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Guesticles posted:Maybe do a generational time line thing. The PCs start as the "heads of households" of some of the pioneer families. Then some time passes, and they switch to one of their children/descendants. Repeat as necessary. Check out Pendragon for a good example of this type of system in action.
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Oct 6, 2012 10:12
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Iunnrais posted:In my youth, I was a fan of Piers Anthony. I still recall the moment I realized that the book I was reading was for pedophiles
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Oct 6, 2012 12:21
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Liesmith posted:I still recall the moment I realized that the book I was reading was for pedophiles Piers Anthony novels get uncomfortably creepy after you're about 13. I used to enjoy them when I was 11-12 years old, and then I re read The Color Of Her Panties (I think) when I was at uni and just went 
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Oct 6, 2012 15:24
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iirc the color of her panties was when I started getting uncomfortable, just because even a child could be embarrassed by the title. I read a bit longer though and it just got more and more awkward, like hansel and gretel in a forest thats getting deeper and darker and more frightening Even the first ones are pretty sleazy though. Like the girl whose superpower is that shes beautiful but dumb as poo poo, or real ugly but a genius. babys first misogyny
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Oct 6, 2012 18:24
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edited out
Thelonious Funk fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Dec 4, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2012 20:09
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It's a little lame and cliched, yeah. Not gonna lie, it doesnt make sense that cities in one country have that kind of range. HOWEVER you can manage this poo poo in a non-lame way easily, with wack rear end seasons. One city is a desert because they get there in the dry season. Another is a jungle because in the wet season, all the magical plants grow at an astonishing rate. Then the winter comes and there's snow even though wet/dry seasons are tropical. Because its a different planet. Build a whole ecology, with seasonal jobs and poo poo. Really change things up and make it exciting. You can do this even if the game is already running, as long as too much time hasnt passed ingame. You could even make it part of the adventure hook: you're going in winter because no one expects war in the winter, everyone is hiding from the snow and dark. And the Jungle is cool because no one leaves the pool of light in the wet season, since they'll get eaten by plant monsters or something idk im not the DM here. Anyway, no one does it. except the players, because they are just that badass Also if this guy is conquering cities, why not level with the players after the second city? "Yeah, you got me. I'm conquering this four city known world and uniting it. Two down, two to go. Join or die, and remember if you join you'll be in good with the emperor of the world." I'd bet money that if you did it right even good-aligned characters will do it out of patriotism, even if they know he's an usurper. EDIT: Even if the game has been going on too long for the seasons dodge, you can get around it by saying "When you leave the city, remember. This place has the Orb of Real Good Weather Or Some poo poo, but the rest of the realm has that hosed up weather that you all grew up with and have known about in-character this entire time" Liesmith fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Oct 6, 2012 |
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Oct 6, 2012 20:17
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edited out
Thelonious Funk fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Dec 4, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2012 20:27
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you can still have that. The deception is that he will obviously never actually let them be dukes or whatever. He might run with it for a while but when they come in for the last city he says "Hey, by the way, now that no one can stand against me except you guys, you gotta go. I'm grateful to you and all but its like Machiavelli says, if someone helped you get where you are, they think that you owe them something and are gonna cause problems. So I'm banishing you. Peace" it would be funny if every time they conquered a place they got a better title and people were really impressed by them and all the sycophant courtiers were real impressed or jealous and tried to cultivate them for plots, but haha turns out titles arent worth anything to a guy who is gonna banish you anyway ooh ohh OK im not giving advice about your setting anymore at all but what if, after they got back from being banished, a couple hundred years had passed, and the guy they made king was remembered as an incredible hero and visionary ruler and your party was seen as his loyal and invincible knights of the round table types, and now the land is in some trouble and there are all these prophecies about how your guys will come back at the time of the kingdoms greatest need. So now that things are poo poo, there are these party imersonators trying to take control and your boys gotta slap them down. If theyve still got proof of those joke titles people are gonna be super impressed and oh my god I gotta run this poo poo  look at me I can go from totally normal advice to turning your game into the knights of the round table coming back in ten minutes
Liesmith fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Oct 6, 2012 |
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Oct 6, 2012 20:30
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Liesmith posted:you can still have that. The deception is that he will obviously never actually let them be dukes or whatever. He might run with it for a while but when they come in for the last city he says "Hey, by the way, now that no one can stand against me except you guys, you gotta go. I'm grateful to you and all but its like Machiavelli says, if someone helped you get where you are, they think that you owe them something and are gonna cause problems. So I'm banishing you. Peace" I like it. I like it a lot. Now I just gotta figure out who the "bosses" (city leaders) of the other cities are going to be. I've already got one that will be an alchemist worldbreaker (explained here) that will drink different potions at different times to completely change what they're fighting. (But not reset the fight or anything.) I do want to do some sort of illusionist, but I can't seem to think of a way to make him more fun than just annoying. EDIT: The gently caress with your edits are you playing fable or are you high or something?
