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Project1 posted:Anyone have experience using language in their games? What I mean is, your players are expected to select what language(s) their character speaks, and if they don't have a common language with an NPC, they need to work out another way of communicating. Using 3.5/4e DnD... I always run that anything with an intelligence score speaks and understands common to some degree. If someone in the party speaks something's native language, I usually give a diplomacy boost as long as that party member does the talking. Written language is another matter; you need to have the language on your list to read it, but you can make insight checks to get an idea of what sort of document it is. My party has a good spread of languages so its not been much of an issue, but one time when the party split, the dwarf wasn't with the section of the party that found some stuff written in Dwarven (and no one else had it as a language). So they made insight checks to figure out the nature of the documents but had to wait till they linked back up with the dwarf before they could get specifics. I sometimes toss little hints and flavor text-type stuff and such in languages party members speak carved in walls or lying around. Its usually nothing terribly useful, but its a little incentive to keep language diversity. (Which reminds me, I haven't done that in a while.) I really wish I was better at linguistics so I could make up my languages and alphabets and just leave stuff lying around that my party could try to crack if they wanted to. Edit: If I didn't do 'everything speaks common', I'd probably use the language barrier as a plot hook to get the aid of an NPC who would translate or otherwise provide some method of translation readily available. Guesticles fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Nov 17, 2012 |
# ? Nov 17, 2012 05:34 |
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# ? Jun 12, 2024 12:27 |
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Project1 posted:Anyone have experience using language in their games? What I mean is, your players are expected to select what language(s) their character speaks, and if they don't have a common language with an NPC, they need to work out another way of communicating. I've always used the "Pick your languages as you play" rules, because it lets people make sure their choices are relevant and they can go AHA! As for languages they couldn't know (Say a dimensional outsider shows up and talks to them) they usually find another way to communicate or they avoid them. The only good workaround I've found is to let them roll skill checks to deduce simple aspects of the language, then basically babytalk at them in bad English. Then they still have to work things out but it's not hopeless/reliant on earlier lucky language picks.
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# ? Nov 17, 2012 05:34 |
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Guesticles posted:I really wish I was better at linguistics so I could make up my languages and alphabets and just leave stuff lying around that my party could try to crack if they wanted to. I'll tell you from experience it's fun, but not really that fun. The part where you make up your own grammar rules is great. The part where you come up with relational rules and pronouns and poo poo? Awesome! The part where you have to keep a dictionary of every term? That's another story.
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# ? Nov 17, 2012 05:55 |
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For my 3.5 D&D games I just throw a potion of tongues onto their path if they'll need it or just have an interpreter nearby if they are in a city.
Tardcore fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Nov 17, 2012 |
# ? Nov 17, 2012 06:01 |
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The White Dragon posted:I'll tell you from experience it's fun, but not really that fun. The part where you make up your own grammar rules is great. The part where you come up with relational rules and pronouns and poo poo? Awesome! The part where you have to keep a dictionary of every term? That's another story. Mainly I'd just like to toss together an alphabet and grammar/phonetics that aren't just an English cypher. Something that could exist in the background to sort of flesh out the world. But I as suck at languages, this would be effort better spent elsewhere. When I ran a game over IRC, I had the thief hireling speak in "local thieves' guild argot", primarily for comedic value. The argot was english, but with a horrible accent. Which I typed out in the best/worse obfuscated phonetic transcription I could manage, so the end result would be something like "N'teh d'stor'n b't wa ha'izi n'kwec eht wi'f'mih t'deh". This wouldn't work very well spoken*, but since that game was done over IRC and everything was typed out, it was practically gibberish. It took the players a few sessions to realize I wasn't just mashing the keyboard when their hireling was talking. I just wish I could do something a little more consistent and a little more logical (and ideally would work when speaking the language) to give my players something they could explore and try to unravel if they wanted. *Sounding it out was the only way to make sense of it. I made a point of trying to never spell the same word the same way twice.
