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P.d0t posted:I basically refer to this as the "Usual Suspects" party composition method. "Reservoir Dogs" is another good method. By "Reservoir Dogs", do you mean "pretend to kill someone close to every character, threaten their lives to go along with a crime they don't want to commit, and ensure they have just enough information and skills that they don't get completely killed when everything goes to poo poo"?
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Feb 15, 2014 03:18
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QuantumNinja posted:By "Reservoir Dogs", do you mean "pretend to kill someone close to every character, threaten their lives to go along with a crime they don't want to commit, and ensure they have just enough information and skills that they don't get completely killed when everything goes to poo poo"? I was thinking more along the lines of "[NPC] has put together a team of people who may or may not know each other at all." Because it seems like "group party composition" never actually happens, ever, so plot-device happens instead.
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Feb 15, 2014 03:25
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What I did in my last 13th Age game to do the whole "how do you know each other" thing is this... We had Fighter Ranger Mage All three are working for a lord in a fair size castle/farming community of about 100-150 people, the way I figured this is that they will know of each other but not be best buddies. Turns out all 3 had something expensive stolen, the fighter 6 shiny new shortswords, the ranger a set of magical stay-clean swamp waders and the Mage a fist sized magical rock. I had the grumpy rear end lord call them all in to see him and proceed to give them a massive rant about taking care of poo poo better and how he's not a bottomless money pit and they had best find the stuff or bad things will happen. Queue the intro quest of "find who's stealing poo poo and why" (turns out creepy guy was building a harvest golem to divert the guards while he stole the magical maguffin) Seemed to work really well and as an addition to the normal 13th age background stuff I also had them write why they took employment with the lord and what they were doing just before. Edit: What was really funny was explaining the setup, calling them into the lords chamber. They were expecting the usual "you have been selected blah blah blah" and got a 5 minute, in character shouty rant about how much of a bunch of screwups they were. They actually looked ashamed out of character. It also broke the ice when they spent a good time in character bitching about how much of an rear end in a top hat the lord is. AceClown fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 03:38
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P.d0t posted:I was thinking more along the lines of "[NPC] has put together a team of people who may or may not know each other at all." Because it seems like "group party composition" never actually happens, ever, so plot-device happens instead. It dawns on me now that I was thinking of Reindeer Games, and I'm pretty embarrassed about that.
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Feb 15, 2014 03:42
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I'd really appreciate some additional ideas for a semi-one-off for my group based around getting someone to a wedding and (possibly) giving a player a glorious death. One of my friends who's formed the fun backbone of my group has decided to get married to a girl from the US, so next week a small number of the group will be going from the UK for the wedding and generally enjoy a last proper week with him. Given flights and stuff we're not sure when if ever he'll be able to join in with D&D again, so we're making time for one last game with the small group we've got. It's 4E, although I've always played fast and loose by the rules to make it fun (and also because they tend to be really slow at combat otherwise). And the group tend to be happy to be railroaded a little bit if it ends up with them hitting stuff and killing things in a cool way. I've looked around for inspiration and come up with the party coming across an exceptionally hungover, naked dwarf who's been lashed to a tree. He's meant to be getting married later that day, seventy miles away, and the last thing he remembers is being out on his stag night with his friends. So from that we come to a classic "get the groom to the Church" romp. But complications: - The groom lost his family's heirloom brooch in a neighbouring village - In the village a woman says that he married her last night - She turns out to be a succubus - They're going to arrive too late and bad poo poo has happened - Possible time travel á la Galaxy Quest They've also never fought a dragon so I thought I'd throw one in. And I've asked the groom if he wants a glorious noble death at the end. I'd really appreciate general ideas for how to make the travelling fun, and for things at the wedding itself. I read somewhere the idea of a huge cake exploding, making difficult terrain around it in a blast. They've already had a fight on top of speeding carriages so I can't really do that again. Thanks!
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Feb 15, 2014 10:23
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I'd avoid the 'bride is secretly a succubus' one, might be misinterpreted. A good thought would be the non-groom party members finding some kind of wedding interrupting force, a dragon crashing the party for the expensive gifts; rival noble who plans to forcefully marry the bride for political reasons; or the ol' standby crazy cultists. Have them do everything they can to prevent them from spoiling the ceremony then at some point during the proceedings (the "Speak now or forever hold your peace" part because obviously) the chaos spills into the chapel through whatever window/wall/door sounds the most fun at the moment. Granted if a player's the groom you'd probably not want to keep them out for longer then a round or two. And killing the groom on his wedding day, eesh.
