the royal signet ring. Fade to black. Fade from black. 20 years have passed. The usurper sits on the throne. Now a young band of heroes must help the rightful King back onto the throne. A grizzled veteran (one of the pregens) is the guy the PCs first interact with, and he inducts them into The Resistance (or whatever). Any other surviving pregens are important NPCs during the main campaign. Terrible idea?
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Sep 23, 2012 10:22
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As a player, I'd enjoy my actions having an effect in a "persistent" world.
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Sep 23, 2012 10:32
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BlackIronHeart posted:I've had a crack-headed idea for my 7th Sea campaign and I'm not sure if it's worth pursuing because it might upset the narrative a little but I think my players would dig it. Here's the skinny, spoilered as some of the players are goons. I did something like this as prelude to a campaign in Pathfinder which I've been running for a long time now. In the prelude, I knew ahead of time that the PCs were going to "fail" their quest, because if they didn't there wouldn't be a point for the "real party" to go on a quest. I talked with my players a bit about it, and they were all cool with the idea of agency being shifted like that. The summarized version is that the prelude PCs all happen to be on an airship for whatever reason at the beginning of the story, and they crash into a snow-swept landscape. This immediately seems very odd, because none of them are from lands which were experiencing winter at the time, and none of them were travelling to or from a place that should be experiencing winter. The first session just starts with them recovering from the inexplicable crash. As they scour the countryside for supplies and signs of life, they eventually come across a structure which I describe looking like a ruined observatory. Upon exploring it, they find two very powerful magic relics: first, a history book which seems to be recounting history as it happens, which they exploit to navigate their way through a few puzzles by simply skipping ahead a few pages to see what it was the explorers did; second, they find a McGuffin which I don't even really name or describe mechanically, but basically it's a time machine and timeline viewing device which enables them to interact with the book to see what happens, what has happened, and how things came to be. Upon fully exploring both devices, they come to a few conclusions: first, that they are in the future several decades from when they got on their airship; second, that some sort of major, climate disaster has befallen the world; third, that the gods themselves seemed incapable of stopping it; and, most troubling, when they turn to the last page of the history-telling book they read that they were too late to stop the calamity. Throughout the course of a few sessions, they each end up drawing up plans on how to investigate and try to stop whatever the problem is. The hell if they're going to just stand around and wait to die, letting some book tell them that things were hosed beyond recovery! I have them each give me the plans they intend to follow, and, to end the prelude, I found a way to work into the events leading up to the end of the world their individual contributions to it. This set the stage for the real PCs in the real campaign set in the past to have some specific challenges which they as the players know about, and some that they don't. One of the prelude PCs, after the prelude was over and he became an NPC, ended up becoming mad and actually working to advance the course of events; another died trying to stop the events; a third actually ended up through a predestination paradox building the observatory and time-viewing apparatus to serve as a beacon for not only his past self but also the eventual "real PCs". We're several months into the "real campaign" now, and everyone is loving it. It took a lot of setup, and it requires a certain type of group to really get going, but it's definitely been worth it. I have a group of players whom are going off of a mixture of ancient legends, player knowledge, predestination warnings, and all of this set in the middle of an entirely unrelated "main plot". There's the feeling that if they don't do something to stop the something, which they don't even know what it is or how to stop it yet, then things will end up being Very Bad; but, at the same time, they're still just low-level grunts working for the local Baron. It's been really fun for all involved to try to find ways to advance the over-plot while still maintaining enough touch with current events and the necessities of everyday adventuring. Sorry for all those words. I just suddenly wanted to share my experience, I guess.
