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Rockopolis
Dec 21, 2012

I MAKE FUN OF QUEER STORYGAMES BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH MY LIFE THAN MAKE OTHER PEOPLE CRY

I can't understand these kinds of games, and not getting it bugs me almost as much as me being weird
Harvesting them for parts of an elixir of youth/power. Rich people are hosed up, yo.
The fostering is to evaluate them for suitably. Maybe one of them gets to be an heir.

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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

AceClown posted:

Billionaires wife has decided she wants to run a fostering house because she's bored and husband billionaire gives no fucks because he's a billionaire.

Don't need to explain the whims of the rich dude. They do what they want because they can.

Edit: Id play it that he's bought the old mansion and they're the last group of care kids in there, as part of the amazing good deal he got for the house he has to let them say out their time there or the contract to buy is null and void.

Of course, this means that if things are trying to kill the players he's hardly going to want to help them, and might actually consider advancing the murder somewhat...

Billionaire's antagonistic in-laws are, unbeknownst to him, a clan of Monster Hunters. After learning that they were orchestrating the shut-down of some orphanage in what appears to be a hostile land-grab deal, he decided to adopt everybody who was still left there as a way to stick it to them.

Be prepared for things to get real hosed up come Thanksgiving.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
Simplest explanation is that the charity is some sort of tax loophole. But more interesting would be the millionaire being a superhero and vetting the pcs to choose a new sidekick. Cue "accidents" to test their skills, etc.

E: no phone simplesr is not a word bad phone

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
So I've been roped in to helping my friend run the finale of his 7 year 2nd edition D&D campaign.

And by "helping" I'll be co-dming a stupidly massive "8 Pit Field + 2 neutral magic users vs. the party" grand melee.

And one of my duties is to design a level 24 magic user that may or may not help the party based on vague motivations that I don't understand.

And I don't have access to a 2nd edition Player's Guide.

Heeeeeeeelp

Heliotrope
Aug 17, 2007

You're fucking subhuman

Pththya-lyi posted:

I am thinking about running a Monsterhearts scenario about orphans who get adopted by an eccentric billionaire and are taken to live in his mansion. My concept is basically Gossip Girls meets supernatural novels - angsty teenagers have money and privilege dropped in their laps, but still have to deal with the baggage that comes with growing up in foster care AND struggling with your insatiable lust for blood/carnage/revenge/magical fuckery/whatever. But there's one thing I need to figure out: why would an eccentric billionaire want to adopt a bunch of angsty monster teens? I can always change the billionaire's motivations around, but it will be easier if I have something to build towards at the outset. The only reason I can think of is that he's Professor X assembling a team of mutant superheroes, but that's a little on-the-nose, don't you think?

You could also put some of it in the hands of the players. Ask them "Why did this guy pick you to be one of the kids to adopt?" and base his real reason off the responses they give.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

So I've been roped in to helping my friend run the finale of his 7 year 2nd edition D&D campaign.

And by "helping" I'll be co-dming a stupidly massive "8 Pit Field + 2 neutral magic users vs. the party" grand melee.

And one of my duties is to design a level 24 magic user that may or may not help the party based on vague motivations that I don't understand.

And I don't have access to a 2nd edition Player's Guide.

Heeeeeeeelp

Speaking as someone who DMed 2nd ed for 12 years, that encounter sounds like it's going to be a goddamned nightmare to run.

A PHB isn't going to help you as much as you'd like, because it only goes up to level 20. Which supplements are you using? Have you DMed 2nd ed before?

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

AlphaDog posted:

Speaking as someone who DMed 2nd ed for 12 years, that encounter sounds like it's going to be a goddamned nightmare to run.

A PHB isn't going to help you as much as you'd like, because it only goes up to level 20. Which supplements are you using? Have you DMed 2nd ed before?