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# ? Nov 17, 2012 06:33 |
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There are four options really. A. PCs can communicate freely with target. (not fun, but the norm - the language isn't the point of the conversation.) B. PCs can MOSTLY communicate with target. (Simple and leads to some comedy misunderstanding potentially, could be fun.) C. PCs can't communicate with the target, and must find a way to. (Is fine if thats a quest in itself and is interesting - go hunt through the forbidden library for a dictionary of Xthll Nouns that the Prince refuses to let anyone read under penalty of death. But can also just be boring). D. PCs can't communicate with the target at all, and either that ends that plot-thread, or ...I don't know really. Yes you can have fun with options B and C, but make something of it. I hate the Killer Dm attitude of "Well since none of you guys speak Dwarf, guess you'll not be able to talk to anyone down here!". If that's the case, make it "The PCs don't speak Dwarf Language, but the Dwarves seem to be trying to tell you something very important - either do this quest to be able to work it out, or ignore them. Working it out will take a day, and if you ignore it you can go now. Ignore it? Okay cool, OH poo poo THEY WERE WARNING YOU ABOUT AWESOME BOSS FIGHT!!!! Work it out? Okay cool, you work out they were telling you to hurry through the dwarf lands at top speed because there is AWESOME BOSS FIGHT COMING AND OH poo poo HERE IT IS!
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# ? Nov 17, 2012 14:39 |
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Guesticles posted:
Type the lines into Google translate, into some language (one they don't know obviously). Paste into Word. Highlight and change to wingdings or the font of some other language (that is not the actual original target language). If you need to say it, say the version not pasted into the foreign script so you can sound it out. To speed up their unraveling, you can give them Rosetta Stone-type things (the big rock not the software) with bilingual translations of little bits of text. They may be able to deduce titles and places and some nouns and verbs. You can also have bilingual speakers slip a word from the other language into their speech, in either direction (gibberish speaker occasionally uses English, English speaker uses gibberish language).
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# ? Nov 17, 2012 17:25 |
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homullus posted:Type the lines into Google translate, into some language (one they don't know obviously). Paste into Word. Highlight and change to wingdings or the font of some other language (that is not the actual original target language). If you need to say it, say the version not pasted into the foreign script so you can sound it out. I'll need to keep that in mind, that's a good idea.
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# ? Nov 17, 2012 21:23 |
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Captain_Indigo posted:Look forward to hearing about it. Just out of curiosity, what system are you running? It was a smash hit. The party scientist tried to sedate the beast so the pointman/assassin could arrest it, which failed, and so they shot its arm off and chased it through the city streets, eventually leading to a sprinting chase down the station's service tunnels, where the pointman caught up to him and tripped him, flipping him down a service shaft where the poor mutant's skull pulped on impact. Then the team's soulless bureaucrat smoothed things over with HQ. The start-under-pressure made everyone snap into their roles and they really played to their characters. Then they went to investigate the printing operation, which lead to them finding the most recent kidnapping victim and flawlessly capturing Scalari (The crazy doctor) with a stun gun. Except the assassin who snuck up on him said "I give him a moment to let the situation sink in before I stun him", which let the doctor put the estate into freefall towards earth, so they had to get out fast. The bureaucrat grabbed the girl and the assassin grabbed Scalari, while the team scientist tried to restart the engines and only succeeded on half - so the station started spinning wildly. Under the force of the spin, the bureaucrat couldn't get out with the girl, so he panicked, slashed her throat with a scalpel (rather than leave her to fall) and fled for their ship. They got out just in time, and managed to get a missile sent at the estate before it could crashland on earth. There's some really fantastic inter-party conflict and roleplaying, from guys I normally don't see it from. And I think the sudden-pressure mission start had a lot to do with that
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 04:41 |
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I'm really terrible at acting and the first time I tried to do a "voice" for the NPC's, I ended up feeling so embarrassed. You know that "Oh God why" feeling when you remember something stupid you did? That's what I get every time I think of that. Problem is, now I'm completely the opposite. I just do my regular voice but act a bit. I'll be brooding when the villain is evil or whatever but I'll never change my accent which I feel is a bit cheap. Am I just worrying too much about humiliating myself? Also is there a tool online for helping with world building? I'm great at building worlds and campaigns.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 05:36 |
