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deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

Cant Ride A Bus posted:

This is a great idea. I think I'll pitch this to them as one direction to take the campaign in, or I could just use it and still have them be force sensitive and have the minor manifestations like Chitoryu said. Thanks for the ideas, guys!

In that vein, it's established especially in Phantom Menace that Force sensitivity without formal training still turns you into like some kind of wonderkid. It's not a stretch to just say, "You, the cartoonishly bad-rear end player characters who lead consistently incredible lives, are that way because of your connection to the Force."

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winterwerefox
Apr 23, 2010

The next movie better not make me shave anything :(

Im looking for a decent sci-fi system to run. Only one in my group likes GURPS, Mutants and masterminds is like building a character in dwarf fortress to some of them, Shadowrun angers another of my players by saying its name, Battle Tech is too spergy to run when you are not interested in the combat sim aspect of it, Star Wars/Star Trek are out, they dont want d20 modern. The only other system I have is Alternity, and it hasnt aged well. Help? The setting is nominally Tiberium Sun.

Drone
Aug 22, 2003

Incredible machine
:smug:



winterwerefox posted:

Im looking for a decent sci-fi system to run. Only one in my group likes GURPS, Mutants and masterminds is like building a character in dwarf fortress to some of them, Shadowrun angers another of my players by saying its name, Battle Tech is too spergy to run when you are not interested in the combat sim aspect of it, Star Wars/Star Trek are out, they dont want d20 modern. The only other system I have is Alternity, and it hasnt aged well. Help? The setting is nominally Tiberium Sun.

This sounds like an incredibly picky group of players. Depending on how much effort you want to put in, you could always homebrew/reskin a system that they actually are open to the idea of playing, or use FATE.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost
Diaspora is a pretty boss sci-fi Fate expansion with a neat shared-world-building mechanic and a nice ship-to-ship combat mechanism.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
Eh, I didn't rate Diaspora that much aside from the world-gen. Or rather, I didn't think it did much that FATE doesn't do by default, and had too many random bits welded on - I'd go for standard fate core if I was running that game again, probably using contest rules for ship combat. Alternatively, Bulldogs looks pretty good for a softer sci-fi take on fate. (Plus it explicitly deals with other vehicles iirc - mammoth tanks ahoy!)

When you say Tiberium Sun, what sort of game are you planning on running with it? Espionage-based super-spy sort of thing? Fate does assume high power levels, so it'd be perfect for Tanya-style characters.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.
i'm working on a custom campaign setting for my D&D5e game with friends and it's my first time as DM in a couple years (last was a ~6month 4e campaign). It's an archipelago world and the players have expressed interest in piracy, has anyone run across decent D&D ship-to-ship combat framework? I'm fine adapting it if it's from some wildly different game or edition, but currently I'm just not sure what would be fun and interesting.

armorer
Aug 6, 2012

I like metal.

treeboy posted:

i'm working on a custom campaign setting for my D&D5e game with friends and it's my first time as DM in a couple years (last was a ~6month 4e campaign). It's an archipelago world and the players have expressed interest in piracy, has anyone run across decent D&D ship-to-ship combat framework? I'm fine adapting it if it's from some wildly different game or edition, but currently I'm just not sure what would be fun and interesting.

3.5 had a supplement called Stormwrack that covered a lot of sea-based stuff.

StringOfLetters
Apr 2, 2007
What?

treeboy posted:

i'm working on a custom campaign setting for my D&D5e game with friends and it's my first time as DM in a couple years (last was a ~6month 4e campaign). It's an archipelago world and the players have expressed interest in piracy, has anyone run across decent D&D ship-to-ship combat framework? I'm fine adapting it if it's from some wildly different game or edition, but currently I'm just not sure what would be fun and interesting.