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Feb 15, 2014 11:15
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I'll ditto the "Dragon Crashes the wedding party for the gifts" The succubus thing is overdone, but imagine the "Speak now or forever hold your peace" and then a MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON bursts through the stained glass, showering the wedding party with the shattered image of Saint Cuthbert. The groomsmen and bridesmaids draw their weapons and go "Let's Do This..."
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Feb 15, 2014 12:16
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I really like the dragon crashing through stained glass idea l. Also sorry if I wasn't clear earlier, but the real groom wouldn't be the in-game groom: I just wanted an excuse to get a wedding into the game. And I'll rethink the succubus idea: I'd thought it'd be okay if it was the wife he needs to get rid of rather than the one he intends to marry (thinking of the Firefly episode mainly) but maybe that's a subject I need to steer clear of entirely.
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Feb 15, 2014 12:50
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What are some good ways to have logic puzzles and the like in an IRC game? I am running an Exalted game and am interested in giving them a story mostly focused on logical stuff as they investigate a tomb rather then just throwing ghosts at them, but I find the medium of IRC is a bit annoying. If it wasn't I could like make puzzles to give to them and such, but I can't do that here. What's some good puzzles or ways to make puzzles that aren't just 'roll your pool, pass it succeed' kind of stuff?
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Feb 15, 2014 18:05
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Going back to that IKRPG game, my players helped defend a Noble's mansion from a really big group of enemies. The players won, but during the battle they started to kill the garrison because "they were useless" (read: not achieving hits whenever they attacked). After the battle, they were on the verge of killing everyone, including the noble, and making a run for the closest big city while stealing everything that wasn't bolted down. I barely managed to avoid this outcome, but what do you do when the players get really, really meta and start doing this kind of stuff? It's not a ~ my story ~ thing; it's more of a "You're dooming yourself and this campaign, better make some new characters if you're about to do this". There's some stuff happening in the city they are going to now, but I'm afraid they will start killing people left and right and the army garrisoned there will murder the gently caress out of them.  Ninja Edit: Also, they make every individual turn a group decision. An "I'll advance there" becomes a huge debate where every single party member pitches in regarding the best place for everyone else to be. So a combat or simple choice that should take only half an hour ends up lasting an hour. I can't take the D&D approach of giving them +1 to hit for acting as soon as their turn comes around since that will just murder the bad guys; I think I'll end up applying a clock. Hell, my guys spent 25 minutes deciding whether to go through the river or through land. 
Azran fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 18:41
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Stallion Cabana posted:What are some good ways to have logic puzzles and the like in an IRC game? I am running an Exalted game and am interested in giving them a story mostly focused on logical stuff as they investigate a tomb rather then just throwing ghosts at them, but I find the medium of IRC is a bit annoying. If it wasn't I could like make puzzles to give to them and such, but I can't do that here. Well you could present an image of something and ask what the players do with it. The Goblins webcomic has done a few of these with some success. (panel 4 with solution Here)
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Feb 15, 2014 20:27
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Azran posted:Ninja Edit: Also, they make every individual turn a group decision. An "I'll advance there" becomes a huge debate where every single party member pitches in regarding the best place for everyone else to be. So a combat or simple choice that should take only half an hour ends up lasting an hour. I can't take the D&D approach of giving them +1 to hit for acting as soon as their turn comes around since that will just murder the bad guys; I think I'll end up applying a clock. Hell, my guys spent 25 minutes deciding whether to go through the river or through land. "Guys, I gotta work in the morning so I'm just gonna stop this now." After DMing a few seasons of Encounters I've found that this is the best device for when someone starts monkeycheesing all over the place. If the experienced players having a debate about what someone else, usually one of the new kids, should do I remind them that they are only playing one character. The +1 thing works for people new to D&D who want to agonize over every turn. But when it's someone trying to run the entire table there's no real trick to stop them. If it's long range travel they're taking an hour to debate tell them the garrison loses faith in their leadership and fucks off down the river or goes home. Make things happen if they bog the game down with which door to go down or try to quote a physics 101 course while opening a box.