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The Worst Muslim posted:
Yes, go big or go home.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 06:53 |
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The Worst Muslim posted:Am I just worrying too much about humiliating myself? Who are you gaming with? If you're gaming with relative strangers I guess I could understand some self-consciousness, but if you're gaming with a group of longtime friends, who gives a gently caress if you sound silly? Run with it. You never know, you might decide it's fun.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 06:56 |
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Who are you gaming with? Yeah, and usually it snowballs -- if you do it once successfully, it's a lot easier to do again, and when everyone gets into it it's a hoot.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 07:11 |
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I have the same problem with getting way to self-conscious to do silly voices.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 07:28 |
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A guy we usually game with is basically "bad accent man". All his characters have a terrible fake accent of some kind. It's hilarious. His most memorable character was the halfling Igor, with the eastern european accent, who would buy/steal/loot as much garlic as possible. Someone eventually said "that's a bit of a racist stereotype", and he responded with "No, comrade, garlic for in case of vampires". So obviously in the next session there were vampires.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 07:32 |
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The Worst Muslim posted:Problem is, now I'm completely the opposite. I just do my regular voice but act a bit. I'll be brooding when the villain is evil or whatever but I'll never change my accent which I feel is a bit cheap. Am I just worrying too much about humiliating myself? If you ever feel self conscious about it remember exactly what you're doing. You're sitting at a table with your buddies. You are rolling dice to see if their elves beat up your elves. And like Xaander said. Once your party laughs at it a few times they'll probably start jumping in. Hell in the game I'm playing the Elementalist player will glare at me holding a lit Bic whenever my Druid starts antagonizing the NPCs. This goes back to the time I got him thrown in a dungeon arena maze because I couldn't stop calling the Orc Warlord "King Bootlick". The thing that set this behavior off? The Bard decided that his Vicious Mockery was Swedish Chef's voice from the Muppets.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 09:48 |
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I'm running a campaign wherein the players are being employed by particularly powerful NPCs, who each want the others plans to fail. The villain is a powerful warlock trying to use a massive magical power source to become unstoppable, and the players are trying to beat him to it and stop him taking control. They can't take this guy on in a fight, and I want him to be around afterwards so I can use him in later campaigns. The only thing is, I want to give them a payoff at the end where they get the better of him and ruin his plans, without it feeling like I'm just handing them a deus ex machina - basically I want them to outmaneuver or out-think him. I'd be interested if anything you guys could propose. For those of you familiar with 13th Age, I basically want them to give an Icon (basically the Diabolist, but I'm using a custom setting so not quite) a whole hell of a lot of trouble without killing them. I will if it seems like the best outcome, but I think it'd make for a more interesting political dynamic to have this guy deal with the consequences of the player's efforts over time, and I can also spin more plot hooks out of it if need be. Of course, if killing him is the most interesting outcome, drat the consequences - I'll do it. I'm already self-conscious of having super-powerful-nigh-untouchable characters so involved in the plot. The scenario so far is written up here if you want the details. The Worst Muslim posted:Also is there a tool online for helping with world building? I'm great at building worlds and campaigns. I've actually found Masterplan to be far more useful for worldbuilding than for actual adventure planning (mainly because I impulsively derail my own campaign almost constantly as I think of fun ideas). It's got a built in encyclopedia and you can link entries together, have specific information for the DM only, and use HTML tagging to organize things nicely. In addition, you can link any new rules, races, classes or monsters you create to encyclopedia entries for easy reference. That kind of stuff is specific to 4th Edition D&D, but the generic features are more than enough to get going. It's the next best thing to having your own campaign wiki, and it's the thing better than that if you're running 4th Edition. Pyradox fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Nov 18, 2012 |
# ? Nov 18, 2012 11:56 |
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Any good programs out there for building a good world map? I don't have a very steady hand so my drawn out maps tend to look like trash.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 20:23 |
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I've used AutoRealm but I think you could probably get the same functionality out of Photoshop/GiMP/Paint.net plugins.