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Oct 6, 2012 20:38
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Thelonious Funk posted:So, I'm fleshing out a story where there are 4 cities in the country they live in, and they're guardsmen of one of them. Another thing you could do is instead of making the cities one island, make them 4 islands, connected with portals. Then when its time to exile your players, they get tossed into the "forbidden portal, from which none have returned". This portal could do a few things. Maybe it dumps them on a 5th landmass and the players have to get back. Maybe the exit portal is in the air, or under the water, or some other very hard to get at place; or maybe the portals are all only one-way, and they have to find the next entrance. Maybe it takes them out the back of the portal several decades into the future (going off of Liesmith's timetravel idea), where a squad of executioners is traditionally waiting for exiles to show up and kill them. The party would have fight through them, but maybe the squad isn't waiting when the players show up due to everything having gone to poo poo. You could also have the area undergone major changes so it takes the party a little bit to figure out "oh god this is home and this the future". Examples like maybe the jungle city is just a muddy bog due to deforestation. The snowy city is maybe now basically in a bubble of ice. And the desert city has pretty much been abandoned and swallowed by the sands [this could the "You maniacs! You blew it up!" moment]. I'd also have the BBEG Usurper APPEAR to be actually be helping and making things better, but in reality making them worse. Like at first it looks like he's dismantling the hopelessly corrupt bureaucracy, but in reality he's installing a worse one (just with his people in charge). If you're worried about the party discovering his motives or something, you could have the Usurper actually be a good person, but his second in command be a little poo poo who kills the Leader (and pins it on the party).
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Oct 6, 2012 22:23
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Oct 7, 2012 00:52
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I'm a brand new GM (never ran a thing) looking to possibly start an Eclipse Phase game here. Seeing as I'm afraid that just posting will somehow gently caress me hard, I'm coming here to solicit some advice to avoid newbie-GM mistakes. First off, as I want to run Eclipse Phase which format would probably be best? PbP is generally too slow for my tastes, but i'm afraid that not being able to play weekends may bone me as far as getting players go and it might be my only choice. I'd rather use Skype/some form of virtual tabletop for a more authentic tabletop experience, but I don't know if that'd be a bad idea or not. Second, I'd like some input on my "planned" campaign to see if it is a good idea at all. It'll be standard Eclipse Phase setting. If you don't know what it is, basically Earth was destroyed by crazy AIs Terminator style and now humanity lives out in the solar system. A lot of post-cyberpunk style supertech like brain uploads, body swapping, and hypercorps. Plan is that each player is going to get a mysterious message with a sizable chunk of credits attached. The message is an invitation to come to the Fa-Jing hypercorp's Martian HQ for a job offer. The players are supposed to meet for the first time int he office of the big-wig they're meeting, but they can make actions beforehand to learn more about Fa-Jing, set up supply caches/allies on Mars, etc. After getting their job, to break into a Direct Action (Space Blackwater) manufacturing facility to steal the designs and prototype of a new kind of plasma weapon, they're basically being let off the leash. I've planned a bunch of "contingency" campaigns depending on how they go from there.