I have DM'd 2nd edition for about 8 years but haven't touched it since the late 90s, before 3rd edition. I've also never DM'd past 14th level (where the system really starts to break down IMO)

I did play in this guy's game 7 years ago when it first started but it was a positively dreadful "old school" DM game with pixel bitching, railroading, all that bad stuff that I'm just not interested in dealing with anymore. So I bailed, but he and his mid-40s friends kept playing it. Now he's called me back because I'm the best DM he knows and he realizes that he's basically hosed himself (this "best DM" thing is not a brag, compared to his group I work hard on prioritizing player fun and engagement and narrative instead of "real fantasy worldz with real consequences power trip" horseshit that he's familiar with, so compared to him I am one long party that people love, comparatively)

I'm not an RPG newbie, been doing this for almost 30 years, I currently know Fate, D&D 4e, Gumshoe well enough to run them off the cuff but I certainly don't know 2e very well anymore and I don't know high level play beyond theory.

I don't even know where to begin generating a 24th level magic user. Don't know the spell slots, don't know the hit dice, don't know what items I should use (obviously some haste stuff and some contingency spells but I don't want to make a character that snaps her fingers and trivializes the encounter).

This is basically a GM Mary Sue btw, so if you're getting the vibe that this is a horrible loving situation that I'm trying to salvage you're absolutely right. The goal would be an interesting character, not a super-powerful one (but how to do that at 24th level? Fuuuuuuuuck.)

I'll find out about the splat books. I know there's also house rules. Any help that anyone could give me, no matter how small, would be appreciated.

I promise a long and detailed trip report of this fiasco afterwards, for entertainment value.

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora
It seems like this is something you don't want to do, and the GM is looking for a way to shift blame when the big ending is a train wreck. Tell him you don't know how to do the thing he wants because it'll be better in the long run not to fake the funk and deal with a possible nerd grudge because you ruined his finale or whatever.

Bad Munki
Nov 4, 2008

We're all mad here.


Lynx Winters posted:

It seems like this is something you don't want to do, and the GM is looking for a way to shift blame when the big ending is a train wreck.

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

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

AlphaDog posted:

Speaking as someone who DMed 2nd ed for 12 years, that encounter sounds like it's going to be a goddamned nightmare to run.

2e nightmare twins :hf:

Yeah my best advice for designing a boss encounter in 2e is "make something up". Depending on how grognardy that group is though, it may not fly very well. In general, statting out a boss in D&D is like a surefire recipe for a weird, anticlimactic bumrush. You're better off throwing a bag of weird powers at the PCs that can only be defeated if they can accomplish (x) task in the battle area while also avoiding death.

Plus, like... are the PCs also level 24ish? If it's the finale of the setting, there's nothing stopping the party wizard from just casting Wish at it.


Edit: Speaking of horrible RPGs that I fondly remember from middle school- I find it staggering that no pdf versions of the R. Talsorian "Dragon Ball Z" game appear to exist. I've been tossing around the idea of doing a one-shot of it (the only way to make it work right), but at this rate I might just brew my own.

deadly_pudding fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Dec 17, 2014

Lucky Guy
Jan 24, 2013

TY for no bm

TheLastManStanding posted:

Has anyone ever worked other games into their campaign? I was thinking what if some king grants a plot of land to the players for a completed quest, then as they work their way up in levels they invest their gold in building towns, strongholds, gaining influence. Eventually, (when they are nearly lvl 20 or things seem to be winding down) the king becomes uncomfortable with how much power they've attained and declares war. At this point you whip out a custom Risk map and a massive battle ensues. Do the players band together to defeat him, or does someone broker a deal with the king in exchange for even more land and power? Seems like a climactic way to end a campaign. It'll be probably a year before I try it, so I'm curious if people have done it (or incorporated any other board game) before.

I ran a modern day, urban fantasy style with Mage's "magic is real but it doesn't work around normals" trope 3rd ed game for several years. I always planned on taking the game to Hong Kong for an adventure, then bust out the Feng Shui character sheets, but we never actually made it there. I did manage to reveal that wuxia wire-fu stuff happens all the time in Hong Kong and no one there bats an eye, though. I definitely wouldn't do it unless I was sure that my players would enjoy the change of pace (they had a blast with previous Feng Shui one-shots, so in this case I know it would have gone over well).

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.

Lynx Winters posted:

It seems like this is something you don't want to do, and the GM is looking for a way to shift blame when the big ending is a train wreck.

No, he's an older guy who is smart enough to realize he's hosed himself. It's a 9 player party to boot so this is just pure loving insanity.

He flew in one of the players from across the country on his own dime. So this is a really big deal for him and he definitely realizes he's bitten off way way way too much.

