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Rexides posted:Should I just get rid of XP and let them level at appropriate story points? Yes, absolutely.
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Mar 13, 2014 20:41
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Captain Walker posted:Don't lure them into destroying anything, play to find out what happens remember? Decide what the consequences of crystals and no crystals would be, and let it ride. Bonus points if both alternatives are terrible. Paolomania posted:And if you want crystal destruction to be such a calamity, it sounds ripe for an Impending Doom. As for "how best to present them", to set this up in a Dungeon Worldy fashion, you would have two conflicting dangers on the campaign front - one whose Impending doom requires crystals, one whose impending doom requires no crystals. The players learn about the dangers as they encounter their Grim Portents, and ultimately get to pick sides and make the call on which doom occurs (and propels the next arc). Setting up such fronts and dangers is central to DW GMing and is explained very well in the book. Uh, lure might have been a bad choice of words. What I meant to say is: "Make it plausible that they'd go along with it" instead of just "Do horrible thing Y/N" where they laugh it off and say "obviously No." But yeah, I should start working with those fronts. I still barely feel the need to use them but maybe it'll sink in after scribbling down ideas.
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Mar 13, 2014 22:19
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Even if you still use the XP system straight, killing those kobolds shouldn't be worth any XP reward. XP is handed out for overcoming obstacles to your goals. Those kobolds weren't obstacles, randomly killing them should earn the PCs nothing. You just have to be up front with the players about it. "Are you sure you want to kill these guys? They're not in your way, you won't get any experience for them. You still want to do it?" And if they want to do it for kicks, well, then they can murderhobo it up and you just work around it.
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Mar 14, 2014 00:10
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I don't really see anything wrong with them murderhoboing it up and getting rewarded for it, so long as all the players are on board. If that's what they want, then reward them for doing it and complicate their lives for doing it later on.
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Mar 14, 2014 01:47
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Rexides posted:Should I just get rid of XP and let them level at appropriate story points? Tendales posted:Even if you still use the XP system straight, killing those kobolds shouldn't be worth any XP reward.
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Mar 14, 2014 04:21
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Somnom posted:
You can pass the player notes, and leave it up to them whether they want to share. If it's general knowledge their character would know, they can be the one to tell the party at the appropriate time (defined by them). If you want them questioning it a little more, you can pass notes telling them that a voice in their character's head is telling it to them. For greater intrigue, one of the other characters is also hearing voices, and those voices are saying something different.
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Mar 14, 2014 14:09
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In my Ravenloft game, the evil player character has everyone in the palm of his hand. He is about to TPK the rest of the party. I guess I hosed up as a DM for letting it come to this. He has failed every powers check for every evil action, and is essentially a dark lord at this point, outpowering the rest of the party on a one on one basis. I figured the other party members were going to put him down. Now, the opposite is about to happen. Is there anything I should do? Should I just scrap the campaign at this point? Should I use the hand of god? We've been playing the campaign once a week for a year and a half.
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Mar 16, 2014 09:25
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I'm not 100% on Ravenloft but isn't it like UltraHell? With that in mind I'd say let him TPK the players. Then have a dark power bring them back to some sort of terrible half life, instilled with new corrupting power, to seek revenge and serve his own dark ends. Same characters but the killer makes a new one. Basically the same result as if they won.
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Mar 16, 2014 09:33
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God Of Paradise posted:In my Ravenloft game, the evil player character has everyone in the palm of his hand. He is about to TPK the rest of the party. I guess I hosed up as a DM for letting it come to this. He has failed every powers check for every evil action, and is essentially a dark lord at this point, outpowering the rest of the party on a one on one basis. I figured the other party members were going to put him down. Now, the opposite is about to happen. If you think it would be a dick move then talk to him and tell him that. If the rest of the party would dig it then go for it. You are playing to have a good time, after all.
