|
That's an awesome idea! The PCs, raised as zombies, have to figure a way to escape the BBEG's control, and hopefully bring themselves back to life. And maybe chow down on some brains when they get a chance.
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 02:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 09:26 |
|
|
ZearothK posted:Or have their characters restored as semi-autonomous undead under said necromancer, who is now their main guest giver.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 09:52
|
|
|
Haha, that would be brilliant  if the players attack and lose, of course. I wouldn't maneuver the group that way, no no no...The funny thing is, the module and original idea for this game are just 'dungeon crawl' - and this is just a side quest to get some XP! But we'll see how it goes. It would be amazing if every now and then they're compelled to do some horrible grave-robbing or whatever to suit this guy's needs...for no XP or gold gained. So next question is: how should I make this necromancer bad guy? I mean technically, like actually making an NPC. If I want him to be a continual pain in the side for the group, he should be a few levels higher. I'm not good with magic use in the game (I always play fighters or rangers) so I'll need to give him a spell book and a list of 'known spells'. Should I just use an AD&D character generator online to make a 5th or 6th level necromancer and then figure out how many spells he should have from there?
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 09:57
|
|
|
This seems like as good a place as any. Is a beholder lich too ridiculous or is it just ridiculous enough?
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 14:12
|
|
|
Just ridiculous enough for a beholder (assuming you mean the concept, and don't intend to make it a broken monster designed to wipe the party).
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 14:20
|
|
|
Lemon Curdistan posted:Just ridiculous enough for a beholder (assuming you mean the concept, and don't intend to make it a broken monster designed to wipe the party). Nah I don't intend to make him super broken. I'm thinking about attempting to stat one up for Dungeon World as a big bad for the players to deal with.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 14:25
|
|
|
There was a decent thread on statting up a Beholder in DW on G+, which might provide some inspiration: https://plus.google.com/112928858730524882505/posts/W1686BXVFUr
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 14:35
|
|
|
Len posted:This seems like as good a place as any. Is a beholder lich too ridiculous or is it just ridiculous enough? A Beholder Lich? No beholder would deign to turn themselves into a Lich - that's what lesser races do. You're looking at a Beholder Death Tyrant (and yes, they were a thing).
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 14:41
|
|
|
neonchameleon posted:A Beholder Lich? No beholder would deign to turn themselves into a Lich - that's what lesser races do. You're looking at a Beholder Death Tyrant (and yes, they were a thing). From what I read those were closer to a zombie than a lich. I'm actually thinking I'll take the lich from the DW book, add all the wizard spells, and slap some minuses to them so he isn't the super best wizard ever.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2013 15:15
|
|
|
Alright peoples. I have a player, who at level 13 was killed by Kas the Betrayer himself, in Ravenloft. The player instigated the fight, and while he was roleplaying well, he broke the code too many times. How many times am I supposed to let a player kill the guys who are giving him a job? Granted, this is Ravenloft, and he was playing a Chaotic Neutral paranoiac barbarian for months, but still, eventually, I had to lay the law down. He died epically. In a 1-on-1 fight with Kas, where he got the dark lord down to 33 hit points. Thing was, this player, roleplayed the effects of Ravenloft, the Dark Powers Checks basically, without being told to. He transgressed. Brilliant roleplayer, favorite player, he decided to play along and after a conversation, he agreed to be made into a dark lord. For people that have been following my posts since I'm an rear end in a top hat, well, this is the same guy who I wanted to kill because he wanted to roleplay going insane and raping people. A simple no to that, and yes, over time he became my favorite player, just a genius at crafting a story from his end, as long as their are the loose reigns. In my plane-jumping plot, which involves as much Planescape and Forgotten Realms as it does Ravenloft. The players were given a choice, and they decided to aide the big bad of our campaign, Vecna, and exile the mists of Ravenloft, one of their bosses, completely. They are coming up on the level that I've set for Vecna to destroy the Demi-Plane of Dread. Cheesy as it is, he's found his former prison-wardens are kept on basically a computer on Mechanus, and he's hacked it to the point that he's destroyed it. There. Dogshit on paper. Has worked well in game. That's the background. The other players decided to aid our big bad in exiling this player to his fate of torture by