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Oct 10, 2012 16:24
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Wapole Languray posted:I'm a brand new GM (never ran a thing) looking to possibly start an Eclipse Phase game here. Seeing as I'm afraid that just posting will somehow gently caress me hard, I'm coming here to solicit some advice to avoid newbie-GM mistakes. Were I starting new, I would be a big jerk and insist on weeknight play, and then want people to commit to a regular schedule.
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Oct 10, 2012 18:00
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homullus posted:I don't play Eclipse Phase, but I do run a weeknight online RPG with Skype+MapTool, and have for a couple years. Weeknight means your sessions will be shorter, and if your players have children, you will lose them some (more) evenings. On the other hand, it doesn't get in the way of other weekend plans and people typically do less on weeknights anyway. Okay,cool. I physically can't be at a computer weekends, so it'd have to be weeknights. So i'd probably do that, with some flexibility of course, aiming for at least one session a week. I don't mind short sessions, used to game at a hobby shop and the 4-5 hour sessions were kinda rough for me. As for the other part of my question, I think I should clarify a bit. When I say contingencies I meant like a CYOA book, with 3-4 ways the campaign could go, with only minor detours from those paths. Once the players are on a path they'd generally stick to it, but could jump to others or just go off the rails I suppose. I'm mainly planning on enforcing the story with in-universe logic instead of GM fiat. It's kinda hard to ignore the bad-guy when he's sending hit-squads after you and blows up your hotel room.
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Oct 10, 2012 21:25
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Trip report! So I ran my flashback sequence on Thursday and it was pretty well received. I gave the players a pick of the 4 new characters a week ahead of time and let them decide among themselves who would play whom. That went surprisingly painlessly though no one wanted the scholar except for the guy who runs our crime drama game and is a masterful schemer. Lucked out there! DivineCoffeeBinge had made a suggestion of time travel and Karandras had suggested a way for the present group to know what the past group did. I realized that I could actually combine both suggestions, in a fashion, and accomplish setting up one of the Backgrounds a present PC was supposed to earn (Earning/buying Backgrounds is a mechanic in 7th Sea to get XP) as well! The way it worked out is that one of the present PCs was also a member of the past party! We knew he would survive and another of the past party would survive as he's been mentioned as an NPC before. That left 3 other past party members fates to be decided. I provided each player with an individual info packet on their past PCs personality and motivations and notes about special gear. I also gave the players a way to earn bonus XP for their present PCs by giving them tokens to spend to control the narrative for a bit. Each token spent would earn XP and they could elect to start with more tokens by voluntarily taking wounds at the beginning of the session.  This worked out really well and the players did some cool stuff, like making up connections and backgrounds for inconsequential NPCs (A ratter in the sewers, for example) that were intertwined with their past PCs. So with two spent tokens, Pierre the Ratter knows Luc the Swordsman and Reginald the Scholar because Reginald cut his hand off aboard a pirate ship a few years back.One past member got straight murdered by ghouls and 2 others vanished into swirling waters. I haven't decided if they'll return but I'm geeked to have that opportunity. 
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Oct 13, 2012 08:41
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How do you handle larger groups of players? There's eight of us in my current gaming group, which means I have 7 PCs to deal with (4th ed DnD, by the way). I'm used to DMing for groups of 3 or 4 PCs, that's what I'm used to dealing with and building around. Now I'm having trouble coming up with campaigns that work with a mob of violent "heroes" tearing through the joint. Combat really worries me. With 7 people all taking turns, combat is already a lengthy mess, and since I'm worried about compounding that too much, they steamroll over most stuff I put them against through sheer numbers. So, now it's lengthy AND boring! It's hard enough keeping everyone involved and focused during plot/screwing around time, but I just have no idea how to handle combat on this scale. I've tried splitting up the party to make things easier for me to manage, but then I have half the players sitting there doing nothing and getting bored. Plus, I'm running out of contrived situations to split them up. Really, the easiest solution would probably be to just lose a few people, but that's tricky enough as it is. I've mentioned to a few of the guys how I think the group is getting too big and how DMing is getting tougher, and they just nod and ignore me. Last time I brought it up, the party mage decided that meant he should bring in his girlfriend (although she's a pretty good player). I just don't know what to do or how to make the game fun and engaging for everyone with this many people. Any advice?
