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Everblight posted:The wine was real, but I like the idea of the wine collector forcing them to go to Dathomir for Rancor milk to make cheese that pairs with it, or other hilariously over-dangerous things because money means nothing to the idle rich. Then you need sarlac-fat crackers to put the cheese on. And that's just the first course...
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Feb 26, 2015 20:36
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Never take stuff from PCs because you think it'll "break the game." Let them have their windfall, raise the stakes a little so they feel like they've hit the bigtime, and carry on. If it's a game about rags-to-riches through the criminal underworld, let them get in over their head just a little by flaunting their newfound wealth. They get bigger jobs from bigger names who think they can handle it. They get an in with someone who likes their moxie, which of course makes them a target to their new patron's rivals. The answer to players accidentally getting too big for their britches is never "take it away," it's "here's more adventure."
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Feb 26, 2015 21:30
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Lynx Winters posted:The answer to players is never "take it away," it's "here's more adventure." This is general good advice for all seasons.
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Feb 26, 2015 21:59
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Iceclaw posted:French politics. Assuming Monsieur is aware of the party, having one of his own effectively tailing them would be a good way to follow their movements. Also provides some nice RP fodder when the new member is revealed to be in league with him (albeit somewhat unknowingly), casting the rest of the party into doubt while he himself is left to question his loyalties.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:25
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Night10194 posted:This is general good advice for all seasons. It really is. Just think of it as adventure fuel. If they flash it around think up 2-3 consequences, tax agents sniffing around, armed robbery, bounties, sweet deal on a star fighter (with an unannounced terrible/hilarious flaw)...
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Feb 26, 2015 23:38
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I need some help with Roll20 Macros, as in , they are totally confusing and I cant get it to work. I'm running a 2nd edition Dungeons and dragons game for some friends who miss it and I'm trying to just set up an initiative token action for everyone to use that links to their Dex reaction adjustment but I just can't figure it out.
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Feb 27, 2015 01:54
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This happened twice with my players in OD&D. The first time, I wasn't familiar with the treasure tables and gave them a roll on the best treasure class and they got over 200,000 in gold. The second time was more of a mechanics thing when they killed a 30 HD whale attacking their ship at sea and had a giant air elemental carry the corpse back to town for butchering. It was a 90 ft whale and when I looked up bone weight vs total weight to obtain meat weight, it was worth a total of 2.5 million gold even after adjusting for unusable organs and such. I knew better in that scenario though and had the town buy it from them for 90,000 gold. But now that town is transforming into a trading hub for whale rations and it's yearly income will be that of a small kingdom for about five years until it runs out of whale rations and oil to sell. The point is they are able to do more fun things with the money now, like clear land and build a fortress, or fund exploration expeditions into the jungles of stygia or the arctic. There is a limitless way for them to spend their money, and they are already running short again. CountingWizard fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Feb 27, 2015 |
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Feb 27, 2015 02:48
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CountingWizard posted:It was a 90 ft whale and when I looked up bone weight vs total weight to obtain meat weight, it was worth a total of 2.5 million gold even after adjusting for unusable organs and such. 
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Feb 27, 2015 04:36
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My response to that situation would have been very different... *A huge crowd gathers around the whale now sitting int he center of town. The mayor, red faced and seething approaches you. Before you can begin to speak he blows his lid. * WHAT THE gently caress DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING? Well, sir, we are adventurers and we have brought this cache of whale meat to... YOU FUCKERS AIRLIFTED A GIGANTIC PILE OF ROTTING FISH INTO THE CENTER OF MY TOWN. CLEAN THIS poo poo UP. But sir I think this will be a great opportunity to.... CLEAN THIS poo poo UP BEFORE IT STARTS ATTRACTING WOLVES... OR WORSE.