Stat the boat out like a character, but give it 'Boat HP' and such. Put it on a gridmap along with any other boats/sea monsters. Treat it like a boat-scale character that everyone has to share control of. Every turn, the boat will move forwards a couple squares on its own; unlike a guy in a field, keep track of the direction it's facing. Every turn, every character gets to have the boat do something. Boat actions could include,
*Adjust the sails, make the boat turn a direction
*Adjust the sails, make the boat go faster or slower for the turn
*Fire a cannon off the side (limited firing arc, needs to coordinate with the turning folks) roll at the character's attack bonus and do 2d6 boat damage
*Cast an area effect spell from the boat, if applicable
*Get on the wheel for evasive maneuvers (+5 AC for the turn or something)

If/when they initiate boarding action, switch over to a player-scale map. If they want to launch one guy over and someone else wants to keep shooting cannons, both maps can play out at the same time. Give them some reefs/sandbars to maneuver around. Get player input on the design of the ship (choice between extra bhp or sharper turns, choice between lower draft (higher AC) or go faster, choice between extra cannon or reinforced midbeam for ramming, etc.)

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
I know that this is a very open-ended question, but I'd like any and all advice on running horror games. I'd be happy to read columns, long guides, or whole books or sections thereof if you can point me to any, I'm looking for as thorough an education as I can get.

I've never run any horror games as more than a one-shot, and while I've been complimented on doing horror well, I mostly do horror as an element tacked onto games in other genres. I'd like to be able to run campaign-length horror games. I've been interested in Night's Black Agents lately, and I've always wanted to run horror campaigns centered around a location or an organization of investigators. I'd like to be able to run one of the big CoC campaigns, like Masks of Nyarlathotep, and do it justice.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

StringOfLetters posted:

Stat the boat out like a character, but give it 'Boat HP' and such. Put it on a gridmap along with any other boats/sea monsters. Treat it like a boat-scale character that everyone has to share control of. Every turn, the boat will move forwards a couple squares on its own; unlike a guy in a field, keep track of the direction it's facing. Every turn, every character gets to have the boat do something. Boat actions could include,
*Adjust the sails, make the boat turn a direction
*Adjust the sails, make the boat go faster or slower for the turn
*Fire a cannon off the side (limited firing arc, needs to coordinate with the turning folks) roll at the character's attack bonus and do 2d6 boat damage
*Cast an area effect spell from the boat, if applicable
*Get on the wheel for evasive maneuvers (+5 AC for the turn or something)

If/when they initiate boarding action, switch over to a player-scale map. If they want to launch one guy over and someone else wants to keep shooting cannons, both maps can play out at the same time. Give them some reefs/sandbars to maneuver around. Get player input on the design of the ship (choice between extra bhp or sharper turns, choice between lower draft (higher AC) or go faster, choice between extra cannon or reinforced midbeam for ramming, etc.)

great ideas, thanks


armorer posted:

3.5 had a supplement called Stormwrack that covered a lot of sea-based stuff.

ill check this out, thanks

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Halloween Jack posted:


I've never run any horror games as more than a one-shot, and while I've been complimented on doing horror well, I mostly do horror as an element tacked onto games in other genres.

I think that horror is best in a game when people are actually trying to accomplish something else. My main experience is with Trail of Cthulu, but Night's Black Agents is roughly the same game.

The best horror is slowly-dawning, nearly inexorable, and threatens things that are important to the protagonists. Its effects (bodies with no water left in them, people killed in rooms locked from the inside) are always known before its signs (a pattern in calendar or geography, certain weather, a warning note, eerie distant drums), and its signs are sometimes (but not always) misunderstood ("oh poo poo, that means it doesn't happen when there's lightning, it happens when it rains" <cue drizzle starting>).

And sometimes there is a perfectly normal, if odd or coincidental, explanation; this is more important for campaigns. Knowing the house is definitely going to be haunted is very different from knowing that it might be haunted.

Horror is a realization -- a sight, a sound, a deduction from the evidence -- and most of them are hard to pull off as well in games. Games with handouts -- you might enjoy setting up something akin to The Armitage Files -- can help, as does having a group that will shut the hell up long enough for you to describe things.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.
I'm doing a Gothic Horror campaign as well and those are some really good pointers, thank you.

Most of the time i have to seriously resist the urge to reveal too much and give away the surprises

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

treeboy posted:

I'm doing a Gothic Horror campaign
Well? Bloviate!