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Oct 14, 2012 08:25
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D&D is not a game that easily accomodates groups above 5-6 members including the DM. If anything that's even more so the case in 4E. You pretty much have two options: change the system, or change the group. Someone else will have to weigh in on the system change, but to start with: what aspects of gaming does your group enjoy most and least, i.e. what would another system need to provide for everyone to have a good time? Changing the group would mean cutting them down to a managable size. If you have the time, consider running two separate games. Completely separate, too, you'll just have even more work if you run one of those "two parties who never meet but the actions of one can influence the other" games. You could either have half the party ferried off to the other side of the world or take those characters and start a whole new game. Either way, be very clear upfront about the fact that it would be a permanent split. And if you don't have the time, I'd still recommend splitting the group, except someone will have to step up and be DM for the other group. Set aside a bit of time to discuss this with the whole group, too, changing the system or splitting/reducing the group are both big decisions and I wouldn't spring either idea on players during the course of a regular gaming session.
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Oct 14, 2012 12:47
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Yeah. Having run an 8-player 4e game for a brief period, you pretty much have to accept that it's going to be difficult to accomodate everyone all the time due to how the system works. Running a brutally quick shot clock on turns can help a little if you have daydreamers or strategists, but you can only really shave off so much dead time, the rest is taken up by the overhead of rolls and powers and all that stuff anyway. If you stick with it, I recommend focusing on making individual fights more brutal and having less of them per level. If every fight is a nailbiter and/or a setpiece, you at least won't lose anyone to boredom. The budgets in 7+ player games are huge and give you a lot of room to do viciously fun things, so play them for all they're worth. If you wind up taxing them too much, you can always gift surge/daily renewals - you can't take back a boring fight. (If you kill them all, it's just an excuse to run a game in a more huge-party-friendly system.)
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Oct 14, 2012 16:29
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A system change hadn't even occurred to me, because I assumed pretty much all tabletop RPGs worked best with 4-5 players. I did try running a brief Dark Heresy campaign, to see if focusing on more investigation and role-playing type stuff would go more smoothly than lots of fighting, but it was still kind of a mess. Two separate games isn't a bad idea. I know a few of my friends have also wanted to try DMing, so we could probably work something out to that effect. I'll see what they think about that idea. Thanks for the help!
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Oct 14, 2012 19:34
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Can someone recommend a good starting guide for GMing Paranoia, or is reading XP sufficient enough? Making my way through it ATM, but something that recommended starting missions or had tips on how to properly act as Friend Computer would be kickass.
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Oct 14, 2012 23:15
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As a longtime GM of Paranoia, I can say that there's no real guide that can do it. It's better to read reports of sample games. And then get a good feel as to what makes people paranoid. Get a feel for the setting, and then MAKE STUFF UP. Ignore any rules that would imply a restriction on what you can do, but use whatever rules you want to enforce against (or occasional, for) the players. In particular, make good use of the GPP mechanic. In my opinion, it's the greatest part of the XP system. If you -need- a template for a session in Classic (not Zap or Straight) mode, I would give this a try... it's based on a play session I once saw on a website somewhere. Don't feel RESTRICTED by this in any way, but I find that having this kind of structure makes it easier to keep things moving. Pre-Set Up: Design what the Computer wants done, or if not the computer, than whatever official person who has an agenda that they can use the computer to get done. It could be trivial (do the laundry for some higher clearance guy) or it could be of vital importance (a nuclear plant is about to go critical). Whichever it is, make sure it will be described to the players as the opposite... the more trivial