The players, and the DM, are too grognardy for suggestions along the line of "gently caress it, switch to <a different simpler rule system that could handle this better>" so if anyone has any ideas about designing a level 24 magic user under 2e rules I would really appreciate it. I realize that it's a bad situation but I'm this guy's friend and I'm not walking away from it, I am going to do my best to try to help him salvage this.

Edit: Also, let's say that this is a nefarious plan to shift blame: I don't care, I never see these other people and a bunch of 45 year old grognards being mad at me because their precious poo poo system fell apart at the finale is actually really funny and cool. Perfectly happy to be a scapegoat in that case.

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Dec 17, 2014

Rexides
Jul 25, 2011

Just play to your strengths. Try to find three fun spells to throw at the players (you will need a PHB for this, though), and the first time they are hit after the third round announce that they have run out of HP.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Well good news, he's agreed that abstraction is necessary and that he doesn't want a total party wipe. I've sent him over some ideas - Rexides your idea got the ball rolling, so thank you.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



If you'd posted this as "here's my idea for an encounter", I would have told you "do something else instead" and left it at that. That said, if "abstraction" is going to happen and I know anything at all about 2e, grognards, or 2e grognards, that means that most of the encounter will be be ad-libbed, hand-waved, and/or use "monster stats" and other rules that exist only in the DM's head.

Let's assume it's not though. Let's also assume that the "right" way to win isn't to have NPC wizard cast Wish and make everything OK, and that a PC wizard likewise can't cast Wish and make everything OK.

Pit fiends are loving murder machines, but a 9 player party of (presumably) 20th level and above... that's not weaksauce either. You could run the encounter straight and the tightly designed encounter building math my gut feeling tells me that they'd have a pretty good chance of winning. There's more than one PC per Fiend. If you don't also have to fight the wizards, or better yet you have them on your side, you've got much less to worry about (seriously, a >20th level wizard can probably solo a pit fiend if they're lucky and they use tanky buffs first).

When I said "sounds like a nightmare", I meant that it would be a motherfucking pain in the arse to run. I also meant it would probably kill the whole party, but I was thinking 4-5 PCs, not 9(+2). I think you've got a good chance of having a few of them pull through if you run it like any other 2e encounter (like, pull some punches when necessary, don't nuke the PC wizards first, don't immediately go after the healer, all that good poo poo that 2e needs if you don't want it to fall apart). The problem as I see it is mostly the length and complexity of the fight and I have no idea there because I just wouldn't have done it.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
I agree, good advice. I've already convinced him that running a five hour combat is not epic, it's exhausting. This is going to be bad, but not "throw yourself off a cliff" bad.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
My main take on it would be 'more is not better' - 8 pit fiends isn't that inspiring as a boss fight. I'd take a look at computer game boss fights for inspiration - stuff that does massive damage, but is telegraphed, and requires more than 'standard tactics' to defeat - the puzzle is as much 'working out how to kill the boss' as having the skill to do it. 'Stages' work well, where the mechanics change as the fight goes on, stuff like that. Maybe there's a single (or even a trio) of pit fiends, the PCs laugh and kerbstomp them, and then the big bad shows.

Rules-wise, I only know enough 2e to think you're insane for even contemplating it, so can't help there.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
An evil wizard, and a hellgate that demons walk through until the party is reduced to 1/4 of their resources.

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
The pit fiends themselves are performing a ritual that, if completed, will do terrible things. While they do this they're immobile. They need to be killed in order to stop the ritual. To ensure this doesn't happen they have summoned *insert non-stupid level-appropriate encounter* as guards.

Maybe raise the stakes midway through by having one of the immobile pit fiends turn out to be a fake, and the real one surprise attacking the party.

E: you could also use this to handle Mary Sue Wizard. He focuses on interfering with the ritual to buy the PCs some extra time to kill the fiends, but if they take too long he ends up dying tragically and heroically.