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Feb 15, 2014 21:12
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Does anyone know any systems with good town-building aspects? I'm spitballing ideas for a post-apoc game, and i'd like to include some sort of 'go and get loot to build up the town' system with a bit of crunch to it. Meikyuu Kingdom looks like the sort of thing I'm after, just wondering if there are any others to plunder for inspiration.
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Feb 15, 2014 22:20
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Azran posted:Ninja Edit: Also, they make every individual turn a group decision. An "I'll advance there" becomes a huge debate where every single party member pitches in regarding the best place for everyone else to be. So a combat or simple choice that should take only half an hour ends up lasting an hour. I can't take the D&D approach of giving them +1 to hit for acting as soon as their turn comes around since that will just murder the bad guys; I think I'll end up applying a clock. Hell, my guys spent 25 minutes deciding whether to go through the river or through land. Just lay down some table rules for this (might be harder in IRC). One d&d game I had, the DM expressly said "Only [experienced player who has played Class X before] is allowed to offer advice to [inexperienced player who is playing Class X now] and only if they request it." Or you can have one official rules lawyer who is the only person allowed to offer advice (and only when requested) or you can limit advice to "if you go here/do that, I can go there/do this on my turn" and let the player whose turn it is make the final judgment.
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Feb 15, 2014 23:02
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Azran - Another thing that might speed them up is to make it clear they don't always need to play optimally - let them know OC that you're not setting a 'right/wrong' puzzle with every decision. It could be that they're taking the computer game approach, where every option is better or worse than the alternatives. That kind of extends to the murderhobo thing - if they want to just kill everyone in sight, let them! Warn them OC that it'll have severe repercussions, but let them do it if they want: Sure, they kill everyone and steal all the loot, but the law will be after them, and if they didn't take care fencing Lord Shitsgold's heirlooms, a squad of paladins will be on their trail. You mention it's probably a TPK if they do it, but if you've made that clear OC ("Hey guys, it's cool if you do this, but the guards will treat you like any other criminal"), just roll with it - they kill everyone, and have sackfulls of loot. Now, how are they going to elude the army outside? And how are they going to fence the swag? Let them write the plot for you. e: Yeah, it sucks that they've invalidated the ton of plot you'd pre-written (and it does suck, not being sarcastic), but that's not the players' fault. Maybe you can re-involve them with it - The Bigbad has heard of them, and wants to hire a group with no morals to further it's ends. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 23:25
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petrol blue posted:Azran - Another thing that might speed them up is to make it clear they don't always need to play optimally - let them know OC that you're not setting a 'right/wrong' puzzle with every decision. It could be that they're taking the computer game approach, where every option is better or worse than the alternatives. This is good advice. One of the things that pretty much murders my games is when players spend time trying to sort 'good' ideas from 'bad' ideas. I run a Shadowrun game right now and everybody who plays that game tries to convince themselves they're playing Ocean's Eleven. But it isn't Ocean's Eleven; part of what makes the heist game fun is that poo poo goes wrong, and as a GM I know they have more fun when I introduce unplanned-for quirks. I had to have a talk with them once where I explained I wasn't going to kill them if they made the 'wrong' choice and I was going to keep introducing quirks even if they made all the 'right' choices. A job has Intro, Legwork, Break In, Oh poo poo, and Payday. That's how a good heist should go. Heist movies understand this and recognize that the plan going awry is part of the fun. Games aren't movies though, and when poo poo goes awry it means somebody was wrong, so it's important to establish those ground rules so that the players know nobody is in the wrong.