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Mar 16, 2014 10:41
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God Of Paradise posted:In my Ravenloft game, the evil player character has everyone in the palm of his hand. He is about to TPK the rest of the party. I guess I hosed up as a DM for letting it come to this. He has failed every powers check for every evil action, and is essentially a dark lord at this point, outpowering the rest of the party on a one on one basis. I figured the other party members were going to put him down. Now, the opposite is about to happen. Talk to the guy like a grown-up. No, seriously. It's one of the easiest things in the world to fail to do, because we see in-game problems and look for in-game solutions; sometimes that's not the right approach, though, and this is one of those times. If this guy is about to TPK the others - and I assume that you view this as a bad thing or else you wouldn't bring it up - just try saying to him "dude, that's not cool, what you're doing. I know it'll be fun for you, but it won't be any kind of fun for the rest of the group, so maybe we can sit down and try and figure out a path forward that involves everyone getting to have a good time." As for how that could happen... well, for one thing, yeah, you hosed up. A PC this close to being a Lord of Ravenloft really should have become an NPC by now. But you know what? Let's run with it. If memory serves, once a guy fails enough powers checks in Ravenloft he becomes a Lord of Ravenloft, and gets his own little chunk of land and whatnot to be Evil to. But that land comes from somewhere; there's reference in the material to realms being carved out of other Lords' realms, often much to their dismay (at least I seem to think there are, but I haven't looked at a Ravenloft book since 2nd Edition was state-of-the-art, so). Seems to me that the local Lord is going to be none too pleased about the imminent ascension of the Evil PC to Lordhood, because that PC is gonna get a village and a keep or something and that village and keep is mine, dammit. So they launch an assault to defuse whatever plans Evil PC has - and reveal his puppet-master-ing to the rest of the party in the process. Okay, but that still has inter-party adversarialness, so it's not ideal... but throw in a vision from the God of one of the other PCs, letting them know Evil Guy can still be saved - and as he's so tied in to the fabric of the Demiplane of Dread at this point, the very act of saving him weakens the entire plane of Ravenloft. This is a Good Thing (tm)! Even evil deities should be on board with that idea, because the more evil gets concentrated in Ravenloft, the less evil there is for them to work with among their own worshippers ("this is the seventh cult leader who's just popped into Ravenloft before he could set my Master Plan into motion, dammit! Something has to be done about this!"). The trick is, they have to sign on with the guy in order to be in position to save him. He has to offer - once his cover is blown - to make them his lieutenants, to invest them with the dark powers of his Lordship to come... and they have to take that offer, no matter how repugnant they may find it. So moving forward you have one guy being Evil Lord and the rest being Evil Middle Management trying to figure out how to redeem the Lord and get him to stop being so Evil; they might manage it or they might not, but if they can, it will be a serious victory for the Good Guys. Think the final season of Angel, trying to take down the Evil from within - and trying not to lose your soul in the process. Suggest something like that to the guy, and if he's worth a drat he'll be on board. And if he isn't, Hand Of God his rear end.
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Mar 16, 2014 11:02
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My Lovely Horse posted:My players are pretty hesitant with this whole collaborative setting thing I'm trying to get them to do. So I've given them homework: in no more than a session or two, you'll arrive in a region where we'll spend the rest of the campaign. Everyone please come up with the reason your character is going there. If you give me a place to go with it and draw it on the map, that's a gold star for you right there. The map in question being a blank sheet right now. The way I solve this sort of problem is that everyone makes their backstory before I really put the world together. Then from there, I pluck out all the places etc and put them on the map. In addition, every time they get a magic item, they get a little notecard and they have to make a drawing for the item, name it, and write a little 2-3 line blurb about it's function/history/reasons before it works in game. This gets players involved in making the game world, and knowing it very well, because they have a vested interest. And they sure love it when they have/choose to go to Borkania when their fighter found a 'Borkanian steel sword' in a tomb four adventures ago and he came up with the name Borkania because he had to come up with a name quick.