Whybird fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Dec 18, 2014

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

Pththya-lyi posted:

I am thinking about running a Monsterhearts scenario about orphans who get adopted by an eccentric billionaire and are taken to live in his mansion. My concept is basically Gossip Girls meets supernatural novels - angsty teenagers have money and privilege dropped in their laps, but still have to deal with the baggage that comes with growing up in foster care AND struggling with your insatiable lust for blood/carnage/revenge/magical fuckery/whatever. But there's one thing I need to figure out: why would an eccentric billionaire want to adopt a bunch of angsty monster teens? I can always change the billionaire's motivations around, but it will be easier if I have something to build towards at the outset. The only reason I can think of is that he's Professor X assembling a team of mutant superheroes, but that's a little on-the-nose, don't you think?
I'm going to chime in because I disagree strongly with most of the advice you've received, which seems to involve the zillionaire plotting the doom and death of the PCs. I'm not sure why that is; perhaps because A Series of Unfortunate Events was popular?

The main problem with your setup is that it makes a NPC the linchpin of why the PCs are together, and in Monsterhearts you're supposed to treat your NPCs like stolen cars. Possibly the PCs don't live and attend school all in one gigantic mansion, and/or Daddy Warbucks is absent a lot of the time, and/or the PCs are very poorly supervised, so they have plenty of opportunity to get into trouble and interact with other NPCs. (Perhaps you've seen American Horror Story: Coven? Very bad parenting and teaching there. Like, mostly absent.)

As for Daddy Warbucks' motivation...here's another place where Monsterhearts' MCing advice runs counter to what's considered Good GMing by a lot of people. Many consider it good GMing to have complex NPCs with complex motivations, and complicated villains with complicated plans. Monsterhearts says gently caress that because the game is about teenage anxiety and romance, and the PCs are going to be complicated people with complicated problems as it is. So with a few caveats (like making humans monstrous and vice versa) you don't want Daddy Warbucks to be a Byzantine schemer plotting some convoluted doom.

What I recommend instead is that Daddy Warbucks wants a family. He could be a wizard or a Dracula or a Yummy Mummy or a Boo Berry or just a rich old Scrooge who hosed up his chances to have a family the normal expected way. (See: the part of The Vampire Lestat where he explains why he was such a douchebag in Interview with the Vampire.) So he can intrude into their lives when the MC is at a loss at random to spoil them, meddle in their lives, insist on a change of scenery, try to act fatherly, try to teach them something, expect warmth, inflict discipline, etcetera in a totally haphazard way because he hasn't really earned the right to do these things, at least not without it being awkward as hell, because he doesn't naturally inhabit a space in these kids' lives. And most of the time the PCs will be left to their own devices, each other, their teachers, vampire baseball, or whatever, because again, their adopted father doesn't know how to be one.

Dwanyelle
Jan 13, 2008

ISRAEL DOESN'T HAVE CIVILIANS THEY'RE ALL VALID TARGETS
I'm a huge dickbag ignore me
Good Evening, ya'll!

I have been slowly catching up on this thread, and it's helped me greatly improve my GMing skills. I've run into a bit of issue recently, and I could use some advice.

One of my players has had their primary PC come into rulership of a small kingdom. My group pretty quickly declared independence from the larger empire they were a part of, and now I'm looking at adding in a war element as well, always fun. We're playing D&D 3.5. I've never even played in, much less ran, a more strategic game before. I've always loved the concept, and one of my disapointments with 3.5 was the removal of stronghold rules, what little they had.

Does anyone have any good advice on running this type of game? Or even a link somewhere to look for examples of this type of play? I've tried google but I came up short. :/ I figured I could cover military stuff, diplomacy with other nearby rulers? There's a fairly well-established backstory to all this, and my players are already throwing around all sorts of ideas, a lot of which sound good to me, because I'm not quite sure where to start with all this. Thanks!

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

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

Thalantos posted:

Good Evening, ya'll!

I have been slowly catching up on this thread, and it's helped me greatly improve my GMing skills. I've run into a bit of issue recently, and I could use some advice.

One of my players has had their primary PC come into rulership of a small kingdom. My group pretty quickly declared independence from the larger empire they were a part of, and now I'm looking at adding in a war element as well, always fun. We're playing D&D 3.5. I've never even played in, much less ran, a more strategic game before. I've always loved the concept, and one of my disapointments with 3.5 was the removal of stronghold rules, what little they had.