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Feb 16, 2014 01:20
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Thanks for the advice. It IS pretty good advice. I know the kind of people I'm dealing with, and so I never trace a plot except for how the adventure starts. I just build encounters; some of them have a higher priority than the others, since they give little bits of plot, even if it's just an enemy doing a throwaway comment. * I was pretty clear with the whole "This guy's a noble and the authorities will be upon you", they managed to force the noble into gifting them plenty of stuff instead of killing him. * Since I'm the only one with system knowledge whatsoever (played plenty of Warmachine for a couple years), I just made a quick rule in-session where they were allowed to ask ME for tips. Half my players were giving tips as if: - it were D&D ("if you reduce his armor, it should make him easier to hit!" forgetting there's a defense stat for the tenth time) - they knew the system ("if he charges he can't attack; it's bullshit if he can"). I don't want to hog the "rules lawyer" spot, but it's their second game and they still don't remember how many base stats are there, even with a character sheet in front. I love the system, and I answer their questions no matter how many times they repeat them, but it feels kinda futile at times. - I even considered playing a NPC myself to show what you could do with the system so they'd learn. To give an example, last battle against a "boss"-like villain, they refused to charge him. It was the only way they'd be able to reliable damage him, I even told them as much while they ran away from him. They spent so many times taking ineffective pot shots, that I just charged at him with a NPC guard and the loving guard killed the Lich (with an albeit lucky roll). The worst part was that one of them had charged a mini-boss last battle, and it had oneshot him. They didn't even remember that! * Leveling is even worse since they think that there's an optimal choice amongst all the available options and they will ~screw their character forever~, no matter how many times I repeat that it isn't the case in this system.  *Half the time they disregard my rulings("I shot twice, so I'm down to 18 bullets." "No, don't worry, I'm not counting shots." *Five minutes later* "Oh, drat, I forgot I only had 18 shots!") * I'm being merciful enough with the guy who will explode in a burst of flames if someone damages his fuel tank (which is kinda easy right now), while allowing them to move 0.5" whenever they are auto-missing an attack by that amount. I don't care if they go out on tangent remembering another game or making silly jokes OOC constantly (I don't think there are In Character moments with this group) And it's not because we were 9 people; there were four players last time we played and it was still annoying because it all kept happening. Man, after typing all that it really feels like my group is messy as gently caress. I'm kinda concerned it's me the one with the problem at times.
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Feb 16, 2014 01:49
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I've re-read that a few times, but it really sounds like you're expecting them to master the system and getting upset when they don't. Talk to them - if the rules-system is getting in the way, that's a problem with the rules, not the players. Honestly, it sounds like you've decided on a massively crunchy system and are blaming them for not 'getting' it. Personally, I'd always recommend a lighter system (but I'm biased). Failing that, cheat sheets! e: quote:they refused to charge him. It was the only way they'd be able to reliable damage him, I even told them as much while they ran away from him. e2: quote:Since I'm the only one with system knowledge whatsoever (played plenty of Warmachine for a couple years), I just made a quick rule in-session where they were allowed to ask ME for tips. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Feb 16, 2014 |
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Feb 16, 2014 02:00
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Captain Walker posted:e: also, how do you handle getting parties together? "You all know each other, tell me how" never seems to work. What worked for me on Thursday was "You're all on a planet and the Reaver Alarm sounds. All the ships except one have taken off, and everyone else has made it into bolt holes and sealed them. What do you do?" ... some panicky ship-jacking later. "That happened three months ago." Starting in combat I find works well. The other staple is "Why do you hate $Bad_Guy?" And making their first adventure as a hit squad to deal with him. (Rise of the Runelords does this). Or a game like Dungeon World that comes with history as part of character creation. Mendrian posted:This is good advice. One of the things that pretty much murders my games is when players spend time trying to sort 'good' ideas from 'bad' ideas. I run a Shadowrun game right now and everybody who plays that game tries to convince themselves they're playing Ocean's Eleven. But it isn't Ocean's Eleven; part of what makes the heist game fun is that poo poo goes wrong, and as a GM I know they have more fun when I introduce unplanned-for quirks. I had to have a talk with them once where I explained I wasn't going to kill them if they made the 'wrong' choice and I was going to keep introducing quirks even if they made all the 'right' choices. A job has Intro, Legwork, Break In, Oh poo poo, and Payday. That's how a good heist should go. Heist movies understand this and recognize that the plan going awry is part of the fun. Games aren't movies though, and when poo poo goes awry it means somebody was wrong, so it's important to establish those ground rules so that the players know nobody is in the wrong. If you want to play a good fast heist game (light although not non-existent on the legwork - but light enough that you can turn up to a session with just a couple of tables and if you have a good Mastermind PC you can run a good heist anyway) get a copy of Leverage. One of the joys is that the PCs normally win - but it's a dice pool game and each 1 that turns up in their dice pool creates a complication.