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Sep 23, 2012 10:36
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Guesticles posted:They're at the end of the tower, where the security system hasn't shown any signs or hints of intelligence yet, and in fact, its been made very clear things are running on mechanical autopilot. So this would be a complete 180 that would fly in the face of several insight checks. The Intelligence running the security system has had its connections to the other floors severed, and wants them to hook it back up, and is willing to enslave them to do it. If they fight it off and then help anyway it may try to gently caress them up, or it may decide that it needs them and they get a sicknasty wizard tower stronghold, depending on how things went down. If it captures them, it enslaves them and now they have to convince it to let them come and go as they please, because it's horrified by the idea of being cut off again and is terrifically lonely. They still get the stronghold once they get away. In the future, wizards and kings who want control of the sicknasty tower stronghold are gonna want to capture them alive to learn how to take it over. Liesmith fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 10:48
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Liesmith posted:The Intelligence running the security system has had its connections to the other floors severed, and wants them to hook it back up, and is willing to enslave them to do it. If they fight it off and then help anyway it may try to gently caress them up, or it may decide that it needs them and they get a sicknasty wizard tower stronghold, depending on how things went down. If it captures them, it enslaves them and now they have to convince it to let them come and go as they please, because it's horrified by the idea of being cut off again and is terrifically lonely. They still get the stronghold once they get away. Again, pretty good ideas, but flies in face of of the previous 3 sessions. (Also, being inside or adjacent to this thing for more than an hour or two will kill you. This severely limits its usefulness as a base.) Turns out to have been pretty unnecessary. Bard and Cleric used secondary/primary combos to knock the skill challenge out of the park without a single failure. There were security golems, but I turned them off (time purposes). My wizard really impressed me with some outside of the box thinking. When he saw the iron cobra go into the water, he used ghost sound to try to act like sonar. He came very close to discovering that there were two snakes and not just the one (but only did it once, for some reason). But it took them a depressing amount of time to put together 5-headed snake statue on the altar/5 shrines in the other corners of the hexagon. (This why I'm trying to be consistent with hints and clues) If I had to do it over again, I think I'd have gone with giant spiders, and made the whole tower more spider themed, instead going for the "contaminated and abandoned facility" angle. Oh well, that's two towers down, 3 to go. Edit: Nietzschean, that sounds like a pretty cool way to set up a grand, over arcing plot. Guesticles fucked around with this message at 11:44 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 11:39
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BlackIronHeart posted:I was planning on the present group finding evidence of the past group (Smashed/broken stuff, discarded items, dead bodies, etc) but I didn't plan on a MacGuffin. It's definitely something to consider though! Thanks! Time travel. Have the past group end up sent forward in time to meet the current group and then both groups are together for the Climactic Battle And/Or Setpiece. It is then revealed that past group went back to their original time and engineered the events that brought the current group of PCs together (they had to, after all; they knew the future). Whether this makes them heroes or antagonists depends entirely on how your group reacts to the machinations. (I'm a sucker for time travel.)
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Sep 23, 2012 22:37
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How do I prevent my campaign from seeming like "Oh, how lucky a group of heroes showed up, because we just happen to need help with something only heroes can take care of!" even though that's kind of the case for some if not most of it?
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Sep 24, 2012 02:59
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Thelonious Funk posted:How do I prevent my campaign from seeming like "Oh, how lucky a group of heroes showed up, because we just happen to need help with something only heroes can take care of!" even though that's kind of the case for some if not most of it? Create several "quests" that need to be done for the various major powers in the area where the players are going, which need be no more fully developed than the sort of one-line ideas that are presented as examples in the DMG. They can even be really mundane things like "we haven't heard from our scout in several days but we can't spare a body right now to go search for him". That kind of quest hook could lead to pretty much anything. Once you have an idea of several things that are going on in the area or which need to be done, figure out which one the players are likely to investigate and resolve; then, resolve the others (or leave some of them unresolved if you like) through entirely mundane means, and let the players hear about it. I'll give you an example. Abigail, Barney and Celia walk into Ye Olde Inne and overhear two off-duty guardsmen, Darryl and Edgar, complaining about how they're having to pull extra-long shifts starting next week because Franklin, whom was sent out to deliver a message from the local Baron to a neighbouring township, has not returned. The players may investigate this, or not. If they do, then they might consult Gerald, the captain of the town watch, and volunteer their services only to find that the message had been intercepted by Herodotus, the Royal Diviner; or, they might find that he was waylaid by the bandit Irvine and his men; or, they might find that he was seduced by Jezebel, and has spent the past few days wallowing in her company; or, any number of things. If they don't follow up with that quest hook, and instead choose to pursue some other quest, have them hear upon their return to town that it turns out Franklin's horse was injured on the trip, requiring him to walk back to town; or, that a merchant caravan picked him up along the side of the road after he'd been robbed, and now the guard captain is looking for people to go root out those bandits; etc. You can do a lot by just coming up with a few general ideas and expanding on them as appropriate. Addamere fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Sep 24, 2012 |
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Sep 24, 2012 03:56
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Thelonious Funk posted:How do I prevent my campaign from seeming like "Oh, how lucky a group of heroes showed up, because we just happen to need help with something only heroes can take care of!" even though that's kind of the case for some if not most of it? The best way to avoid that is to utilize the relationships the characters have already. Every hero has allegiances and rivalries. They could run into old friends, old lovers, old mentors, old enemies, etc etc in any civilized area. That lessens the dissociated feeling of having complete strangers ask for help and turns it into a more relatable situation. "I'm helping out Old War Buddy because I owe him." should be something players can relate to more easily than Random Dirt Farmer promising some baubles if they go clear the goblins out the forest. Of course, helping out Old War Buddy can lead to complications and new allies and new enemies and travel to new places. Fun!
