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petrol blue posted:That's my current DW character's schtick, to the point where she quested for ages to find this: I got fed up with one of my PC's constantly asking for magical items, so I gave him this  The Dwarf got a beer stein that fills with grog whenever she closes and opens it.
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May 13, 2014 01:22
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 00:33 |
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Somebody remembers I Am Killbot? Here it is though now I feel guilty about never making the changes I was going to make after playtesting it.
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May 13, 2014 01:51
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PublicOpinion posted:Somebody remembers I Am Killbot? Here it is though now I feel guilty about never making the changes I was going to make after playtesting it. That's brilliant! The happy birthday doctor scenario is adorable.
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May 13, 2014 12:06
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In a group with variable attendance rates that wants mindless hack and slash, except for one person who isn't always there, should I even bother trying to run RPGs? Is there a board game that scratches the same itch without somebody spending half an hour creating a new character every other session?
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May 13, 2014 18:20
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Captain Walker posted:In a group with variable attendance rates that wants mindless hack and slash, except for one person who isn't always there, should I even bother trying to run RPGs? Is there a board game that scratches the same itch without somebody spending half an hour creating a new character every other session? I would suggest Descent, which allows you to play versus 4 players. Needs a bit of setup and has a decent size requirement but it shouldn't be a huge issue. It scratches the need to pillage a dungeon itch fairly successfully.
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May 13, 2014 18:27
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Captain Walker posted:In a group with variable attendance rates that wants mindless hack and slash, except for one person who isn't always there, should I even bother trying to run RPGs? Is there a board game that scratches the same itch without somebody spending half an hour creating a new character every other session? There's some D&D board games with semi-random dungeons, that use a kind of simple algorithm to automate enemy actions, such as Castle Ravenloft. If you want something that still has kind of a GM and Players mechanic, Descent 2nd Edition is still a thing, and supports ongoing campaign play, as well.
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May 13, 2014 18:28
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PublicOpinion, you mentioned I Am Killbot as having fallen by the wayside - would you have any objection if I write up a version for Fate? I've been looking at making something similar to Omega Zone (which Evil Mastermind did a writeup of), and randomly-assembled killbots sounds pretty awesome to me.
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May 13, 2014 20:00
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petrol blue posted:PublicOpinion, you mentioned I Am Killbot as having fallen by the wayside - would you have any objection if I write up a version for Fate? I've been looking at making something similar to Omega Zone (which Evil Mastermind did a writeup of), and randomly-assembled killbots sounds pretty awesome to me. Go for it!
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May 14, 2014 04:54
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So I'm setting up my game with the theocracy and it's going nicely. I do want them to have a couple of adventures working with the bad guys, though. It's kind of hard coming up with missions. I'm thinking prisoner transport, quashing some kind of assault. Basically all I'm coming up with are escort missions and I want to have a little variety.
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May 16, 2014 14:41
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Writer Cath posted:So I'm setting up my game with the theocracy and it's going nicely. I do want them to have a couple of adventures working with the bad guys, though. It's kind of hard coming up with missions. I'm thinking prisoner transport, quashing some kind of assault. Basically all I'm coming up with are escort missions and I want to have a little variety. Come up with some kind of heresy for them to quash, maybe? Like, rumors of some loathsome Witch blaspheming the countryside, and it's actually just some vaguely foreign woman providing medical services or casting simple spells to help the village that took her in. Like, take any basic plot hook from The Witcher, except strip out all the shades of gray. Then, in the mission briefing, put the shades of gray back in by way of what the PCs are being told about the situation. So, she's providing potions and spells to cure diseases and ease fatigue, but the Church would have its agents believe that it's all a ruse, and she's actually filling those people with the Devil's Own Vigor. That kinda stuff. This pattern can be applied to dungeon crawls and stuff, too, if you want. Church claims that a site of ancient heretical evil has recently reawakened, and it must be exorcised. Examination of the site shows that it's a temple or something clearly of Celestial origin, but the Church says the radiant, winged being hovering serenely in the structure's core is definitely a demon, so... I'd say ramp up the obviousness of how hosed up the Theocracy is over the course of 3 or 4 adventures and see what happens.
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May 16, 2014 14:59
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PCs have to infiltrate and sabotage a group of potential rebels They're tasked with finding and catching a gang of smugglers. A member of the church has died under suspicious circumstances: who killed him, and why?
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May 16, 2014 15:02
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Just pick any off-the-shelf adventure that features a macguffin object. Everyone wants macguffins, even the villains. e: especially the villains.
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May 16, 2014 16:18
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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May 16, 2014 19:14
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One of the hardest parts about running a campaign like that is that Detect Evil is available. It might be easier to run it as a Lawful Neutral organization with incredibly strict hardline religious laws (ie. Sharia) and eye-for-an-eye style punishments for breaking the law.