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.
Did you actually want me to go into more detail? Or are you ribbing me or something? I'd be more than happy to talk about what I'm planning, but bloviate doesn't usually have positive connotations.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
I mean I'd like to know everything about it, how it's going, pitfalls you've run into, feel free to spout tidbits at random.

Crosscontaminant
Jan 18, 2007

I'm considering the possibility of running a Pokémon Tabletop United game with some friends. One thing I'm tempted to try and incorporate into the game is a subtle but growing sense of animosity between the player characters. The idea is that as much as they may want to work together and be friends there is when all's said and done only one Champion title to take away, so they will at some point have to transition from being buddies to competing between themselves for the title, so I'd like to get the internecine stuff and vague distrust going as quickly as possible.

Is this a productive road to go down? Are there any game-magisterial techniques I can use to achieve this, or that I should avoid to prevent things from devolving into a big mess?

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Crosscontaminant posted:

I'm considering the possibility of running a Pokémon Tabletop United game with some friends. One thing I'm tempted to try and incorporate into the game is a subtle but growing sense of animosity between the player characters. The idea is that as much as they may want to work together and be friends there is when all's said and done only one Champion title to take away, so they will at some point have to transition from being buddies to competing between themselves for the title, so I'd like to get the internecine stuff and vague distrust going as quickly as possible.

Is this a productive road to go down? Are there any game-magisterial techniques I can use to achieve this, or that I should avoid to prevent things from devolving into a big mess?

Sounds like a nightmare, imo.

Baudin
Dec 31, 2009

Crosscontaminant posted:

Is this a productive road to go down? Are there any game-magisterial techniques I can use to achieve this, or that I should avoid to prevent things from devolving into a big mess?

This likely won't end well

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

Crosscontaminant posted:

I'm considering the possibility of running a Pokémon Tabletop United game with some friends. One thing I'm tempted to try and incorporate into the game is a subtle but growing sense of animosity between the player characters. The idea is that as much as they may want to work together and be friends there is when all's said and done only one Champion title to take away, so they will at some point have to transition from being buddies to competing between themselves for the title, so I'd like to get the internecine stuff and vague distrust going as quickly as possible.

Is this a productive road to go down? Are there any game-magisterial techniques I can use to achieve this, or that I should avoid to prevent things from devolving into a big mess?

I think you can probably trick the PCs into doing it to themselves. Do some DM world-buildy artistic license thing that makes becoming champion INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT. Then, around the 4th or 5th badge, have NPCs start dropping bombs about how there can only ever be one champion, and the chance to de-throne them comes but once a year. As long as everybody establishes at the beginning of the campaign that not becoming champion is a definite "Lose" scenario, like their mom is dying of poke-cancer, and the Champion's Chalice grants one wish kind of "Lose" scenario.

But yeah-


Baudin posted:

This likely won't end well

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
I agree that it's likely going to end in tears as a campaign, but it might be a viable idea for a one-shot, something where the players know they're going to be competing for one title, lots of secret note passing and doping of pokemon, etc. It'd be hella hard work to GM, and players might spend most of the time having secret one-on-one conversations with you (leaving the others sat on their hands), but if you can work around that it sounds fun - making me think of that grimdark pokemon fantrailer.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

Halloween Jack posted:

I mean I'd like to know everything about it, how it's going, pitfalls you've run into, feel free to spout tidbits at random.

Ah okay, haha no worries.

We haven't actually started yet, I'm still in the planning stages. Generally the flavor is Romantic/Victorian Gothic with a dash of 50's cosmic/existential horror (Lovecraft, etc). The players are going to be shipwrecked on small archipelago kingdom where they have to contest with a growing malaise and unease that permeates the various islands. Cultists abducting villagers, rituals and sacrifices to summon ancient gods, magical experiments gone wrong, vampires looking to seize political control, strange fevers that have caused lycanthropy, necromancers summoning the undead, etc.

Hopefully, if it takes off, the players will eventually be able to learn that things are getting worse both intentionally, and consequentially as a powerful Darklord is attempting to merge his Domain from the Shadowfell into the Prime Material by corrupting and exploiting the boundary between the realities. Other forces serve a more chaotic purpose, like those attempting to piggy back off the Darklord's actions in order to summon outerplanar horrors.