it really is, the more important it will be played up. The more important it really is, the more bored and trivial the supervisors will treat it. And never be afraid of the "We're sending you in to find out what happened to the last team we sent to their certain deaths" scenario. Once you know what is officially wanted, think up how the various secret societies could benefit somehow from one of their members being on the mission. Make sure the secret missions are mutually exclusive. Then assign mutant powers per the players. Give them rope to hang themselves with. The players must NEVER be allowed to create their own characters. ACT I: Getting to the Briefing Room In my opinion, the best way to introduce players to Paranoia is to tell them the basics about the setting, then drop them into a very hostile scenario right away. They all start seperate, in their barracks with 50 other red clones, and they get the message that they are to go to Briefing Room [Long String of Numbers and Letters That You Should Write Down in Advance, such as X2778D53]. Say it clearly, quickly, and only once. Then demand of each player what they do, giving them mere seconds to answer. If they ask for the briefing room number again, give them demerits for not remembering it the first time. If they remember the number, they don't know where it is. Asking the Computer for a map will reveal that the location of the briefing room, being an important state secret, is Classified Orange. The secret here, is that they should be using something treasonous to find their way. Being Naive should get them killed, repeatedly. Using mutant powers, lying, stealing, cheating, or ESPECIALLY Secret Society contacts, should get them to the room safely. If they bumble around, have them walk into execution chamber, or my favorite, an incinerator chute that looks like an elevator on the inside, with the "Drop into Incinerator Button" on the INSIDE. If someone hasn't lost half their clones getting to the briefing room, consider that you aren't trying hard enough. ACT II: Briefing and Supplies Have the briefing officer berate those who are late and reward those who arrived earlier. Give the mission. Assign team roles. Tell them to pick up gear and report for mandatory experimental equipment. By now, they should be plenty paranoid of Alpha Complex. Ease up a bit. If anyone HASN'T contact their secret society, have them be contacted. Let them fight over getting the equipment. Reward those who do sneaky things trying to sabotage the others. Let them volunteer in turn for their experimental equipment. That is, reveal items, one at a time, and either the first to volunteer gets it or it's assigned. The Team Leader or Equipment Guy may argue that they get to assign equipment instead. If they're persuasive enough, let 'em. Experimental gear should always be A) More Useful Than Their Wildest Dreams, and B) Flawed in Some Fundamental Way. The flaws should be such that they could actually avoid the flaw if they just knew how. But the manuals are always classified Green or higher... ACT III: The Mission Let the players cause most of the chaos. If you've assigned secret missions and given the proper equipment out, this should happen on it's own. You only need the barest sketchy idea of the area-- providing situations where players need to try using their experimental gear is good too. ACT IV: De-Briefing Final scoring. Let the players make excuses and place blame. Rewards to those who argue the best/frame others the best. Clonewipes to the failures. It's a simple template, but it works for me.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:52
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The best piece of Paranoia advice I ever received was straight out of the GM's section in the book: Be entertaining. Reward players for being Entertaining. Punish those who are not, in an entertaining fashion. If you have players at your table who turn into whiny bitches when things don't go their way, you're going to have a bad time. I had one, he does not get invited to Paranoia games anymore. Stuntman posted:tips on how to properly act as Friend Computer would be kickass. If you have XP, the description on pages 56-57 will get you started. Pick a personality you can do with a straight face, then once your players get used to it, find an inconvenient time to switch to a different one you can also do with a straight face. No matter what, the Computer is always Decisive, even if it is wrong.
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Oct 15, 2012 03:39
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Does anyone have a reccomendation for a decent mapping program? Im playing pathfinder and something that outputs to A4 paper would be best. Ive tried using a few like Dungeons tile mapper and Dunjinni but they arent the most easiest to use programs. Any help?