Does anyone have any good advice on running this type of game? Or even a link somewhere to look for examples of this type of play? I've tried google but I came up short. :/ I figured I could cover military stuff, diplomacy with other nearby rulers? There's a fairly well-established backstory to all this, and my players are already throwing around all sorts of ideas, a lot of which sound good to me, because I'm not quite sure where to start with all this. Thanks!

Probably take a page from Dungeon World, and maintain a chart somewhere of the situation as it pertains to the various diplomatic powers. Each of them gets to make some kind of "move" between adventures, which should be based on what happened during the adventure. So, if the PCs help one rival kingdom with their dragon problem, then that kingdom's move should be to advance toward friendliness in some way, while the kingdom that sent the dragon there in the first place will move toward enemy status. Sometimes the kingdoms have their own agenda separate from the PC kingdom, and may advance that agenda, instead.

shitty poker hand
Jun 13, 2013

Thalantos posted:

Good Evening, ya'll!

I have been slowly catching up on this thread, and it's helped me greatly improve my GMing skills. I've run into a bit of issue recently, and I could use some advice.

One of my players has had their primary PC come into rulership of a small kingdom. My group pretty quickly declared independence from the larger empire they were a part of, and now I'm looking at adding in a war element as well, always fun. We're playing D&D 3.5. I've never even played in, much less ran, a more strategic game before. I've always loved the concept, and one of my disapointments with 3.5 was the removal of stronghold rules, what little they had.

Does anyone have any good advice on running this type of game? Or even a link somewhere to look for examples of this type of play? I've tried google but I came up short. :/ I figured I could cover military stuff, diplomacy with other nearby rulers? There's a fairly well-established backstory to all this, and my players are already throwing around all sorts of ideas, a lot of which sound good to me, because I'm not quite sure where to start with all this. Thanks!

Pathfinder has some really solid rules for kingdom building and mass combat. It's probably loosely compatible with 3.5 with relatively few modifications, and the rules are all available on the PFSRD, or in Ultimate Campaign.

Cantorsdust
Aug 10, 2008

Infinitely many points, but zero length.
Another option would be Reign's Company rules as an easy system to tack on.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
Update on the "8 Pit Fiends + 2 level 20+ magic users + party of 9 PCs battle royale under 2nd edition rules" situation I was telling you guys about: finally got my buddy to send me the party's character sheets, and lo and behold the party is made up of 10th - 12th level characters. I just assumed we were dealing with epic characters with this kind of encounter composition but nope, it's a big dumb meat grinder and we're going to have a 2+ hour conference call tonight to completely rework this poo poo. LOL this is hilarious to me.

Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Dec 19, 2014

m.hache
Dec 1, 2004


Fun Shoe

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

Update on the "8 Pit Fiends + 2 level 20+ magic users + party of 9 PCs battle royale under 2nd edition rules" situation I was telling you guys about : finally got my buddy to send me the party's character sheets, and lo and behold the party is made up of 10th - 12th level characters. I just assumed we were dealing with epic characters with this kind of encounter composition but nope, it's a big dumb meat grinder and we're going to have a 2+ hour conference call tonight to completely rework this poo poo. LOL this is hilarious to me.

Well, at least now you can probably pull from the Monster Manual.

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
No we're still going to be doing Pit Fiends (he's obsessed with them) but I'll probably be quartering their hitpoints, plus giving them a weak point or w/e and not starting with all of them in play. And the 24th level ME is obviously going to be scrapped or reworked.

It's pretty obvious that he was going to make this NPC Story Time where the players got to be Robin to a bunch of NPC Batmen but he's coming around to my way of thinking instead of running Bad DM's Fantasy Campfire Tales. I just wish I could have seen the original clusterfuck get run on his poor players. This guy introduced a Deck of Many Things to his campaign and it didn't self-destruct, though, so maybe he's just living a charmed life and the party would have rolled perfectly and won in a couple of rounds.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
My GM advice at this point is "Don't get involved with / blamed for this inevitable clusterfuck". Like, if the GM can't see how horrible this poo poo is, just walk away.

Bad Munki
Nov 4, 2008

We're all mad here.