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# ? Nov 18, 2012 21:39 |
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Guesticles posted:I've used AutoRealm but I think you could probably get the same functionality out of Photoshop/GiMP/Paint.net plugins. I'll try this out, thanks. Edit: Oh this is really cool, I love the fractal lines for making coast lines. Tardcore fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Nov 18, 2012 |
# ? Nov 18, 2012 22:08 |
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I'm thinking about running a horror/suspense PbP oneshot using Cthulhu Dark, which is a very light system for cooperative horror games. My current plan is to have the players in a confined space like an airplane and start out small, maybe mix up mundane and supernatural threats. So I'd begin with someone suffering from a mysterious disease, then something goes wrong with the plane, which is made worse by the disease spreading and driving people crazy and so forth. I'm worried about two things: One is the effect of the confined space limiting the players too much; there is only so much you can do in an airplane. Another is getting the escalation right; I don't want to overwhelm the players but I also want to keep the pressure up. What do you think of the scenario? Any advice on how to improve it?
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# ? Nov 20, 2012 21:19 |
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scissorman posted:I'm thinking about running a horror/suspense PbP oneshot using Cthulhu Dark, which is a very light system for cooperative horror games. Put it on a ship rather than an airplane. I can't think of an adventure that is improved by never being able to leave the seating area.
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# ? Nov 20, 2012 21:26 |
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homullus posted:Put it on a ship rather than an airplane. I can't think of an adventure that is improved by never being able to leave the seating area. If Rod Serling had been a DM, he would disagree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_at_20,000_Feet But unless you are
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# ? Nov 20, 2012 21:52 |
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Part of the reason for setting it on a plane is so that the players can't just leave. If your ship is on fire, you don't desperately fight against it, you just hop in a rowboat. So how do you deal with this? I imagine it is a common problem in horror games.
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# ? Nov 21, 2012 10:37 |
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Because hopping in a rowboat doesn't have much hope of crossing the Atlantic. It's also exposed to the cold as balls night sea and you don't have a ton of room for supplies. The Titanic happened in an era with relatively fast communication and they were still only able to save about 700 people out of 2200 or so. So yes people would fight like hell to save a ship in the middle of the ocean.
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# ? Nov 21, 2012 10:51 |
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So I'm running 4e with my friends and everyone seems to be having fun, but I need advice on a couple of things. First, the party has no defender, and I notice that's been taking its toll on the party, especially on the Warpriest, who's obviously all too eager to punch the evil out of everything without a care in the world. Since we only have 4 people at the table, I'm considering coming up with a Defender to tag along with them. Is that a good idea? How do you guys do it? "Companion character" is what some people said is the solution when I googled around, but no one really explains how to make one (I don't have much experience as a DM ) Also, what to do about players who can only make it to sessions occasionally, if just recruiting others isn't really an option? One of my players has been having some work issues coming up at unpredictable times and is considering dropping out, which I'd like to avoid.