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Feb 16, 2014 03:09
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neonchameleon posted:"That happened three months ago." Haha, that's awesome, I'm going to remember that.
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Feb 16, 2014 03:27
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petrol blue posted:I've re-read that a few times, but it really sounds like you're expecting them to master the system and getting upset when they don't. Talk to them - if the rules-system is getting in the way, that's a problem with the rules, not the players. Whoops, my bad. Came across completely wrong! The system is crunchy, yes. The system is also permissive. If the DM says "Just pick whatever you want, according to the idea of your character" but then you spend 30 minutes picking between an axe and a pickaxe because you can't decide between the extra point of damage on one over the passive bonus of the other, even when it's the fourth time I've said "Don't worry, you will be equally capable with one or the other. Just pick whatever you want/fits your character idea", then I think it's the players.  For example, the guy that plays an arcane mechanic just told me "I want a magic flamethrower. How do I achieve that?" and I showed him. I mentioned the drawbacks and benefits, and he was fine. His character would be using a flamethrower because that was part of the idea of the character itself. But this other player wanted a rider with two hand weapons, and wanted to min-max the poo poo out of it. Which is fine and all, but please don't take half an hour while choosing between two pieces of equipment. When I finally gave him a custom one with all the benefits of both and no disadvantages, he complained about not having a fully decked-out warhorse. They can ask me whatever. Rules, setting, anything. The enemy stats are always available and for everyone to see. Their character sheet (here's a random one I found in GIS linked as an example) has stuff like "PARENT SET VALUE" and "SKILL LEVEL" or a box labeled DEF, but I still get asked where's the "Skill level" in the Skills section, and where's their DEF. I make a point of repeating it, because hey it's a new system. Maybe it's just me but for people that came from 3.5, this character sheet looks and reads way simpler. It's not even "how do I calculate", it's "Where is it" after one and a half sessions. If it were the new guys, sure, no worries. But it's people that have played plenty of D&D 3.5 and 4.0 sessions. I've got a cheat sheet ready to be handled out though.Regarding the enemy they should have charged, I was using NPCs as examples. "This guard over here charges and hits" I said, expecting one of the players to ask me what charging was. "Charging is a combination of your action and movement, it gives you an extra damage dice. The system is really lethal, and charging is one of the reasons." During the fight, I said stuff like "The Iron Lich is powering its force field with its focus, only truly damaging blows would be able to damage him." Later on, every single NPC on their side was charging and doing some great damage on enemy troops. One of the piddly guys with a halberd lopped an arm off a metal robot and I even said "that guard sure benefitted from the charge's extra damage dice!" And they were still unsure about how to damage the enemy till I flat out statted it. "Nope, no magic armour immune to weapons. Nope, no shield. Nope, he's just made of plain steel. Nah, that guy doesn't seem to be good at duking it out up close" Again, I may be the one with the problem here. I've been trying to be thorough when it comes to answering system questions, but with 9 players there's a lot of white noise at times.Also, I didn't want to imply that asking the GM was a house rule. Sorry for that.  I meant that half my gaming group is using D&D tactics and terms whenever they plan how to do something. So they were confusing the new people a lot. For example, I explained that ARM was your ability to resist damage while DEF was your ability to evade it. You'd have to beat someone's DEF before facing it's ARM. But one of the players just kept using Armor Class for both values, and would tell one of the new guys that reducing ARM would mean being able to hit the enemy better, or that he shouldn't cast a spell because that meant he would forget it till the next day.Or another one would just straight tell them not to do something because that would mean eating an "opportunity attack", and there went my fifth explanation of the night regarding free strikes. "No, it only happens on movement. Not attacks." Since those players were just spouting D&D advice and making the new players question all the stuff I had taught them regarding the system we were currently playing, I just said "Okay, from now on you ask ME and only ME regarding tips. You can ask what other people will do on their turns, but taking YOUR turns is not a democratic process for everyone else to chime in for fifteen minutes." I even ran a PvP match before starting the first session, where everyone could try out their spells, attacks, how to hit defense, how to damage, how to mark damage, how to cast, etc.  Once again, everything regarding system knowledge that hasn't been internalized is my fault. I went from general (You can't gently caress up a character) to specific (The difference between this and this gameplay-wise is X) whenever they needed it. But whenever someone started smothering the newbies with WRONG SYSTEM advice, it was annoying. EDIT: At the same time, they have only ever tried 3.5 and 4.0, and didn't know other RPGs existed besides D&D. So maybe they think they all follow basically the same rules? Azran fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Feb 16, 2014 |