Alternately, demand to include your OWN mary-sue who will save the party singlehandedly and is a pixie-minotaur-cloud-giant-pit-fiend level 300 fighter-mage-thief-cleric-bard-druid-paladin-ranger in fact here is the character sheet it's all ready to go I have also taken the liberty of giving myself a few basic magic items such as this +30 vorpal holy avenger staff of the magi deck of many portable holes of the planes

Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Dec 19, 2014

Megaman's Jockstrap
Jul 16, 2000

What a horrible thread to have a post.
I'm going to reiterate that I don't care if I get blamed. TBH I didn't realize how bad this finale was, but you know: it's the guy's birthday and he spent hundreds of dollars on Pit Fiend miniatures and one of those Forge World sets and flew a player across the country on his own dime and he also realized that his idea was unworkable so I felt bad for him when he came to me for help. He's a very enthusiastic, focused dude who just happens to be a horrible bad DM and has found a bunch of co-dependent dumbos to put up with his bad poo poo for years on end, so nobody worry about me or about blame or any of that stupid stuff. As long as I show up and try to help he'll appreciate it and I don't care what the grognard players think, from what I've heard they've put up with a lot of bad poo poo on a regular basis (although I think a TPK at the finale would be a new low, frankly).

So either sit back and wait my inevitable trip report or make good jokes or toss me suggestions/cool stuff that I could add to this fight to make it fun. Deadline is..let's say tonight, 7pm. That's when I call him. Thanks guys. :)

Bad Munki
Nov 4, 2008

We're all mad here.


Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

toss me suggestions/cool stuff that I could add to this fight

See above, all done. The rest is just minor details.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

I'm going to reiterate that I don't care if I get blamed. TBH I didn't realize how bad this finale was, but you know: it's the guy's birthday and he spent hundreds of dollars on Pit Fiend miniatures and one of those Forge World sets and flew a player across the country on his own dime and he also realized that his idea was unworkable so I felt bad for him when he came to me for help. He's a very enthusiastic, focused dude who just happens to be a horrible bad DM and has found a bunch of co-dependent dumbos to put up with his bad poo poo for years on end, so nobody worry about me or about blame or any of that stupid stuff. As long as I show up and try to help he'll appreciate it and I don't care what the grognard players think, from what I've heard they've put up with a lot of bad poo poo on a regular basis (although I think a TPK at the finale would be a new low, frankly).

So either sit back and wait my inevitable trip report or make good jokes or toss me suggestions/cool stuff that I could add to this fight to make it fun. Deadline is..let's say tonight, 7pm. That's when I call him. Thanks guys. :)

Definitely want to use those miniatures; you could go with saying some are statues, but "meh." Maybe they are judges, with the other bad guys and the party on trial (by combat)? Rather than weaknesses in the pit fiends, per se, perhaps they will strike at the players' enemies if the party can accomplish certain things during the battle (either combat feats, or argumentation)? Or maybe the players and non-pit-fiend bad guys are there to act as advocates/judges in the pitfiend trial? Just . . . something to make the pitfiends relevant, but not purely combat obstacles.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
The players control the pit fiends, in a cutaway scene to demonstrate just how badass the eeeevil henchdemons are as they lay waste to most of the Armies of Goodness.

In the Grim Darkness of the toy story franchise, there are only pit fiends.

The Big Bad casts a Halloween Special spell, making the PCs appear as pitfiends to everyone but each other!

The armies of good won't be enough to defeat the armies of EEEEEVIL, unless the PCs, under a clever illusion spell, can cause enough infighting to tear the armies apart!

e: What are the pit fiends escorting? No-one likes to be on the defence in an escort mission, but attacking is probably fair game.

The pit fiends that ate christmas - a one-off with PC pit fiends trying to wade through swarms of pixies to take down the fat man.

PCs have to overcome the mystic wards laid down by each pitfiend (one for each /real/ sin) to get to the Big Bad)

Grossly unfair TPK: The PCs 'wake up' in hell, and have to fight their way literally out of hell.

petrol blue fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Dec 19, 2014

MANIFEST DESTINY
Apr 24, 2009

So I'm pretty new to the whole GMing thing, but improving fast (I like to think) running a Dungeon World campaign that is very light on player-side world building, they seem to prefer it when I draw out the map, have my NPC's provide them with obvious quests rather than exploring etc.