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Mar 16, 2014 11:58
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:As for how that could happen... well, for one thing, yeah, you hosed up. A PC this close to being a Lord of Ravenloft really should have become an NPC by now. But you know what? Let's run with it. You are right about traditional Ravenloft, the player becomes an NPC after failing enough powers checks. We're actually playing a plane-walking Planescape campaign where the Powers and the places in Ravenloft are key. The quickest way to explain it is to say "it's complicated." Good advice though. I've just figured an in-plot way of dealing with it.
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Mar 16, 2014 12:03
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Syphilis Fish posted:The way I solve this sort of problem is that everyone makes their backstory before I really put the world together. Then from there, I pluck out all the places etc and put them on the map.  Great idea with the magic items though. I'll have to remember that for future endeavours.
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Mar 16, 2014 12:08
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God Of Paradise posted:In my Ravenloft game, the evil player character has everyone in the palm of his hand. He is about to TPK the rest of the party. I guess I hosed up as a DM for letting it come to this. He has failed every powers check for every evil action, and is essentially a dark lord at this point, outpowering the rest of the party on a one on one basis. I figured the other party members were going to put him down. Now, the opposite is about to happen. Step down from DM, join the group as a new PC, and let that guy be the new DM, problem solved.
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Mar 16, 2014 13:30
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I'm gearing up to start a new campaign, and I could really use some advice, or a friendly point in the right direction. A little back story: The setting is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I am a huge nerd lord about it, and two of my players are too. The other two are SOs who only know the world and terminology in passing, but are willing to learn. Four players total. I have the Wheel of Time d20 source book that I'm half using and half doing whatever I want. In general, I like campaigns with more role playing and puzzles, and less fighting, so this is a perfect setting. I've already told everyone that it is going to be highly political, and that information gathering/having and spying will be the majority of the game. Here's where the fun stuff comes in, and where I need help. If you're familiar with the Wheel of Time, you know that male wizards (or channelers) generally try to hide who they are/what they can do, because otherwise they are liable to get lynched, or hunted down. It began with my partner deciding he wanted to "pretend" to be a nobleman class (kind of a lovely class on its own; has access to things like inspire troops, call favors, militia, not really hand to hand fighting, though. It's basically a bard) but ACTUALLY be a male channeler. I think this sounds SO RAD and I really want him to be able to keep it a secret as long as possible. Do you have any recommendations for how we can manage this? I'm basically thinking two character sheets, one to have in front of everyone, and one he would consult in his notebook of what his REAL saving throws/stats/powers are. But I really don't want it to be obvious. I also don't want to have to do all his rolling for him, as what's the fun in that? Any ideas much appreciated.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:28
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That's a little tricky. Depends on the table. Personally I don't like tricking players, so if a character has a secret I don't keep it from the players, I just ask the other players to roleplay someone who doesn't know the secret. But if you want more of a paranoia style thing going on, I would have the fake sheet which he has, and the real one that you have. He'll just have to be familiar with his real hidden sheet. Then use notes and/or code words to communicate. He can even ask for what his stats are. But if he's checking a hidden piece of paper that looks like a char sheet all the time the jig will be up fast.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:44
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Print the character sheet using that red/blue hidden message stuff and have the player use a set of awesome decoder glasses. e: Use red for one character's stats, blue for the other, and then fill with random noise of other colors to hide both from everyone else. Then he can wear the red/blue glasses and just close one eye or the other for reading whichever character.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:49
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Mr. Prokosch posted:That's a little tricky. Depends on the table. Personally I don't like tricking players, so if a character has a secret I don't keep it from the players, I just ask the other players to roleplay someone who doesn't know the secret. But if you want more of a paranoia style thing going on, I would have the fake sheet which he has, and the real one that you have. He'll just have to be familiar with his real hidden sheet. Then use notes and/or code words to communicate. He can even ask for what his stats are. But if he's checking a hidden piece of paper that looks like a char sheet all the time the jig will be up fast. I don't normally go for the paranoia thing either, but that is going to be a central aspect of this campaign. I already said that a house rule this time around is that anything you say out of character, the other players will know, in character. So they already know they really need to watch what they say. Every player has a secret, actually, but I don't think all of them are going to need two character sheets to keep it. (I can't be more specific because my partner is a goon  )
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Mar 19, 2014 03:52
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That way also works, or an obscured stat block in the equipment section or something. Most players won't read each other's sheets. It's just having two sheets that will tell them something is up.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:52
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AreYouStillThere posted:Every player has a secret, actually, but I don't think all of them are going to need two character sheets to keep it. Sweet, now they all have an excuse to have decoder glasses, so nobody will suspect a thing! Because they'll all be able to read each others' sheets. Plus, you all get to wear decoder glasses.