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Feb 16, 2014 04:01
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Azran posted:Whoops, my bad. Came across completely wrong! And I think that of the system. If there are mechanical differences then there are mechanical differences. And they are things players investigate. But I think a bigger problem is: quote:Their character sheet (here's a random one I found in GIS linked as an example) has stuff like "PARENT SET VALUE" and "SKILL LEVEL" or a box labeled DEF, This looks incredibly close in many ways to a 3.5 character sheet other than the damage spiral. It's just different enough to make all the assumptions wrong, but at the same time it's not different enough that people will go in without those assumptions. Skill = Stat + Number. A clean break (e.g. Fate) probably wouldn't run into the spurious familiarity problems you are having. quote:Later on, every single NPC on their side was charging and doing some great damage on enemy troops. One of the piddly guys with a halberd lopped an arm off a metal robot and I even said "that guard sure benefitted from the charge's extra damage dice!" And they were still unsure about how to damage the enemy till I flat out statted it. Agghhh!!!!! Only One Way To Succeed is a bad way of doing things. quote:EDIT: At the same time, they have only ever tried 3.5 and 4.0, and didn't know other RPGs existed besides D&D. So maybe they think they all follow basically the same rules? As I said, Iron Kingdoms looks almost like 3.5. A complete change that does very different things in a very different way (something Fate-ish or *Worldish or Cortex+ish) would probably be a lot better at taking them right back to the basics rather than getting them to bring inappropriate skills.
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Feb 16, 2014 04:59
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quote:If the DM says "Just pick whatever you want, according to the idea of your character" but then you spend 30 minutes picking between an axe and a pickaxe because you can't decide between the extra point of damage on one over the passive bonus of the other, even when it's the fourth time I've said "Don't worry, you will be equally capable with one or the other. Just pick whatever you want/fits your character idea", then I think it's the players. I understand that you've gone the distance to help these folks chill out and have fun, but this is a perfect example of the rules of the game being "bad", in that they are causing a particular group to have less fun. Imagine how differently they would have reacted if the only difference between weapons was how success and failure were described, or if there only a literal handful weapon stat lines ("fast," "heavy," "long"...however many properties weapons can have in the system), and they were told the pressure's off, just have whatever weapon you like, trade up when you feel like it! Don't be Herbie: don't play with a system that fights you when you try to help people have fun with it.
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Feb 16, 2014 05:24
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I had a SixthWorld (Shadowrun Hack for AW) game last week and it was great, normally 4 or 5 hours before the match I draw a map (not literally, just a small list of things happening in the world because of their actions,) and I'm kind of running a blank of what we're going to do this session. Could you give me some ideas to help run this? They're not really getting the "You also control the plot," bit of a *World hack, but I'm hoping they'll pick up on it eventually. It's a lot of fun, I'm just needing people to help me draw some blanks for them to fill in this next session. Last match they attacked a couple of 86'rs dressed as another gang (Halloweeners,) to start a gang war. This involved infiltrating a lovely hotel, then making a bunch of noise and being flashy when they were inside. I made the Halloweener colors bright yellow, with yellow SMGs, and a Yellow sports car with neon lights waiting outside. They kill a couple of Hellhounds and a poo poo ton of gangsters and that was that. I had it be two weeks in between sessions, so I'm going to show that the Gang War is getting crazy big, and Lone Star are getting an extra contract to put the gangs down hard. Permanently. This will effect their future missions by having a stronger lone-star presence. Now if only I knew what their next job is.
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Feb 16, 2014 16:00
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Turtlicious posted:I had it be two weeks in between sessions, so I'm going to show that the Gang War is getting crazy big, and Lone Star are getting an extra contract to put the gangs down hard. Permanently. This will effect their future missions by having a stronger lone-star presence. Have somebody hire them to steal a corp's space program. Get everything they can from the research site into transports and destroy the rest.