One issue I'm having is that some of the players are in a bit of a rut, not using their class's range. I don't think the wizard has cast anything but magic missiles. They all have interesting utility items that do weird stuff, but hardly touch them. I was thinking I should just throw out problems where the obvious solution is to use their secondary untouched abilities, but really I want them to apply them in regular situations, should I just speak up? I'm worried, at least with a couple of the players, that they'll take it personally if I'm like "hey you're missing a lot of chances to use your abilities more creatively". Subtle hints don't seem like they're getting through though. One character has a spell that spoils food, and when they encountered a group of orks in their barracks at chow time, I tried to emphasize it, but they ignored the cue.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
I've only been on the playing side of DW, but it might be worth trying to lead by example - maybe make a point of mentioning the exact text of a monster's move (especially if someone's playing as The Druid), and do something unusual/unexpected with it.

But if that's still too subtle, yes, definitely let them know they can do more! Probably best to steer clear of 'you could have done X', in case someone takes it as a criticism, but 'An example of stretching [ability] could be...' should only be a good thing.

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora
I've been playing for like two years with a couple of people who manage to unlearn how to play between every session. Sometimes you simply cannot get people to actually remember all the cool poo poo they can do, no matter how often you point it out or put them in situations specifically designed for it. The last game we played was GURPS so I thought, yeah, ok, GURPS has a lot going on. Now we're playing a different campaign in FAE and half the group forgets that stunts exist until NPCs use them. poo poo, I even wrote up a mechanics cheat sheet and the "how do I..." questions still come up three months in.

My answer is "be patient" and also sometimes just point at the thing on their sheet that works and say "your character would probably recognize that it's a good time for this."

fosborb
Dec 15, 2006



Chronic Good Poster
Your player probably just really likes magic missiles. Rename/reflavor all of the his spells as magic missile.

MANIFEST DESTINY
Apr 24, 2009

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, for the wizard, I even handed her a pair of gauntlets that turn the magic missiles into elemental attacks (fire/wind/water/earth) with uses for each, but nope still just used the basic missiles. So yeah she is definitely getting attacked by a fire elemental next session.

The good news is where we left off the last session, I know exactly where they're going first in the next one, so I can design the whole encounter as a tutorial of sorts. I think I'll just start the session by saying hey, this place is full of a lot of bizarre traps, so take a moment to review your spells, abilities, and items, you're going to need them. If I can just get them to use the abilities once, I'm sure they'll latch on. They're headed to a wizard's tower where all the inanimate objects have come to life amongst other phenomena, so hopefully their proclivity for using the base attacks in every situation will be cured.

inklesspen
Oct 17, 2007

Here I am coming, with the good news of me, and you hate it. You can think only of the bell and how much I have it, and you are never the goose. I will run around with my bell as much as I want and you will make despair.
Buglord
I've played two Fate campaigns with the same group and the mechanics have always kind of gotten in the way. The players forget about their aspects except when they want to boost a roll; they never invoke aspects to gain fate points. It's also really hard to get them to focus on the Overcome an Obstacle or Create an Advantage actions, in part because they're kind of abstract; the players just go "I roll dice to do the thing". (And, since the players don't engage with the mechanics, it's really hard for me as the GM to do so; it seems unfair for the opposition to be taking advantage of things the PCs aren't.) Likewise, it always feels arbitrary when I pick the difficulty of a task.

I think I'm either going to try a PbtA game the next time (moves rooted in the fiction, results based on 0-6, 7-9, 10+, etc) or go for something much more freeform like Primetime Adventures.

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My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

I have a player who likes to stay within her comfort zone of 1-2 abilities too. When she played a wizard she only used Thunderwave (and spent a whole lot of feats and item options turning it into a legitimately scary, huge area boom of death), now she's playing a battlemind and 90% of what she does is an unaugmented Iron Fist (and she picks tactics that let hear soak up lots of weak attacks with that damage reduction that would otherwise get distributed among the party). I guess some people just thrive in that situation.

Anyway, idea for my feywild soujourn: evil hag lives in a gingerbread house full of traps. She has her heart safely locked away Koschei-the-Deathless-style and can only be defeated after it's destroyed. The traps are all made of gingerbread and easily disarmed by eating them but so is the heart, and if you ate all the traps you might be to full to deal with the heart when it comes down to brass tacks.

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