the Dark Powers. This player is about to be re-released from his prison of Ravenloft. He is about to resurface. And I want to give this player his former character back. *(since then he's been playing a cleric who aided the party so he could escape Ravenloft). So this character, now he's been transmogrified by the dark powers into an evil dark lord. He is going to cause problems for the rest of the party because of who he is. And he is also going to be more powerful than the other players because of who he is. I guess my question is, how should I handle giving my party back their character, who is now an insane dark lord of Ravenloft? Should I not do this? Or should I just sit back, and turn this game of high level D&D into a game of Paranoia? God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Sep 29, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 10:50
|
|
|
Characters (or players "role playing") who can't operate within a party, shouldn't be in elf games. If they can't regulate themselves then you have to Seriously, being the batshit crazy guy is fine if you are playing the "bring 3 characters because you're going to die a lot" style of game. But clearly you're not since you're going to such great lengths to bring back a "beloved" character that you were "forced" to kill because of awesome role playing.  I actually find chaotically-behaved characters really annoying and stressful as a DM, so I don't understand why you seem to insist on fostering them. tl;dr 
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 18:00
|
|
|
God Of Paradise posted:I guess my question is, how should I handle giving my party back their character, who is now an insane dark lord of Ravenloft? This just seems like a bad idea. 1. He's more powerful than the rest of the players, loving up all sorts of balance and potentially having the other players go "Why the gently caress did he get that epic char and can one shot everything?" 2. That character seems like he was fun in a chaotic kind of way. But bringing it back, when the other players had a hand in exiling the guy? Nah... gently caress that. At least bring up this idea with your players. Some poo poo you want to ask yourself: Do the player want his former character back, or do you? Will the other players be annoyed, or think its fun? Both of those questions are more important than any balance, story, party issues. It all boils down to wether bringing back that char will be beneficial to the game in any sort of fun way.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 18:16
|
|
|
If you give him the character back, that sounds not-very-fun for the other players. They'll either have to team up to take him out (in which case, why not just make him the BBEG NPC) or be his bitches (in which case, NPC quest-giver).
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 21:59
|
|
|
If you give him the character back, it seems like you're rewarding him for loving things up for that character in the first place? I mean, the lesson here is, "Keep doing stuff that eventually forces my hand and I kill and you'll get to comeback as a superdude."
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 22:02
|
|
|
If you absolutely must have him back, make him an NPC.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 22:06
|
|
|
Absolutely. In fact, PCs that become Big Bad Evil Bad Guy NPCs can be a lot of fun.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 22:14
|
|
|
Also, if the player was into playing the 'fall from grace' schtick, I think he'll be totally happy with the 'reward' of the character now being the major threat.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 22:47
|
|
|
Yeah, that's a "reward" the entire party can enjoy.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2013 22:48
|
|
|
Yeah, NPC it is. I still can't shake the notion that my player should control his former character. For some reason, the rest of the party having to put him down seems like a good opportunity to have PVP without it being a bunch of angry bullshit. But if you guys say that never works, then it probably never works. I really should just run a one-shot game of Paranoia, and get this kind of poo poo out of my system. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Sep 30, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 00:46
|
|
|
God Of Paradise posted:Yeah, NPC it is. I still can't shake the notion that my player should control his former character. For some reason, the rest of the party having to put him down seems like a good opportunity to have PVP without it being a bunch of angry bullshit. If you really want them to be able to kill each other, run a flashback or alternate stream where he gets to run his precious evil snowflake, and other characters play other villains (ideally ones you've introduced already, it's ok if not) representing a power struggle or something. They try to kill each other. The winner is a major villain later.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 16:42
|
|
|