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# ? Nov 21, 2012 16:51 |
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clavicle posted:So I'm running 4e with my friends and everyone seems to be having fun, but I need advice on a couple of things. Companion characters are basically NPCs written up in monster stat blocks. When I had attendance problems with a smaller group, I got sick of rebalancing fights on the fly to account for absences, and it became doubly-bad if (e.g.) no defenders showed up. So I created companion characters for those PCs. To speed things, I calculated their initiative as though they rolled a 10 and gave them a set average damage roll for all attacks (doubled for crits). For any complicated powers, I simplified them (e.g., Avalanche Strike proned the user instead of -4 to defense) or just swapped them out for others of the same level. Finally, for dailies, I toned down the power so it was encounter-level or found a similar-feel encounter power from 2 levels higher (e.g., 3rd level encounter for 1st level daily). The whole idea was that I could hand any player a companion character and they'd be able to run that character quickly and without having to figure out how a bunch of complex powers worked, and the only variables that needed to be tracked were HP and surges. Definitely a good option for the irregular player. About the defender issue: generally I think that things ought to be fun for the PCs and their choices. Someone runs a non-optimized character because it's fun? Then great, I take that into account when building encounters (obviously a fictional example in my game, bunch of munchkins for the most part in my group). But, the way 4E is designed, you need a defender. You can fudge healing through an NPC or boons or whatever, no party is ever short of strikers, and as for controllers -- the best status effect to put on a monster is "death", and having an extra striker does that pretty well. But defenders are key to 4E tactical combat? You could redesign encounters so a defender is unnecessary (e.g., all ranged combatants), but that'll get old. You could create a companion NPC defender, but all that will do is let some PC run two characters (because the last thing you need is to run another NPC) and cause you to rework any encounters you've already designed. The best option probably is to convince someone to switch classes, and allow them to do it at no penalty (up to and including changing their stats, feats, skills, magic items, race, etc.). That warpriest? Sounds like a perfect candidate for a paladin. (And point out that 4E paladins aren't like those boring earlier-version do-gooders; they're basically well-armed zealots "on a mission from God", as the Blues Brothers would put it.) Someone is playing a monk? Then convince them to play a Brawling fighter. You get the idea. If you point out that the PCs are getting creamed in every fight, and that you have a solution essentially continues playing the same character, someone should go for it. (After all, the PC's personality should remain the same, just the specific abilities and game mechanics change. And if everyone is so in love with their specific mechanics that no one will make this change to help the game out, well, that's fine too. Hope they pack a ton of healing potions.) Also, the problem might be that your players think that fighters are the most boring class in the entire game. It's completely different in 4E. Defenders are all fun to play (except maybe the Essentials defenders) and each is distinct in how they fill the role. I think controllers are the only role that comes close to being as interesting. Or another approach: which is more fun? Shooting two big arrows every round and occasionally shooting one more when the warlord tells you to? Or suplexing an ettin, giving him a wedgie, and slapping him a pinkbelly so that he is enraged enough to keep attacking you instead of going after that ranger who keeps shooting him with two (or sometimes three) arrows round after round? Finally, you didn't say you were going to do this and I doubt you were based on your post, but because it ought to be said often -- when someone misses, don't screw them out of XP, gold, or items. That just sucks, especially in 4E where the math runs everything. It's not that everyone else is more dedicated to the game, it's that someone else has something better to do on a given day (family, work, catching up on sleep after working 80 hours, playing in a different campaign that overlaps every six weeks, or whatever). It's basically saying, "prioritize this or you get rewarded less." Umm, that's what my job does, I'd rather not have the principle carry over to game night. Alternately, if the game is fun, then attendance is its own reward, and absent players don't need a penalty.
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# ? Nov 21, 2012 18:02 |
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Nonvalueadded User posted:and allow them to do it at no penalty (up to and including changing their stats, feats, skills, magic items, race, etc.) Why would you ever penalise people for rebuilding their character in the first place? Don't do this. Don't be a Bad DM. (This is addressed to people silly enough to do this, not to Nonvalued User).
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# ? Nov 21, 2012 18:21 |
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clavicle posted:So I'm running 4e with my friends and everyone seems to be having fun, but I need advice on a couple of things. I believe DM Guide 2 has a list of suggested companions by level, but I give my party a 5th "henchman" slot. The party's hench is full character with feats/powers. The party can give their hench orders, and they are generally trusthworthy; If the hench thinks the fight is unwinnable, they might run (D/B/I check to keep them from breaking, etc), but they won't sell the party out or straight-up backstab them. The party doesn't level their henches, they level the henchman slot. Any NPC that fills that slot becomes that level. Once they get a lair, I'm going to give them a mechanism to swap out their 5th from an expanding cast, so they don't have to level each one individually. I also have a player who's considering joining but can't always make it due a temporarily chaotic schedule. The henchman slot has helped me with that because this person now the ability drop in and out of sessions as needed. He's new to 4e, so I think he likes that he's playing different characters when he is able to make it, so ymmv on that.