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May 16, 2014 20:16
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HatfulOfHollow posted:One of the hardest parts about running a campaign like that is that Detect Evil is available. It might be easier to run it as a Lawful Neutral organization with incredibly strict hardline religious laws (ie. Sharia) and eye-for-an-eye style punishments for breaking the law. Alternately, a secret GM rule that's sure to infuriate rules lawyers: Detect Evil registers "evilness" relative to the god/church/whatever's own sensibilities. Relying on Detect Evil is a surefire way to absolve oneself of the responsibility of judging the validity of the church's orders.
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May 16, 2014 20:23
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Alternatively ordained ministers are granted a ring upon achieving rank which just happen to be Rings of Mind Shielding (or similar).
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May 16, 2014 20:59
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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May 16, 2014 21:08
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'Detect Evil' only senses un/super-natural evil, e.g. demons, necromantic spell effects, horrible curses, the aura around a level 15 high priest of the Dark God of Slaughter and Assholes. edit: You can't tell me my house rule is wrong.  It's a sensible way to get rid of constant, perfect, effort-free moral judgments on everybody without totally neutering the ability.
StringOfLetters fucked around with this message at 08:41 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 16, 2014 22:41
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StringOfLetters posted:'Detect Evil' only senses un/super-natural evil, e.g. demons, necromantic spell effects, horrible curses, the aura around a level 15 high priest of the Dark God of Slaughter and Assholes. Wrong. Detect Evil will detect all manner of evil including alignment. Evil creatures with less than 4 HD do not radiate an aura, but those with 5 or more radiate a faint evil aura that grows stronger with additional HD. And evil divine spellcasters radiate a faint evil aura at 1 HD and a moderate aura at 2HD. Assuming the leaders of the church are at least level 5 they would radiate a strong evil aura.
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May 16, 2014 23:02
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Detect evil is only useful in situations where the area is completely devoid of life. It goes off at the slightest indication that a little child is thinking about putting a tack on someone's chair. How vile, the child must be vanquished.
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May 16, 2014 23:36
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"No, that spell is detect good. You can tell because it detects all the clergy. Please tell us who told you it was 'evil' so that we can go and correct their mistake."
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May 17, 2014 00:14
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Rotten Cookies posted:Detect evil is only useful in situations where the area is completely devoid of life. It goes off at the slightest indication that a little child is thinking about putting a tack on someone's chair. That's not true either. Detect Evil only shows auras for people and creatures with an evil alignment. It wouldn't go off is someone performed an evil act. However if they performed repeated evil acts their alignment would slowly shift to evil and they would gain an aura. And there's a big difference between evil and mischievous. Unless the child wants to see the effects of the poison they placed on the tack it's not an evil act. And even if it was it wouldn't register with Detect Evil unless the child had an evil alignment and was sufficiently powerful to gain a faint evil aura.
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May 17, 2014 00:33
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This sort of thing is why I usually just houserule alignment mechanics away from any D&D game I run. Might be a bit too late for that solution though.
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May 17, 2014 13:22
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Yeah, you will have to houserule Detect Evil into Detect Impious or something if you're running this but that is a good idea anyway. Detect Evil is a terrible spell.
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May 17, 2014 13:47
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50 Foot Ant posted:The church isn't evil. The people in it aren't evil. Everything they are doing is approved by the holy writings, by the lawful good god. That's exactly what I'm going for. This is a Lawful Good party, so they've been having fun with their Holy Smite and Smite Evil abilities. The head enforcer for the Church is going to be a Lawful Good paladin. He is going by the book. He believes himself to be creating a peaceful, quiet community. My ultimate goal would be for the PCs to disagree and maybe have one of them join the rebellion first, while the other stays with the church for another mission or so. I'm not aiming for PVP, but just to see if I can do it.
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May 17, 2014 15:13
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HatfulOfHollow posted:That's not true either. Detect Evil only shows auras for people and creatures with an evil alignment. It wouldn't go off is someone performed an evil act. However if they performed repeated evil acts their alignment would slowly shift to evil and they would gain an aura. Jokes. They exist.
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May 17, 2014 15:16
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Rotten Cookies posted:Jokes. They exist. Jokes are banned under the theocracy. They create too many misunderstandings. Humor can even be used to mock our God! 