It's ambitious but my players seemed jazzed at the idea of rooting out evil conspiracies and uncovering dark plots/cults/rituals. Trying to keep just enough information back so they can put things together piece by piece is the trick, and i'm terribad at it, so i'll have probably ruined all the surprise by our fifth session.

Functionally the archipelago acts as a bounded open world. They'll be relatively free to travel wherever they wish within the confines, but the forces that initially wreck them will make travel outside difficult or impossible. Each island has "something wrong" which then references to one of the other islands creating a chain of sorts, eventually leading to the capital and admittance to higher classes of the kingdom (where the vampires are pseudo directing affairs at the direction of their master). There are a few specific beats I'm hoping to hit from rescue, to dungeon delving for information in catacombs, to murder mystery at a masqeurade. But generally I'm hoping that, somewhat like zone design in an MMO, a certain amount of nonlinearity should be fine if they just want to explore.

It might crash and burn spectacularly, but either way i'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes :v:

Crosscontaminant
Jan 18, 2007

sebmojo posted:

Sounds like a nightmare, imo.

Baudin posted:

This likely won't end well
Mkay. I shall drop the idea like a bad penny.

Hubis
May 18, 2003

Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

Crosscontaminant posted:

I'm considering the possibility of running a Pokémon Tabletop United game with some friends. One thing I'm tempted to try and incorporate into the game is a subtle but growing sense of animosity between the player characters. The idea is that as much as they may want to work together and be friends there is when all's said and done only one Champion title to take away, so they will at some point have to transition from being buddies to competing between themselves for the title, so I'd like to get the internecine stuff and vague distrust going as quickly as possible.

Is this a productive road to go down? Are there any game-magisterial techniques I can use to achieve this, or that I should avoid to prevent things from devolving into a big mess?

It's quite a bit different in flavor, but give Contenders a look. It works fantastically.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Crosscontaminant posted:

Mkay. I shall drop the idea like a bad penny.

As a one shot, sure, but you sit round the table together to have fun, y'know?

Rexides
Jul 25, 2011

Crosscontaminant posted:

I'm considering the possibility of running a Pokémon Tabletop United game with some friends. One thing I'm tempted to try and incorporate into the game is a subtle but growing sense of animosity between the player characters. The idea is that as much as they may want to work together and be friends there is when all's said and done only one Champion title to take away, so they will at some point have to transition from being buddies to competing between themselves for the title, so I'd like to get the internecine stuff and vague distrust going as quickly as possible.

Is this a productive road to go down? Are there any game-magisterial techniques I can use to achieve this, or that I should avoid to prevent things from devolving into a big mess?

Just hand them a piece of paper that says "I have to become the Champion because _____________________". Like mention explicitly that the core gimmick of the campaign is that they all want to be become the one champion and if they are not down with it then you can play something else.

Mimir
Nov 26, 2012
The best outcome for this is that they all realize at some point which reason is the most important, because Pokemon is ultimately a story about friendship overcoming obstacles, and they work together to ensure that the person who deserves it most wins. Or they work together until the end, and your last session is a series of honorable duels between comrades.

How does this sort of thing go down in the Pokemon fiction? What's the core theme you're trying to emphasize. What's the reason you're running a Pokemon game? It's not animosity. It's the knowledge that this reward goes to whoever earns it by Being The Best There Ever Was. Hero characters in the Pokemon world usually have a cultural code of honor that segregates cutthroat battles from being friends. That's why Ash can deal with losing all the time. That's why people don't steal already owned Pokemon. It's a kind of chivalry.

The kind of people that would betray their friends to get the Championship don't deserve it in the first place, and they aren't the people that normally become player characters. They're Team Rocket. If there is some sort of universal prize granted at the end of the Indigo Plateau, they're the people that support a candidate to take it by underhanded means, in some sick perversion of all the ideals good people hold dear. So your evil campaign alternative and possible villain is that these PCs/NPCs are all working together to set up a single champion. Only one of them can win, but they're all on-board to put one over on the Championship Commission because they'll all profit in the end, when Giovanni asks for a benevolent dictatorship over Kanto and Johto.