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Mar 19, 2014 03:52
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Really only works if the guy is good enough to act it out for others to suspect, make him wear a bluetooth and whisper voices into his head while he plays that or have them come across a stedding and see if they notice his sudden stat/usefulness drop. A mystery is only fun if it's possible to solve.
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Mar 19, 2014 04:19
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AreYouStillThere posted:I'm gearing up to start a new campaign, and I could really use some advice, or a friendly point in the right direction. The important question is are you playing the setting before or after the cleansing because a player slowly going mad while the other players don't know WTF sounds cool as hell.
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Mar 19, 2014 13:27
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I need help. I'm in a 1st edition D&D game with rotating GM duties. Every few months when a major adventure arc concludes a new GM is picked and the story continues. It's not my favorite setup, but it hasn't been terrible so far. That said, I'm scheduled to go next and as of 3 weeks ago, the adventure we're currently in has turned to complete crap and I hate it. The current GM took our established low-magic fantasty setting and introduced space ships and light swords and we discovered that ancient aliens created life on this planet with a terraforming device and ~science~ and jesus gently caress, what are you doing to my D&D? So now I have to take over next week and all I want to do is throw this entire universe into a well like a sack of unwanted kittens. I'm at a total loss for how I deal with this poo poo without undoing all of the GMs work, even though I really want to. Does anyone have a decent ~fantasy~ way to explain all of this dumb bullshit? My first thought is that they hallucinated all of it. But that seems like a total cop out. Thoughts?
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Mar 20, 2014 15:47
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I'd get them on a space ship and have something cool happen but they have to escape pod out and that pod happens to crash land on a planet that just so happens to be in a perfect fantasy setting. the pod is obliterated and with no way of recharging those blasters and lightsabers it's back to swords and sorcery! Or you could go with the whole "portal to another plane of existence that closes behind you" trope. How are the other players responding to the sci-fi switcheroo? It sounds to me that the last GM really wants to play starwars RPG and he's set it up so that's what he can do. Just throwing them back to swords and magic is probably gonna piss this guy off.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:14
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Yeah, or just "you wake up on the cold stone floor of what can only be some kind of dungeon; robed figures, which don't seem to have noticed you yet, are whispering urgently that the potion appears to be wearing off far sooner than expected, should they alert the master?"