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Sep 24, 2012 04:44
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Need to make a quick fictional reality check here. Take the following situation from my game the other day: Two parties meet up. One is your typical plucky band of adventurers, right now tasked with delivering a chest to the other, under the command of a powerful NPC. The other turns out to be an alliance of primordial cultists, nightmare being from the Far Realm, and demon worshippers. The adventurers know fully well the alliance is planning to destroy the world, and the alliance know the adventurers want to stop this. The chest turns out to contain some of the magical artifacts the alliance needs to achieve apocalypse. All this is taking place at a major sacrificial site of Dagon in the Elemental Chaos. The alliance start some expository monologue, but the party notice their NPC companion is falling under the mental influence of the Far Realm being. The party wizard decides to drop an ice wall between them to break visual contact. This is part of the strongest spells in her arsenal and the wall will badly hurt creatures who even stand next to it, although she doesn't actually place it next to anyone right now. How would you respond to a school of thought that said this was a nonviolent action and calling for initiative rolls at that exact moment was out of line?
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Sep 24, 2012 07:24
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I'd cite the (fictional) Battle of Camlann. Knight draws a sword to kill an adder, and the action is misinterpreted as a hostile action, leading to an incredibly bloody battle. That said, I'd probably give the party a chance to talk their way out of it, but I think with both sides knowing what the other's up to, this was just sort of speeding up the inevitable bloody confrontation.
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Sep 24, 2012 07:38
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My Lovely Horse posted:Need to make a quick fictional reality check here. Take the following situation from my game the other day: Battle magic in a negotiation? Combat starts. Battle magic in a negotiation where the other party pretty much has "bad guys" stamped on their foreheads? Combat starts, fuckwit. Seriously, a combat spell in a negotiation? They might as well be firing an AK at the ceiling. But you know, not at anyone and not in a threatening way. What I'm saying is, isn't this more to do with the actions of the villains at that moment? How do they interpret the wall of ice? If they say "poo poo, hostile battle magic", then call for initiative. If they're like "oh, a wall of ice, how strange, guess it doesn't bother me though", then don't call for initiative. Unless I've misinterpreted the question and you're asking "do I get them to roll initiative before the casting, or after the wall is up", in which case I'd say after the wall is up.
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Sep 24, 2012 07:38
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My Lovely Horse posted:Need to make a quick fictional reality check here. Take the following situation from my game the other day: I would respond as follows: "You don't get to decide how the NPCs interpret your actions. That's where the N in NPC comes from." Specifically, it doesn't matter how high-level the spell is or what its effects are or what the intent was or any of that; what matters is 'do the cultists feel threatened, and if so, will they initiate combat?' That is the only question you have to concern yourself with. The player's intent cannot drive the NPC's responses; if the NPCs are jittery enough, they could take the casting of a friggin' Light spell as justification for attack, much less a spell that could legitimately discomfit them. Now, that being said - you need to make it clear to your players what is going on. If the cultists are already on edge and the appearance of the ice wall drives them to attack in a panic and rage, then your players need to know that that's what happened. You can't just say "Well, you cast a high level spell, dude," you have to show them (or, failing that, at least tell them - which, in an after-the-fact scenario like this, will be necessary) that the NPCs are responding the way they are because of internally consistent motivations and not 'well, I needed a fight scene to happen' or what have you. Make it clear to them that the issue that sparked combat isn't "you cast a spell," the issue is "you cast a spell and they freaked out about it."
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Sep 24, 2012 08:17
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Thelonious Funk posted:How do I prevent my campaign from seeming like "Oh, how lucky a group of heroes showed up, because we just happen to need help with something only heroes can take care of!" even though that's kind of the case for some if not most of it? imagine your average adventurer guy is a sheriff in the old west. The sheriff has a territory as big as Rhode Island to cover, on his horse, alone. So he's not gonna show up that often. When he does show up, people treat him like the wandering merchant or tinker, only instead of hauling out months of broken pots and pans, or buying enough salt to last the rest of the year, these people dump all their adventures on him, everything they've heard, all the goblins that have been loving with them since the last adventurer came to town. that's how you do it. This stuff didn't just come up, it's just that they knew an adventuring party would turn up sooner or later so they've been saving it for them.