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Feb 16, 2014 17:33
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Turtlicious posted:I had it be two weeks in between sessions, so I'm going to show that the Gang War is getting crazy big, and Lone Star are getting an extra contract to put the gangs down hard. Permanently. This will effect their future missions by having a stronger lone-star presence. Maybe they get offers to assassinate the head of each gang. That would let them choose sides and if they go after both, could create an interesting power vacuum within the game. Or, if you don't want them to choose both, have their be some kind of time-related incentive. "Kill him before the end of the month and I'll double your money" kind of deal.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:26
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Gangs hire you to act against Lone Star. Gangs try to broker peace as Lone Star moves in. Lone Star hires you to keep bumping up important figures in each gang, to destabilize them and keep the war going.
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Feb 16, 2014 19:32
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Is there a Idiot's Guide to Basic GMing somewhere? I wanted to start up a space opera campaign, so I bought some dice and the Mongoose Traveller Rulebook (I saw it recommended on some site I don't remember a while back), But I really don't know the most basic poo poo I need to do beyond that. No one I know has any tabletop experience, it's just something my friends and I decided might be cool to do sometime. Any help at all would be appreciated.
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Feb 18, 2014 05:22
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petcarcharodon posted:Is there a Idiot's Guide to Basic GMing somewhere? I wanted to start up a space opera campaign, so I bought some dice and the Mongoose Traveller Rulebook (I saw it recommended on some site I don't remember a while back), But I really don't know the most basic poo poo I need to do beyond that. No one I know has any tabletop experience, it's just something my friends and I decided might be cool to do sometime. Any help at all would be appreciated. Don't be a disabler be an enabler.
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Feb 18, 2014 05:49
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Turtlicious posted:Now if only I knew what their next job is. Create Threats, have those threats make moves, Announce Future Badness, ask "what do you do". If those moves are hiring the characters (reasonable for corps or other wealth-havers), then that's fine. For jobs that actually have nothing directly to do with the goals of a character or threat, there's the gigs "move" from the Fixer playbook. In brief, you roll dice at the start of the session to see if one or more job got totally hosed off-camera.
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Feb 18, 2014 06:29
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petcarcharodon posted:Is there a Idiot's Guide to Basic GMing somewhere? I wanted to start up a space opera campaign, so I bought some dice and the Mongoose Traveller Rulebook (I saw it recommended on some site I don't remember a while back), But I really don't know the most basic poo poo I need to do beyond that. No one I know has any tabletop experience, it's just something my friends and I decided might be cool to do sometime. Any help at all would be appreciated. *World games tell you to "be a fan of the PCs". Remember that this doesn't mean you give the players anything they ask for on a silver platter, or that you never put them in potentially lethal circumstances. When the game says "be a fan" they're thinking of characters like Mister Mxyzptlk or Bat-Mite of DC Comics. Those two are huge fans of Superman and Batman respectively. And they display this by tormenting their heroes and throwing impossible situations at them in order to watch Supes and Bats do awesome stuff.
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Feb 18, 2014 07:12
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I recently took over DMing for my 4e group after our previous DM wanted to take a bit of a break and be a player for a change. I haven't had much, if any, experience DMing before but we'd been having fun for the first few sessions. One of the first things I did was change the setting and we plane hopped to Eberron cause I absolutely love that setting. The first few sessions went really well, the party got tangled in a big political intrigue plot that steadily escalated into a 3 way civil war and I was really excited to see which of the 3 factions the players would side with, I put a fair bit of effort into trying to make it ambiguous. To give the players a bit more incentive to join a side I set up an overarching villain who'd been manipulating the war for his own purposes with an underground army that the party had uncovered. The idea being the party would need an army to face him and would need to side with one of the major factions to help them win the war and defeat the villain and ultimately end up changing the country completely with new rulers and a chance to run the country for themselves if they were up for it. What I ended up finding was that, while the party was interested in stopping the villain, they had no interest in siding with any of the major factions despite getting involved in all the tensions and conflicts that set it up. I can't quite figure out what it was but it seemed like all they wanted was an army, couldn't really care where it came from and it meant some of them decided they didn't care about the fate of the country and who wins the war and figured it's not their plane anyway. After a long session of chatter they ultimately chose one side, but very reluctantly and I really can't shake off the feeling that I've ended up railroading them into a story they no longer care for. I really don't know what I could've done about all this and how to salvage what's left of the campaign to be as open as possible.