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Mar 20, 2014 16:30
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AceClown posted:I'd get them on a space ship and have something cool happen but they have to escape pod out and that pod happens to crash land on a planet that just so happens to be in a perfect fantasy setting. the pod is obliterated and with no way of recharging those blasters and lightsabers it's back to swords and sorcery! Like AceClown says, you should probably guage the other players on this. If they are on board with "magic is actually technology too advanced to comprehend, and all of you were created by ancient aliens", I would roll with it. Maybe try and bend it in such a way that allows for a compromise back to the Fantasy zone? Like, throw down some kind of haywire artifact in the world somewhere that tries to impose Axiomatic traits upon the world around it. It couldn't handle poo poo like magic and monsters, so it came up with an explanation of "aliens did it." Give the players the choice- they can make it stop, and everything will kind of snap back into Fantasy-land (only now it's spelljammer or something, since the aliens are already here), or they can let it keep doing its thing and deal with aliens trying to colonize their planet or whatever.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:39
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AreYouStillThere posted:I'm gearing up to start a new campaign, and I could really use some advice, or a friendly point in the right direction. It's funny, nothing about "more roleplaying" and "highly political" made me understand that the game was going to be openly adversarial. If that's what you want, John Wick's Play Dirty is full of advice, but personally I think roleplaying games are a not a natural format for that kind of play: the games are inherently cooperative, and it can be hard to get everyone's understanding of the appropriate degree of competition to match up. Your friends may be totally in sync on that, but you may also just think they are. "Don't split the party," as they say. Personally, every time I've been part of a game where one player kept their character's "true nature" hidden from the other players, I've been bored and annoyed by it. Players have to be aware of a character's fatal secret before they can enjoy the drama and cleverness around keeping it, even and especially if it's being kept from their characters.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:41
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The big plot point that people have a problem with is that when the spaceship landed on our planet 3 million years ago and started terraforming the Ancient Aliens also created the first races here, and ultimately created our Gods. The Dwarven Cleric in the party just said "Nope. Didn't happen." when that was revealed. I think the two other people in the party could go either way. And the current GM has actually laughed and said "I don't know how you explain all of this when it's your turn." So at least he realizes he's done something pretty dumb. As of the end of our last session we set off some sort of chain reaction in the ship's power source and we're pretty sure the entire ship is going to be obliterated in the resulting explosion. So I'm just going to say that with the ship's power source gone, none of the energy weapons will work because they were linked to the ship's power. The PCs can then rationalize whatever other explanation they want about what we went through (it was clearly a failed plan of Fraz Urb'luu, demon lord of illusions and trickery, to sow the seeds of disbelief and chaos). All in all, I think I'm just annoyed that I have to pick up the smoldering remains of what was once a fun campaign. There has been so much deus ex machina crammed into the last 3 months that it actually hurts my brain to think about. Everything from putting us up against impossible combat situations and then having gods come in and save us at the last minute, or killing all of us off in a combat that was very poorly designed and then resurrecting us in some unexplained way, to stripping us of all of our equipment and making us depend on insufferable, overpowered NPCs to handle all of our fights for us, and then ending with aliens. Before the current GM took over it was a very low magic campaign setting set in one small corner of the world. Things just spiraled out of control in all sorts of weird directions and I hate having to clean it all up. deedee megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Mar 20, 2014 |
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Mar 20, 2014 16:55
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Give the players a cathartic chance to get rid of the bullshit by punching it in face repeatedly. Make a campaign about bringing down the reptilian conspiracy (or whatever the aliens were), ending with their remnants retreating from the world in panic, taking their poo poo with them. Once in a blue moon, drop hints that the magic artifact #2314 the party just found might be some techy gizmo left behind - it shouldn't be a big deal and you'll better pretend that you're just continuing the story in a certain direction rather than just saying a big "gently caress you" to player's (admittedly lame) input. And the creation myth turns out to be pure bullshit propaganda, one of numerous attempts at maintaining the invincible gods image to keep sheeples from getting funny ideas. Ramp up the big overwhelming conspiracy angle, then allow the heroes to find cracks in accepted truths, then use their wits and heroics to gradually undermine their secret hegemony. If done right, you'll make it feel like a cool twist rather than shameless retcon.
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Mar 20, 2014 17:30
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If no one particularly liked it, pretend it didn't happen.
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Mar 20, 2014 17:36
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Rexides posted:If no one particularly liked it, pretend it didn't happen. Early d&d wasn't all ox carts and rats in cellars. But if the Sci Fi stuff is lame then have the players blow up the core reactor or whatever then just handwave it to taste.