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May 17, 2014 15:53
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Writer Cath posted:My ultimate goal would be for the PCs to disagree and maybe have one of them join the rebellion first, while the other stays with the church for another mission or so. I'm not aiming for PVP, but just to see if I can do it. Given that, I'd have the spell work exactly as written. Except for the fact it doesn't work. Start out with 'church detects as LG  ', end up with 'yep, apparently those children must all have been evil, because the priest is still detecting as LG.' Make the fact the spell is horribly broken in every sense the focus of the game if you can't fix it.How long will it take the paladin to doubt their 'detect evil' if the 'processing camps' don't ping it? Will they trust the results of a spell over their own sense? Hell, maybe the god got pissed off with everyone being too lazy to think, and is making a point?
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May 17, 2014 23:35
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petrol blue posted:Hell, maybe the god got pissed off with everyone being too lazy to think, and is making a point? A paladin of the God of Passive-Aggressiveness
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May 18, 2014 01:29
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A few months ago I posted about my "everyone tell me while you're travelling to the kingdom of Tabula Rasa" approach to plot building.My Lovely Horse posted:- Paladin of the travel goddess who wants to rediscover and revitalize the legendary dwarven trade passage, which was a place full of sophisticated technology and wonders but was lost in a catastrophe of unclear definition. (I wrote down "looking for Moria" somewhat to the player's surprise, but he had to admit it) The Kalashtar is hearing voices from the Astral Realm as a character detail. I've secretly decided a good portion of those are the community she's looking for, stuck in a state of meditation for as of yet unclear purposes. I'll reveal that and figure something out at an opportune moment, hopefully not in that order. Not-Moria is going to be the final dungeon and I'm thinking there could be something buried there that the dragon from the witch's backstory is looking for, or maybe the necromancer to link those two plots. Or both. Got a few ideas there: maybe it's behind a door that only opens for royal blood, maybe the Kalashtar community has something to do with it, meditating to keep whatever it is sealed. Which brings me to the part where I have no idea: what the hell is down there? It could be anything. Hell portal, fountain of youth, Balrog, literal nuke arsenal and we're actually in post-apocalypse fantasy, Underdark, the sky's the limit (so to speak). If you were an elder dwarf council, what would you consider worth collapsing your mountain passage to keep it down there?
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May 19, 2014 13:00
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My Lovely Horse posted:hich brings me to the part where I have no idea: what the hell is down there? It could be anything. Hell portal, fountain of youth, Balrog, literal nuke arsenal and we're actually in post-apocalypse fantasy, Underdark, the sky's the limit (so to speak). If you were an elder dwarf council, what would you consider worth collapsing your mountain passage to keep it down there? It could be any of those things. That's why I try to just plan for broad strokes. I've got 3 or 4 different potential endings kicking around for my current campaign. Just let your PCs adventure and eventually the party will fixate on something and you'll have an ending. Don't force the big picture on them from the beginning.
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May 19, 2014 13:31
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The city wasn't abandoned when the entrance was collapsed; the entrance collapsed when the dwarves' glorious magical utopia fell apart into a mess of murderous, factional infighting. Now just a few archmages rule over a city full of magically warped, deranged things that used to be the best and brightest dwarves of their generation.
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May 19, 2014 16:18
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Whybird posted:The city wasn't abandoned when the entrance was collapsed; the entrance collapsed when the dwarves' glorious magical utopia fell apart into a mess of murderous, factional infighting. Now just a few archmages rule over a city full of magically warped, deranged things that used to be the best and brightest dwarves of their generation. Welcome to Rapture! Oh wait, dwarves. Welcome to Rupture!
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May 19, 2014 16:20
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My Lovely Horse posted:If you were an elder dwarf council, what would you consider worth collapsing your mountain passage to keep it down there? Listen to the PCs speculate. At this stage in the story, you're not married to any particular end-game. Sometimes the poo poo they come up with is as good, or better than what you've got in mind. That said, you can always tweak it.
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May 19, 2014 16:23
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This may be a bit of an obvious question, but I'm interested in GMing and have a bit of experience with it and feel like I understand what to do in broader strokes, but I'm a bit at a loss for how to effectively set the mood and get players pulled into a scene, especially if it's the first game of multiple that establishes the campaign's or the setting's premise. I'm not much of a writer traditionally, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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May 19, 2014 17:56
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Think of a movie with similar ambiance and rip it off like it's going out of fashion. Even if the players immediately see through it, it's still okay.
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May 19, 2014 18:32
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Commissar Budgie posted:This may be a bit of an obvious question, but I'm interested in GMing and have a bit of experience with it and feel like I understand what to do in broader strokes, but I'm a bit at a loss for how to effectively set the mood and get players pulled into a scene, especially if it's the first game of multiple that establishes the campaign's or the setting's premise. I'm not much of a writer traditionally, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Some people queue up music to help set a scene. Pre-established modules also have a lot of flavor text written up, so there's no harm in cribbing from there. If it's not your forte, borrow from other sources and tweak it to make it your own.