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Feb 27, 2015 04:47
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Zereth posted:The Mafia will obviously hold up their end of the deal. So what I did is, the Mafia does give them work, but they only get about an hour heads up, no time to plan, and normally it involves getting shot at almost immediately. The way I see it the Mafia is giving these guys jobs where there just isn't enough time for them to think a way to turn on them, and they're not great jobs with great pay. They try to negotiate and they get nothing with the threat that future work will dry up. This weekend I'm planning to give them a job to make ammends, prove their the honest sort. Maybe the Yakuza is willing to give them another chance, but on really lovely terms, like some sort of honor duel or something for a head honcho. I'm still spitballing a bit. I've had a really bad habit of making games unfun by going too far easy / hard so I'll probably be running a few ideas every week by you guys too make sure I'm not doing something terribly unfun. e: Some of the players don't like paying rent, so I have no penalty for it, but those who do get some cool boons like a +1 essence for being well rested, or if they have a really good place the first roll of the night is boosted. Stuff like that.
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Feb 27, 2015 04:47
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HatfulOfHollow posted:My response to that situation would have been very different... What's the magical equivalent of TNT?
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Feb 27, 2015 05:19
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CapitalistPig posted:I need some help with Roll20 Macros, as in , they are totally confusing and I cant get it to work. I know roll20 macros pretty well but don't know 2e at all, what needs to happen specifically? Does the thing they need to roll change at all within a session?
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Feb 27, 2015 05:39
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PublicOpinion posted:I know roll20 macros pretty well but don't know 2e at all, what needs to happen specifically? Does the thing they need to roll change at all within a session? I actually figured out what was wrong. I forgot to assign the tokens to a character so the roll wasn't working. :/
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Feb 27, 2015 05:42
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Everblight posted:drat that is spergy as gently caress. Like, you're probably a good guy and all but I don't make these kinds of calculations during a session, but still it was only like 2 numbers I needed to find and the whale length and species was approximately the same as the whale I had rolled up. I usually do the heavy thinking between sessions to speed up the game, and if it makes it less fun I veer towards fantasy rather than reality. I do this kind of research for a living though; answering tough questions with no beginning basis of knowledge.
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Feb 27, 2015 06:11
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If a whale is worth 2.5 million gold, you'd think there'd be a whole whaling industry (thus bringing the prices of the raw materials in a whale down) to get in on that racket. That'd be another way to approach it. Having the town buy it for a sum is a fine solution though, but you might want to think that further: might the town be interested in hiring the adventurers to bring them another pile of whale? Will the whole town be under a massive whale rush the next time they drop in?
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Feb 27, 2015 10:38
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Antti posted:If a whale is worth 2.5 million gold, you'd think there'd be a whole whaling industry (thus bringing the prices of the raw materials in a whale down) to get in on that racket. That'd be another way to approach it. Having the town buy it for a sum is a fine solution though, but you might want to think that further: might the town be interested in hiring the adventurers to bring them another pile of whale? Will the whole town be under a massive whale rush the next time they drop in? If you're gonna sperg out to calculate the market value of whale rations, why not go whole hog and sperg out about how you're calculating the price using final market values, after markups for labor and storage and transport are included so that the PC's actual value of whale-product is probably only a fraction of that and that's before you get into supply gluts and market forces and before you know it you're running the Little Federal Reserve On The Borderlands.
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Feb 27, 2015 10:48
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:If you're gonna sperg out to calculate the market value of whale rations, why not go whole hog and sperg out about how you're calculating the price using final market values, after markups for labor and storage and transport are included so that the PC's actual value of whale-product is probably only a fraction of that and that's before you get into supply gluts and market forces and before you know it you're running the Little Federal Reserve On The Borderlands. Yeah there would be a lot of intermediary steps between "we have a colossal whale" and "2.5 million gold worth of whale meat at retail".
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Feb 27, 2015 11:53
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My advice here would be to sayZereth posted:Yeah there would be a lot of intermediary steps between "we have a colossal whale" and "2.5 million gold worth of whale meat at retail". then continue with "...so do you guys wanna do this or did you wanna get on with the original story? I'm good either way, but if you're going into the whale products and byproducts business then I'll need some time to prepare." Because I can think of all kinds of fun and crazy poo poo to do if they decide they want to go into the whale and whale products business. There's politics, corruption, organised crime, whaler's unions, angry sea gods, insane revenge-fuelled one-legged captains, etc.
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Feb 27, 2015 14:38
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...insane revenge-fuelled one-finned whales....