Aside: Indigo Plateau. Elite Four (or the Four Devas, Japan). Road of Trials. "Hall of Champions". Maybe I've just been reading too much Glorantha tonight but those sound like divine or semi-divine terms. They're the end of a long heroic journey, the final guardians on the road to a final reward. If you don't make hay out of how the Championship is an almost mythical title, reconsider.

Glukeose
Jun 6, 2014

So a question I've been meaning to ask of late: how can I make 4e feel a bit more "dangerous" for my players? That is to say, it's a game with four (soon to be five or six) PCs at 7th level, and the campaign thus far has been a bit of a learning experience for me. I'm having a bit of an issue getting the right level of threat for their opposition, since we've all agreed that we'd like encounters to be infrequent, but serious, so that the PCs can focus more on roleplaying and skill usage and other stuff. 4e just seems to have a high power level for the PCs.

Any more veteran 4e DMs around these parts with a couple suggestions? I've found thus far that dangerous ranged combatants and ongoing damage are having the most success against the PCs, but I'd like to expand the repertoire of foes to throw at them.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



First thing to try is "go over the encounter budget".

Try putting together enemy groups that work well together, like... soldiers? the tanky kind to keep them away from the ranged combatants, don't be afraid to throw in a few boxes of minions (keep in mind how much AoE capability they have, though), that sort of thing.

Haven't touched 4e in ages so I don't have any specific advice on hand. Other than "Use the Monster Manual 3/Monster Vault math if you aren't using monsters out of them". I'm sure somebody will be along shortly with a link to it.

moths
Aug 25, 2004

I would also still appreciate some danger.



Late to the horror party, but atmosphere is absolutely essential. Playing in a loud game store isn't going to be scary. You don't need to dim the lights and burn Santeria candles, but try to control excess stimulus.

Be aware of what time it is in-game. I use a d12 and d6 as an in game clock, which is helpful when trying to determine stuff like "is it daytime?" that should be obvious.

When you're describing something, try to incorporate as much sensory description as makes sense. You can just say the PCs are on a motor boat - or you can describe the roar of the engines, smell of the ocean mixed with exhaust, the sun warming their skin and the cooling sea spray, the brightness and glare forcing you to squint.

The same applies to NPCs- describe them in a uniform way, like from the top down. Hair, face, body type, clothes. And try to incorporate more than just visual information. You can get a lot of mileage from an odd aroma, wheeze, nervous tic, or a even a limp handshake. Make sure everyone has a name.

You want it to be as easy as possible for players to picture the scenario. If you go into full detail in mundane things, it won't seem unnatural when you describe important stuff.

The hotel's teenage bellhop exists only to get eaten by deep ones, but that will inherently mean nothing to players. Give him some acne, an unfortunate name, have him awkwardly smile at an attractive PC, smell like cigarettes, and maybe confess that he's missing prom to work because he's supporting his pregnant sister. That's an NPC players don't want to see eaten.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

moths posted:

The hotel's teenage bellhop exists only to get eaten by deep ones, but that will inherently mean nothing to players. Give him some acne, an unfortunate name, have him awkwardly smile at an attractive PC, smell like cigarettes, and maybe confess that he's missing prom to work because he's supporting his pregnant sister. That's an NPC players don't want to see eaten.
I'm taking this to heart. I was always impressed by what I call "drive-by characterization," where an author gives a character just enough fleshing-out for it to be affecting when something happens to that flesh. Thomas Harris was a master of it.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.
nice, i was about to ask how i can create some emotional investment in random NPCs, so that's a great tip. I'm probably going to start them off on a small island with a Death Cult problem (abducting girls from the village, dark sacrifices, corrupt officials, etc) and i want them chomping at the bit to chase down those dirty bastards and dispense some indiscriminate justice.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Glukeose posted:

I'm having a bit of an issue getting the right level of threat for their opposition, since we've all agreed that we'd like encounters to be infrequent, but serious, so that the PCs can focus more on roleplaying and skill usage and other stuff.
There's your problem. It's not so much that 4E has a high power level for PCs as such, but that it's not made for that playstyle. PCs in 4E are as strong as they are because they're expected to go through 4-5 combat encounters between extended rests. It's pretty much hardcoded into the design.