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Oct 18, 2012 07:57
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Nutsngum posted:Does anyone have a reccomendation for a decent mapping program? http://pyromancers.com/ is quite good for making simple maps. I have some questions, or rather - would like to ask opinions. My party inadvertently activated an ancient waygate in a forest near the major city they were heading to. This let through an undead horde from a neighboring undead empire who are constantly launching border attacks. Whoops! They're currently retrieving an irascible and reclusive portal expert from his paranoid trap-laden tower as he's the only one who can close the waygate. I'm basically gearing up for them recovering him, bringing him back to the city, then having the undead launch their siege assault while the portal expert prepares the ritual inside the mage's tower in the centre of the city. He'll also reunite with his adorable 9 year old niece (this is important). Basically I want to run a choice-filled siege for the players. What do you guys think of this: 1) They are first assigned to patrol the sewers, in case of undead incursion. Undead do, indeed, incur. They fight a bit, and discover an undead agent (recurring nemesis) has placed bombs underneath various points of the city. They may only have time to defuse 2/3 of the bombs. What do you guys think I should put at risk? I was thinking a choice between an orphanage and a hospital, or the inn they all love and a vital military barracks crucial to the battle coordination. 2) After that, a wounded guardsman falls into the sewers, gasping to them that the mage's tower has been infiltrated (betrayal from the inside or w/e). They race to the tower, only to be presented with another choice en route: The leader of the Paladin forces of the city is in trouble against a number of powerful golems controlled by a lich-mage, but also a vulnerable area - what area? is under assault! Do they go for the lich-mage, or save building X? 3) Finally they breach the tower, and storm into the portal ritual room - the old mage is barely alive, protecting his niece from the recurring bad guy. Cue fight. Here is where I really need an opinion, or to know if I'm being too evil. My thought was that the ritual could close the waygate they opened. OR, they could use an "innocent sacrifice" to supercharge it and suck most of the undead back into it, saving a lot of soldiers lives. Of course, the adorable niece is the only innocent to hand. Are these good ideas? I wanted to try to have a branching climax to the current story arc, with the final result tabulated on what choices they made (e.g. if they let the barracks blow up, let the leader die, and don't sacrifice the girl the battle is almost lost regardless, with the city really damaged, or the opposite but massive civilian casualties if they make other choices). How would you guys represent the raging battle occuring outside the city walls? Have them run into guardsmen every so often? Have catapult shells fall occasionally into combats?
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Oct 18, 2012 10:28
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Nutsngum posted:Does anyone have a reccomendation for a decent mapping program? If you don't mind spending money on asset packs, Tiamat/RPGObjects looks pretty good. I use Maptools, and generally like it, but there's a little bit of a learning curve getting started and when you go from beginner square dungeons to more intermediate level stuff. Be prepared for the party to want to split up. Don't put your players into repeated "save the orphanage or keep the defenses from falling" scenarios, unless tough-choices/alignment sort of stuff is part of the larger campaign. Their should be more consequences to their actions than "People from Town think you are an rear end in a top hat/Awesome". Make sure there is someway that they can achieve some degree of success at both. You don't have to make it easy, and they can fail, but they should have the option. Example, for scenario number two, as a player, I'd go help the Paladins, but get their leader to send a company to go secure Building X, or at least protect Building X long enough for the party to deal with the mage and get there. Scenario #3 is a little better built, except I'd maybe make the upside to child sacrifice a little closer to home. Have the evil mage summoning some kind of really nasty monster when the party arrives; if they kill Little Suzie, it will stop or delay the monster's arrival. If they chose not too, they're going to have to deal with the FleshGolem 1000.
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Oct 18, 2012 11:15
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Nevermind
Affi fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Oct 21, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 09:13
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Lord Twisted posted:http://pyromancers.com/ is quite good for making simple maps. 1. The sensible choice would be to sacrifice the orphanage: you need the command center to win the battle with a minimum of casualties, and the hospital to care for the wounded that are to come. Besides, losing the orphanage to the undead isn't so bad:  2. Hit the granary to ensure potential mass starvation.  Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? Mix lye with water to liquefy the corpses, producing a brownish sludge with brittle bones. Lye is already used for drain cleaning, and it works much better than acid. Watch out for the fumes, though! No seriously, stop playing with those people. No gaming is better than bad gaming, Carthago delenda est, etc.
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Oct 19, 2012 09:37
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Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? 2) Bad characters don't equate to good roleplaying, and wanting to play up the mechanical aspect of an RPG isn't some mortal sin worthy of punishment, nor does it mean your players are entirely hyper munchkins. 3) Refluffing exists if their choice of race is that much of a problem. Hell, refluffing is probably the single most important thing to have in your toolbox in general. (Especially when playing some variation of D&D.)