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Feb 27, 2015 16:37
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Captain Walker posted:What's the magical equivalent of TNT? You put a bag of holding into a portable hole.
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Feb 27, 2015 18:33
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Or breaking your staff of power/magi over your knee like a bad rear end.
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Feb 27, 2015 18:37
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Bad Munki posted:Or breaking your staff of power/magi over your knee like a bad rear end. While shouting RETRIBUTIVE STRIKE!
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Feb 27, 2015 22:49
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:If you're gonna sperg out to calculate the market value of whale rations, why not go whole hog and sperg out about how you're calculating the price using final market values, after markups for labor and storage and transport are included so that the PC's actual value of whale-product is probably only a fraction of that and that's before you get into supply gluts and market forces and before you know it you're running the Little Federal Reserve On The Borderlands. Markups are for resellers. It's that much gold because I made the shortcut calculation of saying 1 lb of rations is worth as much as 1lb of salted whale meat. Whales in OD&D are pretty rare, and it takes very high level magic users to move that much weight around. Magic users mostly sit around in their towers studying, and there just isn't a whale industry yet. But to the point my players now know they have an effect on the world and now they will be eating nothing but whale rations and having to deal with brawlers, pirates, thieves, and such in the village now that it is expanding.
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Feb 28, 2015 05:52
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CountingWizard posted:Markups are for resellers. It's that much gold because I made the shortcut calculation of saying 1 lb of rations is worth as much as 1lb of salted whale meat. Is it wrong that my first thought was "where the hell did they get that amount of salt, and how much did it cost them"? Whales are pretty rare in most D&D games, though, because they are worth a ridiculous amount of XP. "Kill a whale, gain a level" became an in-joke at our FLGS when a DM without much of a plan for his gaming session acceded to his players' request to go whale-hunting. Three sessions later, everyone was several levels higher and blew what little plan he actually had out the window. It then became customary to design campaign worlds where whales had been hunted to near-extinction by adventuring parties decades earlier.
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Feb 28, 2015 05:59
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CountingWizard posted:Markups are for resellers. It's that much gold because I made the shortcut calculation of saying 1 lb of rations is worth as much as 1lb of salted whale meat. Plus, you know, I'm pretty sure the price for rations already has the markup in it.
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Feb 28, 2015 07:26
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:where the hell did they get that amount of salt, A very exhausted town wizard that spends all his slots on summoning salt mephits.
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Feb 28, 2015 08:07
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Bad Munki posted:Or breaking your staff of power/magi over your knee like a bad rear end. Summoned Raven + Wand of Magic Missile (Mostly Full) = Army of Goblins dead. Summoned Raven + Fireball Necklace Magic Item (Complete) = Oh poo poo, I've just carpet bombed the capital. Basically, Summoned Ravens make great force multipliers to any explosion.
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Feb 28, 2015 09:27
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fosborb posted:...insane revenge-fuelled one-finned whales.... Holy poo poo. Holy poo poo. I now have a haha-only-serious sideplot for my next game, which was already set in a port / on a ship.
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Feb 28, 2015 09:35
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AlphaDog posted:Holy poo poo. It's trying to murder an albino sea captain that hires the party to protect him.
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Feb 28, 2015 18:46
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Everblight posted:I screwed up and let my PCs have too much money. Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game, most of the PCs are running around with about a grand in their pockets, with docking fees being around 50-100 credits every time they touch down. They found some Alderaanian wine and (since Alderaan doesn't exist anymore) it is quite rare. Using their contacts, they located a Corellian wine connissuer and sold all three cases for 27,000 credits. Why spend just 27,000 credits? There's this guy, owns a whole stable of racing starships, but one of them won the Space Pentathlon too many times and they changed the rules, and really, with everything he's put into it it's less expensive just to start from scratch. He's got a buyer for 40,000 credits, but you guys remind him of his shipjockey days and he'll let it go for 35,000. And okay, maybe you don't really have that much to scrape together, but there's this gal, real solid gal, who'll write you a bond for 10,000, heck, even 15,000 credits if you need the walking-around money. Bunch of guys like you, always keep their eyes open, you'll pay it back in no time! Everything involved in it is completely above-board. The ship is a good ship. The guy legitimately owns it and is willing to part with it. The gal is not the hidden-clause lose-your-organs style of broker but has a solid record. But this is a confidence game. Will the guys who made the big lucky strike take an even bigger risk? I mean, I don't know how much is a kickass ship. Substitute a similar big party-wide upgrade thing. Remaindered weapons nobody will pay for, surplus armor that's being returned because the loving hippies wanted the stronvibrium ethically sourced, a bunch of new contacts with the full faith and credit of someone getting out of the game.