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Mar 20, 2014 20:46
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HatfulOfHollow posted:I'm in a 1st edition D&D game with rotating GM duties. Every few months when a major adventure arc concludes a new GM is picked and the story continues. It's not my favorite setup, but it hasn't been terrible so far. That said, I'm scheduled to go next and as of 3 weeks ago, the adventure we're currently in has turned to complete crap and I hate it. The current GM took our established low-magic fantasty setting and introduced space ships and light swords and we discovered that ancient aliens created life on this planet with a terraforming device and ~science~ and jesus gently caress, what are you doing to my D&D? Talk about it like adults, god drat. If one GM shits on the setting, that doesn't mean the solution is to take another, bigger poo poo on top of theirs and hope yours doesn't smell so bad. It means that you need to agree as players what the boundaries of the rotating GM's creative license are and where you all want the setting to go, because clearly one of you thinks that throwing sci-fi plot twists in is awesome and the rest of you don't.
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Mar 21, 2014 01:19
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My Mass Effect group has found themselves in a war between the gangs of Omega and Cerberus. What's the best way to handle a near full-scale war (and a full-scale one while we're at it) that isn't just them fighting hordes of people on the front lines? Should I just have them dropping in to take out a prime target or what?
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Mar 21, 2014 06:16
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Disrupt supply lines, sabotage war equipment, direct troop movements (kinda like Total War, in a Rock-Paper-Scissors scenario) and daring prisoner rescues.
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Mar 21, 2014 06:33
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Yeah, treat the PCs like a special ops team, not a front-lines grunt. Sneak behind enemy lines. Steal information. Assassinate enemy leaders. Blow up key defenses. Set up traps and ambushes where they're not expected. At worst have them hold off waves of troops for a while so a VIP can evacuate or another group can re-position.
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Mar 21, 2014 08:44
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Cant Ride A Bus posted:My Mass Effect group has found themselves in a war between the gangs of Omega and Cerberus. What's the best way to handle a near full-scale war (and a full-scale one while we're at it) that isn't just them fighting hordes of people on the front lines? Should I just have them dropping in to take out a prime target or what? Have them be a spec-ops team like the guys above me said, or if they're in a large combat, just describe the action going on around them and have them take down a few key enemies (like a captain with some random mooks and specialists thrown in) after which the enemies have to pull back. I recently had a game of Dungeon World where my players invaded a lizardman city with an army of elves and most of the large battle was in the fiction: on a 7-9 roll, they got surrounded or lost track of each other, a random enemy bashed one of them, a friendly soldier blocks their path while he's dueling some mooks, a musket going off next to their heads rings their ears, that sort of stuff. But they never fought the 5000 lizardmen soldiers directly.
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Mar 21, 2014 10:46
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Yeah, if you do a battle scene treat most combatants as obstacles (and possible spawn points I suppose) and focus on a particular slice of it, giving the players a particular task (infiltrate and blow up the Death Star!) that'll turn the rest of the battle.
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Mar 21, 2014 11:12
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Combine the special-ops stuff with pivotal moments in the fate of worlds. If they succeed, the action is a decisive blow for their side. If they fail, they lose the world and will have to win at least one other world over before they can infiltrate and try again.
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Mar 21, 2014 14:21
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Whybird posted:Talk about it like adults, god drat. If one GM shits on the setting, that doesn't mean the solution is to take another, bigger poo poo on top of theirs and hope yours doesn't smell so bad. It means that you need to agree as players what the boundaries of the rotating GM's creative license are and where you all want the setting to go, because clearly one of you thinks that throwing sci-fi plot twists in is awesome and the rest of you don't. The GM Advice Thread: Talk about it like adults, god drat.
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Mar 21, 2014 22:27
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deadly_pudding posted:Like AceClown says, you should probably guage the other players on this. If they are on board with "magic is actually technology too advanced to comprehend, and all of you were created by ancient aliens", I would roll with it. Maybe try and bend it in such a way that allows for a compromise back to the Fantasy zone? Lynx Winters posted:The GM Advice Thread: Talk about it like adults, god drat. (The aliens being responsible for the gods is dumb though)
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Mar 22, 2014 02:03
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