I'm not sure if this has been covered in the 121 pages of this thread... My friend is gearing up to run a post-apocalyptic campaign in a couple months, and is concerned about minimizing "loading times," as she calls them. Basically, she has only played before with me or my friend Dean GMing, and both of us like to draw pretty elaborate and precise maps on the grid mat. I didn't really have any worthwhile advice for her besides, "Don't be like me, the guy who lays down individual dots for each tree in this forest encounter." I've got some dungeon tile sets, but they are of limited utility in the system she wants to run, which uses hexagons, and I've found them to be slower than just drawing anyway. Essentially, she wants to minimize the time spent preparing an encounter at the table, and I'm not sure what to tell her besides dumbing down the map.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:20
|
|
|
Draw it in advance, then it can be as shiny as you want.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:23
|
|
|
Draw them out beforehand on paper or foamboard, cut into modular pieces..?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:26
|
|
|
Or grab a drywipe battlemat in your choice of hexes or squares: http://paizo.com/products/btpy74id?DoubleSided-Battlemat-with-1-Squares-and-1-Hexes or similar
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:28
|
|
|
thespaceinvader posted:Or grab a drywipe battlemat in your choice of hexes or squares: http://paizo.com/products/btpy74id?DoubleSided-Battlemat-with-1-Squares-and-1-Hexes or similar Right, I've got one of those. The issue comes about when there are multiple encounters, or a dungeon that is bigger than the mat. Do you think transparency sheets could work? The only issue I see with drawing the maps beforehand is keeping them organized. I guess it does probably take less time to sort out coordinate labels than it does to draw a map, though. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:32
|
|
|
Speaking of battlemats, is there anywhere I can get good hex battlemaps of train stations and warehouses and things like that for roll20, I'm gonna be running a STALKER campaign in GURPS soon.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:37
|
|
|
Nihnoz posted:Speaking of battlemats, is there anywhere I can get good hex battlemaps of train stations and warehouses and things like that for roll20, I'm gonna be running a STALKER campaign in GURPS soon. I'm not sure about pre-made ones, but you might start here. Easiest mode would be overlaying hexes of the appropriate scale, but I'm guessing you want to embellish with collapsed areas and that kind of thing, too.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 19:44
|
|
|
I dunno how tactical your game is, but you can have a very satisfying fight on a hastily scribbled sketch map. If it is tactical, then get a roll of gridded vinyl and use dry erase markers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 21:24
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:I dunno how tactical your game is, but you can have a very satisfying fight on a hastily scribbled sketch map. WET-ERASE, never use dry-erase on a vinyl mat. It will never come off.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 22:22
|
|
|
Or buy a laminated cardboard one you can use drywipe on.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 22:36
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:I dunno how tactical your game is, but you can have a very satisfying fight on a hastily scribbled sketch map. it's roll20 so I can just draw stuff on the board, but I'd like something that's not an impossible-to-decipher scribble. Which is what my maps usually are. Nihnoz fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Oct 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 00:37
|
|
|
Nihnoz posted:it's roll20 so I can just draw stuff on the board, but I'd like something that's not an impossible-to-decipher scribble. Which is what my maps usually are. In that case you might want to invest in tiles for your game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 00:41
|
|
|
I have two battlemaps. Wet erase is better. One is used for on the fly encounters, possible encounters or even non-encounters where I sometimes use one just to build tension. The other battlemap is where sometimes predraw maps that I expect will come into play that session. These are for big encounters. But therein lies a problem. In RPG's this is hard to use unless they've seen this area before. One thing about maps I recommend, is drawing what the characters can see only. After they venture into an area that part of the map is uncovered. The two map system is also good for having mutliple-leveled buildings or dungeons.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 04:41
|
|
|
I like predrawing maps ahead of time, because then I can put in a lot of nice detail and have something that looks good on the table vs a hasty sloppy sketch. I'm good at drawing if I take my time at it, but when I'm in a hurry, it looks like poo poo. Also, I don't like taking a lot of time interrupting the flow of the game to draw a map. I usually buy 1" gridded easel pads at Staples. A 50-sheet pad is usually $15-20, and lasts around 15 sessions per pad (averaging 3 sheets per session). The grid squares are perfect for minis, are compatible with dungeon tiles, and can be cut up into pieces without any shame or guilt if you want to feed the map out as players explore it (in this case I'd recommend laying out a base sheet, and sticking the pieces down with a bit of glue stick or something). In this way you can also plan changes to the map, like one time I had a dragon knock out a bridge spanning a dungeon chasm, while the players were being pursued by a mob of gnolls.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 20:21