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Mar 1, 2015 06:06
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Everblight posted:I screwed up and let my PCs have too much money. Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game, most of the PCs are running around with about a grand in their pockets, with docking fees being around 50-100 credits every time they touch down. They found some Alderaanian wine and (since Alderaan doesn't exist anymore) it is quite rare. Using their contacts, they located a Corellian wine connissuer and sold all three cases for 27,000 credits. PCs having money is not a problem. It's a plot hook. They're almost certainly not the only person who has dealings with this wine connoisseur, after all. One of his other contacts, perhaps a shadier type, witnesses them walk out of the guy's house and starts asking around. Hey, these guys are suddenly flush with cash, he learns. He would like to be flush with cash... ...the party's favorite loan shark, the guy they always go to when they're short on cash, notices they haven't been looking for loans much lately. Now why could that be? he wonders. Hmm, if they're suddenly flush, they won't be coming to him anymore, and that's bad for his bottom line. Maybe he should give them a call, remind them that he knows where some of the proverbial (or maybe literal, depending on the PCs) bodies are buried, and maybe they'd like to throw some of their score his way. For old time's sake... ...now that the PCs can afford decent clothes instead of looking like scruffy nerf herders, they're attracting more attention on the street. Enter any number of con men, grifters, and scam artists looking to divest them of their cash... ...the current Big Bad that's irritating the party has to be taken out, but it turns out he can be bought off instead. Most Imperial Grand Moffs weren't exactly chosen for their sterling and honorable conduct, after all; maybe instead of having to blow up an Imperial research facility (or whatever) they can slip the guy, say, twenty grand and the facility's staff will all be suddenly discovered to be treasonous elements... ...and so on, and so forth. Don't think of the PCs having money as a weapon in their arsenal, think of it as a weapon in your arsenal, because now they have something that everyone wants.
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Mar 1, 2015 09:26
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Don't read if you're in the WWWRPG game! On "last time", one of the PW (Player wrestler/PC) ambushed a NPW (Non-Player) after the NPW's win with a brass knuckle and told him "it's nothing personal". Now he wants revenge. I was thinking he actually interrupts a match against a NPW, but I don't want to do anything unfair. It says stolen wins happen when the player rolls a botch, but I'm thinking this is more he turns it into a no-contest (both are on the ground and we cut away). I'm going to give the PW another "real" match too. Does this make sense? Is there a better way to do this?
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Mar 1, 2015 22:03
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I can't follow this... Is the PC trying to get revenge on the NPC or something else? Who used the brass knuckle on who? More pronouns, please!
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Mar 2, 2015 01:12
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Oops. Sorry. The PC ambushed the NPW last time. The PC used brass knuckles. Now the NPW wants revenge. I was thinking the NPW actually interrupts a match between the PC and another NPW, but I don't want to do anything unfair. It says stolen wins happen when the player rolls a botch, but I'm thinking this is more he turns it into a no-contest (both are on the ground and we cut away). I'm going to give the PW another "real" match too if I do this. Does this make sense? Is there a better way to do this?