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Oct 19, 2012 12:26
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Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? The way you stop them is by saying "Guys, this isn't the style of game I want to run. I'm not having fun with all these ridiculous bits of setting, so going forward I'm only allowing PCs from the basic PHB. Don't worry though, I won't run any fights that are unfairly statted, and I'll make sure that your vanilla characters have just as much cool plot as your half-demon-half-dragon golem trees. Probably more in fact, since they're now more likely to run into stuff relevant to their species." E: Another fun option is "Well, you can't /start/ as a dryad, but what about this: you're an elf druid who was born when his mother did the nasty with a nature spirit. You're pretty normal looking but sometimes when you're wounded it scabs over with bark (but it doesn't give you special powers or anything, it just freaks people out and makes them call the town guard). You reckon if you found enough nature spirits and eat their souls then maybe you could transform yourself into a proper dryad one day... AT A HORRIBLE PRICE." E. E: Even better if the first spirit he comes across is this thorny Douchebag who's luring people into his den and eating them. The next few are causing a disturbance for people but really just want to be left alone. Then they start banding up for protection against this spirit-murdering soul-eating monstrosity who is wanted for murder most anywhere that respects the natural order by now. Whybird fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 13:43
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Pththya-lyi posted:1. The sensible choice would be to sacrifice the orphanage: you need the command center to win the battle with a minimum of casualties, and the hospital to care for the wounded that are to come. Besides, losing the orphanage to the undead isn't so bad: Granary! Genius! I altered the orphanage to be the Church of Bahamut near the centre of the city where most of the refugees are hiding. So now they have to (its possible to do both, but there is a time limit) defuse 2 bombs, picking between the military hospital, or the refugee encampment (where a lot of their NPC friends are). Second choice will be kill the necromancer controlling the golems, or save the food stores (they can, of course, do both) Third choice will be: The bad guy has been beaten down, but has raised up a barrier and is attempting a summoning. The portal expert will say this summoning is bringing something big, and the PCs might not be able to defeat it. Only way to stop the summoning is to sacrifice the little girl. So will it be personal choice, or potentially going out like big drat heroes. (the monster will be a modified Beholder, with the portal expert providing them round-by round random buffs like free saving throws or THP).
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Oct 19, 2012 14:34
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Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? The best advice is what was given: either forbid Pixie-Plant-Deva munchkining or just say you aren't running this group. If for what ever reason you want to continue your plan to visit pretend murder upon these people, try these listed in a rough order of least to most terrible. 1) Wait for them to give you their perfectly Min-Maxed character sheets, and then instantly switch the game system to fantasy-themed Paranoia. 2) Have the party instantly killed by a trap in the first encounter, and their bodies destroyed beyond any hope of reconstitution. They are now ghosts, and spend the rest of the game as such. They wanted cool powers, and are now insubstantial with the ability to possess people. 3) Bust out horrible, but level appropriate, bullshit. Diseases, petrify, start them in the shadowfell, whatever you can find. Tailor the encounter to maximize the monster's advantages, and add environmental hazards. After a few encounters, or after they are all dead, ask if they want to continue to try and out min-max you, or if they want to make characters that aren't based solely on numbers. Lord Twisted posted:Second choice will be kill the necromancer controlling the golems, or save the food stores (they can, of course, do both) One more thing I wanted to add: I mentioned that, as a player, I'd try to get the Paladin's leader to send a company to the Granary to hold it until the party was done with the necromancer. As a GM I might add a little more grey area to their moral choice: the Paladins will provide some sort of combat advantage to the party (shooting arrows, casting buffs, even extra allies on the battlefield). The more Paladins they send to the granary, the longer they can hold it with fewer losses, but the fewer advantages the party gets in the battle with the necromancer. If they only send a small detachment, the party will fight the necromancer with a henchman or two, and the necromancer won't be able to call in weaker undead as reinforcements (being that the paladins are holding them off). The small detachment will hold the granary until the party arrives, but will be slaughtered to a man. If they send the whole paladin force, the granary will be held will minimal losses by the paladins, but the party won't get any combat support fighting the necromancer. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 19, 2012 16:25
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Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? If every other person in your group wants to play those races/play to get the benefits and you don't, maybe you should learn to deal or compromise because you are one person at a table of more people.