That's a good start though. If you and your group agree that extended rests will be had with that frequency, period, even normal budget encounters become pretty tense. Another way, particularly for infrequent-but-serious encounters, is the Lair Assault design philosophy for encounters - the chaps in the 4E thread know more about this than I do, but basically, you take the XP budget for a level+5 encounter and spend it on three separate combats. No short rest inbetween those, at most a way to spend a single healing surge or regain an encounter power, but in exchange powers with durations longer than 1 round can be active throughout all three fights.

Hubis
May 18, 2003

Boy, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines...

Glukeose posted:

So a question I've been meaning to ask of late: how can I make 4e feel a bit more "dangerous" for my players? That is to say, it's a game with four (soon to be five or six) PCs at 7th level, and the campaign thus far has been a bit of a learning experience for me. I'm having a bit of an issue getting the right level of threat for their opposition, since we've all agreed that we'd like encounters to be infrequent, but serious, so that the PCs can focus more on roleplaying and skill usage and other stuff. 4e just seems to have a high power level for the PCs.

Any more veteran 4e DMs around these parts with a couple suggestions? I've found thus far that dangerous ranged combatants and ongoing damage are having the most success against the PCs, but I'd like to expand the repertoire of foes to throw at them.

People who read the 4e thread may think I'm a broken record at this point, but: Do "Lair Assault"-style encounters.

Take a Party Level+5 XP budget, and spread it out over two or three Party Level-2ish encounters, and a Party Level-ish finale. Include traps and environmental hazards, and add them to the XP budget. Run the whole thing as one encounter, where "Encounter" powers last the entire duration (and are effectively dailies). Give them an effective time-limit of 5 "Game-World" minutes.

Boom, big, set-piece combat encounter for when things get "serious" that you can run every so often and which can be legitimately dangerous.

deedee megadoodoo
Sep 28, 2000
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one to Flavortown, and that has made all the difference.


treeboy posted:

nice, i was about to ask how i can create some emotional investment in random NPCs, so that's a great tip. I'm probably going to start them off on a small island with a Death Cult problem (abducting girls from the village, dark sacrifices, corrupt officials, etc) and i want them chomping at the bit to chase down those dirty bastards and dispense some indiscriminate justice.

Have them discover a girl who is hiding in the woods and crying. Both of her sisters have gone missing so she ran away into the woods on her own. Have the PCs help her out in some way, maybe find her lost puppy or something. But really play up the innocent sob story. Then when you've got them all RPing with the little girl and back safe and sound, have her abducted the following night.

I did something similar in one of my games and I've never seen a group go from lighthearted and fun to bloodthirsty mob so quickly.

Glukeose
Jun 6, 2014

Alright rad, I'll give that all a shot when our group reconvenes. Thanks folks.

moths
Aug 25, 2004

I would also still appreciate some danger.



And try to keep the tone somber. Remember that the townspeople aren't in the mood for levity, and are going to be wary of outsiders - especially those practicing magic or heavily armed.

If they're laughing it up in a tavern, stress how inappropriate they're acting. Maybe the waitress's daughters went missing. Ha ha, funny guys.

E: Also don't just have little girls go missing. It's a bit objectifying for one, but it also makes the cult more predictable and less scary. Take the mayor's dog, the butcher's dimwit son, the waitress's aging grandfather, Ivan the burly lumberjack, etc. If you're doing it right, discovering Ivan's shattered axe handle should be as jarring as a stock image frightened little girl.

moths fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Aug 14, 2014

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.
I was planning on having it be the abductions are focused on the towns girls, but everyone who's gone looking for them have disappeared without trace. Animals/livestock being found butchered and mutilated in the forest and fields, etc. Not super worried about objectification, especially as poo poo is bad enough there'll be plenty of time to threaten everyone in other situations. It also very much plays off the source material of Victorian/Romantic horror where the innocent virginal women are preyed on by supernatural forces beyond human control/reason/understanding. In the source its very much an allegory for various cultural fears regarding disease and sex and whatever, but it's also an effective emotional target in pretty much every human culture and a good place to start off the tone of how not-good things are on the islands.