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Sep 24, 2012 11:07
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Guesticles posted:I'd cite the (fictional) Battle of Camlann. Them's fighting words.
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Sep 24, 2012 11:09
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Liesmith posted:imagine your average adventurer guy is a sheriff in the old west. The sheriff has a territory as big as Rhode Island to cover, on his horse, alone. So he's not gonna show up that often. That right there is amazing. Great idea, Liesmith. Presenting it to them exactly like that would be a great way to have them feel like real heroes, too.
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Sep 24, 2012 11:49
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Make it clear to them that the issue that sparked combat isn't "you cast a spell," the issue is "you cast a spell and they freaked out about it." Otherwise, though, those cultists and demons were very much planning to grab the party and toss them down the sacrifice pit within the next few minutes or so, and they also knew roughly what the party could do in a fight. Seeing one of them break out their strongest spell definitely did trigger their "oh poo poo okay they're getting serious, gloating phase over" buttons. I did allow for a Bluff check to give the party a surprise round and, hell, halfway through the encounter I even thought of something else: I could have called for a Bluff roll to pass the ice wall off as a regular elemental chaos phenomenon, given the location. But too late, and anyway the most logical thing for the Imix cultist would then have been to melt it down with a fireball and she'd have been pissed at wasting a Daily power. Oh well. Next session is going to see them visit Gloomwrought in the Shadowfell and will happen shortly before Halloween. If that doesn't write itself then I don't even know what.
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Sep 24, 2012 13:54
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I would explain it to them like this. If you went to a board meeting with some guys you knew were involved in organized crime, and halfway through the meeting you suddenly bunker down behind a riot shield, they will assume some poo poo is about to go down. The fact that hiding behind a riot shield is not an inherently violent or hostile action isn't really relevant.
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Sep 24, 2012 14:30
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My Lovely Horse posted:I did allow for a Bluff check to give the party a surprise round and, hell, halfway through the encounter I even thought of something else: I could have called for a Bluff roll to pass the ice wall off as a regular elemental chaos phenomenon, given the location. But too late, and anyway the most logical thing for the Imix cultist would then have been to melt it down with a fireball and she'd have been pissed at wasting a Daily power. The bluff check to pass it off as local phenomenon would probably have been the best way to play it, or even an instant diplomacy check to calm everyone down. But I'd say half the "not thinking of that" blame rests with your players. Liesmith posted:Them's fighting words. Let me rephrase, the fictional account of the battle, instead of the battle on which the tale is based. yes, I understand your comment was in the spirit of mirth as is my reply
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Sep 24, 2012 15:33
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My players have mistaken hints I've been dropping that the mcguffin they are seeking is an intelligent artifact to mean that the mcguffin is actually a creature, or even a person. Which actually sounds awesome. It was originally meant to merely be a "Skeleton Key" that can open even metaphorical doors (in order to explain the Thief's epic destiny that he's choosing which will allow him to "steal things unstealable, like someone's eye color")... but having the key be a creature actually does sound pretty cool. So I want to run with it. So... what creature (or creatures, because there are more than one of these things in my setting-- they are owned by fae royalty) would make a good key?
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Sep 24, 2012 18:06
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Is your campaign very serious because, well, you already said "skeleton key"...
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Sep 24, 2012 18:13
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In xxxHolic, the main character gets this familiar called a "Pipe Fox". The thing is like a cross between a fox and a snake, and I could easily see it getting into locks and messing with some tumblers. Plus, it can apparently hide around someone's neck or wrist without arousing suspicion.
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Sep 24, 2012 18:16
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Reasonably serious, yes. They're fighting several world-ending entities, the fae are screwing with everyone, including the gods, and most actions they take only make things worse, whether that be action, inaction, or even prioritizing which foe to go after at any given moment. The deck is stacked against them, they feel like they have their backs against the wall... but they're FINALLY starting to pull themselves out of all the holes that have been dug, and FINALLY making some real progress. Silliness probably wouldn't fit the mood. Metaphor and symbolism would fit better. Besides, these are faerie keys. There's got to be a faerie tale (read: horror genre) about it. TheSoundNinja posted:In xxxHolic, the main character gets this familiar called a "Pipe Fox". The thing is like a cross between a fox and a snake, and I could easily see it getting into locks and messing with some tumblers. Plus, it can apparently hide around someone's neck or wrist without arousing suspicion. I've seen that! Could work... hrm...
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Sep 24, 2012 18:16
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Literal talking animated key. With a tiny skeleton head as part of the end. A tiny skeleton head that hates the players 
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Sep 24, 2012 18:27
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