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Feb 18, 2014 08:23
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petcarcharodon posted:Is there a Idiot's Guide to Basic GMing somewhere? I wanted to start up a space opera campaign, so I bought some dice and the Mongoose Traveller Rulebook (I saw it recommended on some site I don't remember a while back), But I really don't know the most basic poo poo I need to do beyond that. No one I know has any tabletop experience, it's just something my friends and I decided might be cool to do sometime. Any help at all would be appreciated. Download Pirates of Drinax. It is a free sandbox campaign that is just ridiculously good. Not finished yet, but there are dozens of hours of play in what they've put out so far.
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Feb 18, 2014 09:14
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petcarcharodon posted:Is there a Idiot's Guide to Basic GMing somewhere? I wanted to start up a space opera campaign, so I bought some dice and the Mongoose Traveller Rulebook (I saw it recommended on some site I don't remember a while back), But I really don't know the most basic poo poo I need to do beyond that. No one I know has any tabletop experience, it's just something my friends and I decided might be cool to do sometime. Any help at all would be appreciated. There's an amazing guide by Greg Stolze somewhere. I'll try and dig it out when I'm home from work. E: Found it! Check out the bottom of http://www.gregstolze.com/downloads.html Whybird fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 09:26
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AFoolAndHisMoney posted:I recently took over DMing for my 4e group after our previous DM wanted to take a bit of a break and be a player for a change. I haven't had much, if any, experience DMing before but we'd been having fun for the first few sessions. The leaders of the faction the PCs sided with are really glad the party is on board, but they absolutely want to ensure their victory and feel just the PCs isn't enough, fortunately there's a new mercenary group around. They call a meeting and it's like, hey party, really glad you could make it, meet our new chief tactical officer, and that's the same underground army lieutenant that has been giving them grief for months. I hope you have someone like that around, else it's just obviously someone who's with the villain, but obviously, the PCs know but can't prove that. This guy, backed by the leaders, orders them to take a squad, go demonstrate our newfound strength and burn down this enemy village, population: women and children. The order alone leads to dissent in the faction's regular army, some of them are big fans of the PCs, and before soon the faction has split down the middle and the PCs now have their very own army. ... I've been playing Tactics Ogre.
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Feb 18, 2014 09:36
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AFoolAndHisMoney posted:I recently took over DMing for my 4e group after our previous DM wanted to take a bit of a break and be a player for a change. I haven't had much, if any, experience DMing before but we'd been having fun for the first few sessions. Did you chat with the players about this in advance? Eberron is an amazing setting and I love it, but changing the setting is the kind of big change to a campaign that it's important to get players on side with, especially if you're doing it for OC reasons. There is, I want to be clear, nothing wrong with saying 'I want to run, but only if we can have the game set in Eberron, because I love Eberron' to your players. AFoolAndHisMoney posted:
It sounds like they don't have enough of a personal stake in stopping this guy. Which is fair enough: everything that's important to their characters is in another plane, after all. Always remember: the plot is what your PCs decide to do. Why not face them with a hard choice: They learn of a gate back to their home plane. When they get there, it's in the hands of the bad guy's mages, who are studying it to figure out how it works. They can fight them off and activate the gate themselves, but it's clear he now knows of it's existence; do they leave now, or do they risk letting him turn his attention to their home next?
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Feb 18, 2014 11:44
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Is straying super far from the set lore taboo, or is it encouraged? 'Cause I just sent my PC's 200 years into the future because they threw half a goblin corpse into a gods fountain.
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Feb 19, 2014 02:03
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Sounds good to me.
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Feb 19, 2014 02:09
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Lore's really more of a suggestion...
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Feb 19, 2014 02:10
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Lore is just there to seed your brainstorming. Any time you get too caught up in trying to adhere to it, your game will devolve into "WELL YOU'RE DMING THIS WRONG BECAUSE I READ IN THE LATEST SALVATORE BOOK THAT DRIZZT ONLY WEARS GREEN PANTS AND AND AND"
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Feb 19, 2014 02:18
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