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# ? Nov 21, 2012 19:45 |
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Nonvalueadded User posted:Also, the problem might be that your players think that fighters are the most boring class in the entire game. It's completely different in 4E. Defenders are all fun to play (except maybe the Essentials defenders) and each is distinct in how they fill the role. I think controllers are the only role that comes close to being as interesting. Or another approach: which is more fun? Shooting two big arrows every round and occasionally shooting one more when the warlord tells you to? Or suplexing an ettin, giving him a wedgie, and slapping him a pinkbelly so that he is enraged enough to keep attacking you instead of going after that ranger who keeps shooting him with two (or sometimes three) arrows round after round? Yeah, Brawler Fighters are the type of Monk I always wanted to play. So I was super psyched when someone showed me they were an option. If the theoretical Monk is a hard sell. Here's a crossposted image from the Hot Modrons thread. A DM basically sold his Eclipse Phase group on 4e by running a mini campaign centered around them tracking down a hacker in an anime inspired MMO. The player who rolled a hand to hand fighter in said MMO was treated with this reskinned character card:
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# ? Nov 21, 2012 20:08 |
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Hey guys, I just need some ideas. My party is caught up in a large undead assault on a city, which is going to last 2 ingame days (2 waves). They've already ventured below the city to defuse a series of bombs laid by undead sympathisers (defused 2, one detonated), and are on the way to save the Justicar-General of the city's Paladin order, who is pinned down by flesh golems and needs someone to take out the controlling necromancer. I have the finale of the battle written up nicely, but I need 1-2 more "filler" things for them to do during it. I thought hold off a massive wave of minions in a broken bit of wall maybe would be good, but its all getting a bit combat heavy. Bearing in mind that there will be a lull in the violence, what kind of things can you guys think of for RP?
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# ? Nov 23, 2012 16:03 |
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Lord Twisted posted:Hey guys, I just need some ideas. Are these zombie undead, or necromancer undead? I read necromancer, but only for the flesh golems so I'm not sure. If you want RP, make an NPC they know and love (or one of the players themselves) happen to notice that one of the undead looks like a loved one (their brother/father/mother/sister would especially be awesome) and have that NPC freak out and start charging out to where the undead are coming from by themselves, so the PCs have to try and restrain him or something.
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# ? Nov 23, 2012 18:25 |
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Lord Twisted posted:Hey guys, I just need some ideas. Maybe have a bit of a role-playing thing slash skill challenge where they have to rally the citizens to prepare for the final assault? Maybe even split it up so that half the party's trying to rally the city against the undead horde and the other half's tracking down and eliminating the last of the undead sympathizers in the city? Throw in the minion thing and there's two good fillers right there.
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# ? Nov 23, 2012 18:49 |
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Lord Twisted posted:I have the finale of the battle written up nicely, but I need 1-2 more "filler" things for them to do during it. I thought hold off a massive wave of minions in a broken bit of wall maybe would be good, but its all getting a bit combat heavy. Bearing in mind that there will be a lull in the violence, what kind of things can you guys think of for RP? Would you be able to be a little more specific about what you're looking for? I've got some broad ideas, but don't know if they're what you're looking for. Have someone in your party give a "But they'll never take OUR FREEDOM" speech to the assembled paladins. Maybe the party is on bomb clean up. Has the leader of the undead sympathizers been caught? (Or maybe who they are is known, but no one can get prove it?) There might be evidence in the blast crater, or on the bombs they defused. If I recall, you've got a 3rd encounter planned with a wizard and a portal. Maybe the party does something with the wizard; fetch components or something. Maybe a mage thinks they developed a way to reverse undeath on a large scale, and needs test subjects.