Though that being said, them taking the would be rescuers as additional sacrifice makes the plight of the abductees seem even more hopeless.


HatfulOfHollow posted:

Have them discover a girl who is hiding in the woods and crying. Both of her sisters have gone missing so she ran away into the woods on her own. Have the PCs help her out in some way, maybe find her lost puppy or something. But really play up the innocent sob story. Then when you've got them all RPing with the little girl and back safe and sound, have her abducted the following night.

I did something similar in one of my games and I've never seen a group go from lighthearted and fun to bloodthirsty mob so quickly.

this is a fantastic hook for both the story and granting them a modicum of trust with a townsfolk that by all accounts will be super paranoid, thanks

treeboy fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Aug 14, 2014

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Glukeose posted:

So a question I've been meaning to ask of late: how can I make 4e feel a bit more "dangerous" for my players? That is to say, it's a game with four (soon to be five or six) PCs at 7th level, and the campaign thus far has been a bit of a learning experience for me. I'm having a bit of an issue getting the right level of threat for their opposition, since we've all agreed that we'd like encounters to be infrequent, but serious, so that the PCs can focus more on roleplaying and skill usage and other stuff. 4e just seems to have a high power level for the PCs.

Any more veteran 4e DMs around these parts with a couple suggestions? I've found thus far that dangerous ranged combatants and ongoing damage are having the most success against the PCs, but I'd like to expand the repertoire of foes to throw at them.

Cut as-of-right healing surges way back. Like, two per night. Then massage the encounters a bit and hand them out as treasure or something. One of my more memorable passages of 4e play was a few sessions in the Mournlands in Eberron.

Also: inexhaustible streams of minions are fantastic in 4e, with the PCs having to accomplish tasks/keep someone safe. Also, powerful minion allies (i.e. they have a squad of minions).

Come And See
Sep 15, 2008

We're all awash in a sea of blood, and the least we can do is wave to each other.


Glukeose posted:

So a question I've been meaning to ask of late: how can I make 4e feel a bit more "dangerous" for my players? That is to say, it's a game with four (soon to be five or six) PCs at 7th level, and the campaign thus far has been a bit of a learning experience for me. I'm having a bit of an issue getting the right level of threat for their opposition, since we've all agreed that we'd like encounters to be infrequent, but serious, so that the PCs can focus more on roleplaying and skill usage and other stuff. 4e just seems to have a high power level for the PCs.

Any more veteran 4e DMs around these parts with a couple suggestions? I've found thus far that dangerous ranged combatants and ongoing damage are having the most success against the PCs, but I'd like to expand the repertoire of foes to throw at them.

Tear them apart right out of the gate with dailies, difficult recharges, and attacks-when-bloodied. If you make them panic early they won't notice that you slowed down. 50 dmg in round 1 and 10 dmg in round 2 is somehow more terrifying than 30 dmg each round instead. Glass cannons for enemies also works.

Or give your encounters the home advantage. Set up environmental hazards that the party's foes can easy push them into.

In a pinch, auras that emit ongoing damage or thorns that throw damage back have worked for me.

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Come And See
Sep 15, 2008

We're all awash in a sea of blood, and the least we can do is wave to each other.


I could use some help myself. My party is about to fight The Galt, a libertarian batman. I need attacks. Here's what I have so far:

Bootstraps!: Ranged, 2 targets. A bolo that, if it hits both targets, pulls them together and knocks them prone.

Au-stare-ity: Ranged vs will. A judgemental stare that halves healing effects (save ends). "You wouldn't take so much damage if you didn't depend on handouts so much!"

Suddenly-Hazardous-And-Rapidly-Kombustible Repellent. A spray to the face that forces the target to run away. And then explodes.

Galtapult. Arm-mounted mini-catapult that launches [steel projectiles?].

Visible Fist. Melee attack. "When you mess with the Invisible Hand you meet my..."

Laissez Fire. Close blast?

Atlas Shrug It Off. Convert a status effect into damage once per round.

Puns are encouraged.

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