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Oct 19, 2012 16:28
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Mikan posted:If every other person in your group wants to play those races/play to get the benefits and you don't, maybe you should learn to deal or compromise because you are one person at a table of more people. Yeah I'm sorry but that sounds rad as hell. If people want to play fantasy critters in a fantasy game why wouldn't you let them? I mean I'm playing in a fantasycraft game where the party is a Lizardman Paladin who rides a raptor and shoots guns, a fire giantess mage, an Oni pit fighter, an Orc Fencer, and a human necromancer and it owns bones* *it is a necromancer joke EDIT: And prior party members were a swiss clockwork golem and a literal Dragon.
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Oct 19, 2012 16:38
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Chaotic Neutral posted:3) Refluffing exists if their choice of race is that much of a problem. Hell, refluffing is probably the single most important thing to have in your toolbox in general. (Especially when playing some variation of D&D.) Alternatively, if they want these races specifically because of their stat combinations, just let them put +2 into whichever two stats they like regardless of race. That way they can choose whatever they think is cool. (I'm assuming this is 4E, since I can't imagine people playing those races for powergaming reasons in 3.5.)
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Oct 19, 2012 17:10
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Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? If all they want is the stats, give them the stats. If your objection is that they're a motley collection of nonhumans and all they care about is getting +2/+2 to the right attributes then the simple compromise is to let them be a human who happens to mechanically be a Deva. It's easy enough to ask them to come up with a background that handwaves at the mysterious abilities they happen to have (The Pixie being tiny is the only one that might cause some hardship but maybe the player would be okay with a non-tiny 'pixie' who doesn't get or need the shrink and wee warrior features) Honestly, they'll be robbing Peter to pay Paul in a way since all three of the races end up being a bit light on truly optimized racial feat support.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:18
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Guesticles posted:So how the hell are they going to RP vikings then? That's like saying I want to run a game based on a family of eagles, but don't want to deal with the whole "flying" thing. I'm not sure I can find a Norse curse harsh enough to afflict you and all those that spring forth from your loins that matches the offense I take at this. I may have to go to the library for this one, to consult all those bits of Norse culture which are not rape-related. They're certainly more than you'd think.
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Oct 19, 2012 18:08
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Rulebook Heavily posted:I'm not sure I can find a Norse curse harsh enough to afflict you and all those that spring forth from your loins that matches the offense I take at this. I may have to go to the library for this one, to consult all those bits of Norse culture which are not rape-related. They're certainly more than you'd think. Oh god this is going to rule. I can't wait. 
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Oct 19, 2012 18:09
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Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? First, don't play games with people you hate. That never ends well. Second, mention the game and edition, because this plays out very differently between, say, 4th edition D&D, where this is about an alternate set of stat bonuses to 1st-level characters, and 3rd edition D&D, where that race choice is considered on par with 10-20 levels of character advancement. Third, if this is 4th edition, your players just told you they wanted to play a game where demons try to push the Far Realm into the Feywild in the hopes of, I dunno, destabilizing reality with the resonance cascade.
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Oct 19, 2012 20:10
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Rulebook Heavily posted:I'm not sure I can find a Norse curse harsh enough to afflict you and all those that spring forth from your loins that matches the offense I take at this. I may have to go to the library for this one, to consult all those bits of Norse culture which are not rape-related. They're certainly more than you'd think. I want to hear the curse you're cooking up more than I want to point out that was the comedy answer.
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Oct 19, 2012 20:23
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Affi posted:Group is annoying and wanting to play Devas, Pixies, Plants and Gitzerai. How do I get rid of their bodies? Don't run for them. They deserve a better GM.
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Oct 19, 2012 20:29
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