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# ? Nov 23, 2012 18:54 |
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Razorwired posted:Yeah, Brawler Fighters are the type of Monk I always wanted to play. So I was super psyched when someone showed me they were an option. If the theoretical Monk is a hard sell. Here's a crossposted image from the Hot Modrons thread. A DM basically sold his Eclipse Phase group on 4e by running a mini campaign centered around them tracking down a hacker in an anime inspired MMO. The player who rolled a hand to hand fighter in said MMO was treated with this reskinned character card: This is completely wonderful. Are there cards for other characters?
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# ? Nov 23, 2012 20:15 |
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AlphaDog posted:This is completely wonderful. Are there cards for other characters? They're collected here at the top of the page, and Ettin explains a bit about what they're based on two posts below: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3342275&pagenumber=98
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# ? Nov 23, 2012 22:11 |
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Thanks guys! I've narrowed it down to a few ideas based on yours: Big camp out in the main city square in between the fighting - equiv of a full rest - Party has to gather up materials for the wizard performing the ritual to close the undead portal, while consoling NPCs who they know who have lost people, perhaps having to mercy kill one. As a side track they know one of the guards is a traitor, but don't know who. I figure they'll get "close to finding out" who the traitor is, then the next attack wave will come, interrupting things. During the fighting they'll meet back up with the NPC who knows who the traitor is... turns out its someone assigned to guard the wizard who is doing the crucial ritual. Cue race to save the wizard, cue final battle atop the tower. The tower is a university of magic, a tempting target for the undead (controlled by a lich essentially). The mage performing the ritual has a series of scrolls of Summon Meteor, which he intends to use to demolish the tower if the whole battle goes to hell. Party will arrive as he has used one of the scrolls (dying from guard betrayal), and will have found that the undead leader has tied the ritual's power to juice up a summoned Beholder, which they will then have to duel atop the tower. Halfway through the fight a meteor hits the midsection of the tower, and the PCs have to finish off the Beholder while in freefall over the city, which triggers the ritual and banishes the entire undead army. They then have about a round to save themselves from "certain death" from the fall (if it all goes wrong then they'll still survive, just with much description of horror, broken equipment which I'll replace for them, etc).
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# ? Nov 24, 2012 13:08 |
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Lemon Curdistan posted:They're collected here at the top of the page, and Ettin explains a bit about what they're based on two posts below: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3342275&pagenumber=98 Thanks, I didn't look back far enough (only 20 pages). These are great.
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# ? Nov 24, 2012 14:50 |
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Razorwired posted:Because hopping in a rowboat doesn't have much hope of crossing the Atlantic. It's also exposed to the cold as balls night sea and you don't have a ton of room for supplies. The Titanic happened in an era with relatively fast communication and they were still only able to save about 700 people out of 2200 or so. Of course it's relatively easy to arrange for an escalation of this if the setting is remotely modern and has good quality lifeboats. Whatever happened happened at night and one of the first things that happened was loss of control and the lifeboats being dumped. Now the crew only has a handful of inflatable lifeboats left which aren't anywhere near enough to save the passengers and only give you a very small chance of survival (Which improves the longer the PCs hold out). Now the players will have to win against whatever is happening or at least keep themselves alive long enough for the crew and passengers to be whittled down until they fit in the remaining life rafts and rescue is close enough to pick them up before they drown/freeze to death/starve/etc. This is harder but not impossible to do with a train. Trans Siberia express decides to come to a stop in the middle of Siberia? Rescue is coming, but surviving until they get there is not going to be easy!
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# ? Nov 24, 2012 17:17 |
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# ? Jun 12, 2024 12:27 |
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Why is the Trans-Siberia express stopping in the middle of its route? Was it… Savatage?
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# ? Nov 24, 2012 17:22 |