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May 19, 2014 18:32
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Lichtenstein posted:Think of a movie with similar ambiance and rip it off like it's going out of fashion. Even if the players immediately see through it, it's still okay. 100% this. Also, they probably won't see through it. And if/when they do, they won't care, they'll be stoked.
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May 19, 2014 18:55
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Writer Cath posted:Listen to the PCs speculate. At this stage in the story, you're not married to any particular end-game. Sometimes the poo poo they come up with is as good, or better than what you've got in mind. That said, you can always tweak it.
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May 19, 2014 18:55
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My group is going to be ending soon, due to pretty much everyone moving away come this summer. That means I need to wrap up the game MUCH, MUCH faster than I had originally intended. The reason I need help is that when I plot things out for my players, I plot for the LONG haul. I mean, this group has been going for 3 years straight now, and longer plots have great payoff. Here's the threads I need to tie together. I could REALLY use advice for condensing this into a RAPID FIRE resolution. We have maybe 5-8 sessions left. 1) The players have discovered that there is a prophecy that if they die, the world ends. The know why the world will end-- "The Necromancer" is attempting to cast a ritual spell that uses the entire world, and all alternate splinter timelines near it, as a spell component. The spell would enable him to break through the "Great Wall" and breach the Far Realm and beyond, and he hopes to challenge the Supreme Being. The REASON that the players' life will determine whether The Necromancer succeeds, is that the players have stolen a project of a Lich Queen. She, her 9 siblings, and her Mother (all Lich Kings and Queens (or Empress, in the last case)) are under the thrall of The Necromancer, but have been trying to break free of that thrall, and the players stole the VERY FRAGILE means that they would have used to get free. So at the critical moment, the Liches will help the Necromancer instead of fighting him. While the players still live, they have the means to make amends-- but they don't yet know what the thingy they stole is or does. Had the game continued, I planned to drag this out, dribbling hints over the course of the campaign (in the background), with intermittent undead attacks by the liches who are simultaneously enthralled to help the Necromancer, but also REALLY need their McGuffin back, but also can't SAY that, because the McGuffin isn't finished yet, and the Necromancer can't learn about it before it is complete. 2) The players are CURRENTLY in the middle of a war between the Fae Courts. This is complicated, as anything relating to the Fae would be, so hang on... here's exposition! Background: The Faerie Court of Summer is making a play against the Court of Storms, planning on opening the Well of Storms, which contains (is powered by) an absolutely horrifying Psuedonatural Horror known as the Living Flame, whose light shines bright enough to illuminate all the way to the horizon, and anything that casts a shadow, that shadow becomes a psuedonatural ethereal monster. The Summer Court is using a mortal (that the PCs have dealt with) to utilize an artifact designed for the purpose of summoning and controling a True Phoenix (think "Phoenix Force" from X-Men) that would resurrect The Solar, Guardian Angel of the Entire Solar System, which was slain by the Necromancer 10,000 years ago in order to allow his undead to walk in the daylight. This mortal is being tricked into using the artifact to resurrect his master and teacher instead of the solar. (The players asked him to take the artifact and resurrect the solar, since they didn't have the skill to use it). This teacher was cast into the Well of Storms 30 years ago. Resurrecting him will free the Living Flame. MEANWHILE, the Court of the Harvest is seeing where this is going, and is trying to find a way to protect themselves from the Living Flame, and so are using the mortals they have subtle control over to dig up ANOTHER Psuedonatural Horror, known as The Sandman. (Think Leviathan from Wildbow's "Worm" serial, except with sand instead of water.) Of course, the Court of the Night used to own the Sandman in ancient times, and wants it back, so the Night and the Harvest are duking it out over this thing. The players know nothing about the Living Flame yet-- I was going to reveal that later, but now I need to move it up and resolve it faster. The players have JUST encountered the means the fae use to control psuedonaturals such as the Sandman, and are about to fight off the Harvest faeries who are guarding it (the fight has been a lot of fun so far, mostly involving contract law and wordplay). 3) Meanwhile, a faction of Devils has just discovered that the war with the Demons has been deliberately provoked, sustained, and helped along by the gods. (which are technically the same "species" as both demons and devils, and can be called gods merely because they are worshipped by mortals on the prime) Pissed off at this, they're engaging in a systematic campaign to undermine all mortal worship, while simultaneously discovering that mortal worship can provide power. Cannibalistic devil worshiping cults are popping up everywhere, and as they gain power, they're discovering the tricks of controlling angels. My plan was that when the players finally do get the Phoenix to resurrect the Solar, that a devil would be waiting to take control... So. With all that! How do I wrap this story up? Iunnrais fucked around with this message at 22:23 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 22:17
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