|
|
|
When playing in person I hand draw everything out as I go on a Crystal Caste Battle Mat. I found that it tends to hold up better to long term play nights versus my old Chessex mat which enjoyed bleeding in after the ink had been on there for an hour or so (this is probably a defect with the mat I would imagine since I know other people who have no issues). For Roll20 I went and found a dump of the Final Fantasy 1 tilesets from the PSP remakes and have been using Tiled to fashion my own dungeons out of them. If I need to use text I just go ahead and use the Text tool so people can read it. (Map of the first floor of a dungeon from my recent game: http://i.imgur.com/xFtOuSC.png) Any chests/monsters/statues/etc are put in using the layers in Roll20 so I can change stuff as needed. Otherwise random mini dungeons and surprise encounters not planned are drawn out by hand using the Roll20 stuff. Dr. Doji Suave fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Oct 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 21:04
|
|
|
I'm running a Next campaign through Maptool with some friends over Vent and having some trouble making map encounters. I've been using pyromancers.com which is great, but has a bit of a limited selection in terms of objects/art assets. I see you can load more stuff in but I can't find anyplace I can get more stuff to load in. Any suggestions, or alternatives for map making in that regard?
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 21:50
|
|
|
Since it's map-chat, I figure it's worth mentioning how we have recently starting doing mapping - we used to use Maptool but it became such a pain in the rear end for the other GMs to make maps that we went to using a big whiteboard and a set of dry-erase markers from Costco. I got the white boards free from work, but I know they can be expensive. I draw everything out and we measure movement at 5 feet per inch, using a tape measure just like we do for wargaming. Super simple and because the module we're playing gives 1000gp to map each level I make the players map it out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 21:52
|
|
|
Dohaeris posted:I'm running a Next campaign through Maptool with some friends over Vent and having some trouble making map encounters. I've been using pyromancers.com which is great, but has a bit of a limited selection in terms of objects/art assets. I see you can load more stuff in but I can't find anyplace I can get more stuff to load in. Any suggestions, or alternatives for map making in that regard? There's a giant (like 2GB) archive of stuff for MapTool if you don't mind making your maps directly in that. It's supposedly available on bit torrent but last I saw, nobody was seeding. I have the archive on a public server, I just don't want to hand out the URL. You don't have PMs, but if you email me at badmunki@goondorfs.net I'll send you the URL. krushgroove posted:Since it's map-chat, I figure it's worth mentioning how we have recently starting doing mapping - we used to use Maptool but it became such a pain in the rear end for the other GMs to make maps that we went to using a big whiteboard and a set of dry-erase markers from Costco. I got the white boards free from work, but I know they can be expensive. I draw everything out and we measure movement at 5 feet per inch, using a tape measure just like we do for wargaming. Super simple and because the module we're playing gives 1000gp to map each level I make the players map it out. Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Oct 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 22:00
|
|
|
Oh, awesome. Sent you an email. Is there a way to make Maptool snap to the grid? I found some interesting tiles in maptool but am having difficulty making them go where I want them exactly. And they're in like, 4x4 chunks so I have to align them all.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 22:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 09:26 |
|
|
Yeah, there's an option in the toolbox, the one that looks like a rectangle with dots on each corner, that's the snap-to-grid button for drawing. Or, when you've placed an object on the map, you can right-click on it and tell it to snap to grid. I think there's a preference somewhere to make objects snap by default, but I can't remember where exactly. e: Yeah, for objects, right-click->snap to grid, or set it in the general preferences, lower left corner: Objects, Start Snap to Grid. You can also set that for tokens and background stuff.   And for drawing, the blue rectangle at middle left: 
Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Oct 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2013 22:32
|
|