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Mar 2, 2015 03:22
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Could you have the NPW get themselves setup as guest ref for the fight? Or turn up and distract the ref at a vital moment (just as the PC makes a pin). It sounds like a perfect setup for a running feud if they start taking turns to screw with each other, perfect wrestling stuff! I wouldn't give the PC another match straight away: instead give the NPW a title bout, and give the PC a nice juicy chance to interfere.
petrol blue fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 06:40
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Foolster41 posted:I was thinking the NPW actually interrupts a match between the PC and another NPW, but I don't want to do anything unfair. It says stolen wins happen when the player rolls a botch, but I'm thinking this is more he turns it into a no-contest (both are on the ground and we cut away). I'm going to give the PW another "real" match too if I do this. petrol blue posted:It sounds like a perfect setup for a running feud if they start taking turns to screw with each other, perfect wrestling stuff! I wouldn't give the PC another match straight away: instead give the NPW a title bout, and give the PC a nice juicy chance to interfere. Are these top card guys? Because you could even build it up to a number one contender match. The PC costs the NPW the title. NPW convinces whatever your Authority figure is to give him another shot, with a stipulation. It depends how much you'd like to push your players. But if you play it right, you can build it to a pretty big crescendo, and have another rivalry (or two) to run immediately after. CaligulaKangaroo fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 22:35
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I'll be working on a little noir murder mystery adventure and I wonder if there's some good GM advice around, like the stuff on thealexandrian.net, or various GUMSHOE books. You know, just some fun little tips & tricks to get the gears in head turning.
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Mar 3, 2015 14:02
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Lichtenstein posted:I'll be working on a little noir murder mystery adventure and I wonder if there's some good GM advice around, like the stuff on thealexandrian.net, or various GUMSHOE books. You know, just some fun little tips & tricks to get the gears in head turning. A murder mystery is going to largely be a character/setting drama kind of situation, and if the PCs are doing the investigation all by themselves, then the players will reach whichever conclusions they end up reaching. What is your group's play style normally like? If they are usually pretty straightforward "check off the mission objectives and get the treasure" type of players, then you can just sort of move them through a series of open-ended setpieces like, "This is the crime scene, where you need to find a clue about a witness; you've found your witness, but they're afraid to talk- what will you do?; the witness revealed the name of the murderer, now you have to find evidence connecting them to the crime scene..." and so on. If they are more open-ended storygame people, I would just set up the following ahead of time: Some locations relevant to the crime, the victim, the apparent cause of death, and some colorful characters who were involved with the victim and/or those locations. Let the players suggest their own methods for finding clues using those cues you already wrote in, and then just fill in the details around their investigation, throwing in little twists as you go. If one PC decides that the murder weapon is super important, then they should find several potential weapons (or signs of weapons, like bullets/casings, and such) scattered around the crime scene. Which one is the real murder weapon? Who did it belong to? What's with all these other weapons here? The players in this case will start to reach their own conclusions about the details of the murder and the people involved, and as the GM you should probably just roll with it. If they come up with a really solid case in this way, then it might as well be correct. If their case is shaky, then the situation is a little murkier, and they might risk blaming the wrong one of the victim's apparently many enemies as more and more people who would have benefited from the victim's death keep coming out of the woodwork.
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Mar 3, 2015 14:19
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I'm definitely thinking of a very noir thing, where the case itself is more of a pretext for PCs to meet some interesting bad people before they inevitably self-destruct. So, you know, more of an open-ended character drama than an actual puzzle to solve. As much as I love the genre, for some reason I'm always a bit chickenshit about using it, even if it's not that much different from non-crime thing I've ran. I guess I find it daunting to make the mystery/web of lies (in this case, Moscow policemen finding out their case is connected to some poo poo way above their paygrade) is ineresting and convincing enough, while not becoming a bloated, impenetrable mess only the GM gets. Usually in this kind of flexible "let them loose" style of play I relied on players themselves to construct the web of tensions (in one memorable case, I made each player make two PCs, each from one of two feuding venetian families), this time I'd like to make it external, and have the players sucked into it. It's the same in principle, probably, just with more NPCs around, but I find it a bit daunting to both work without my crutch and keep some actual mystery as the drama builds up.
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Mar 3, 2015 14:48
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Lichtenstein posted:I'm definitely thinking of a very noir thing, where the case itself is more of a pretext for PCs to meet some interesting bad people before they inevitably self-destruct. So, you know, more of an open-ended character drama than an actual puzzle to solve. As much as I love the genre, for some reason I'm always a bit chickenshit about using it, even if it's not that much different from non-crime thing I've ran. I guess I find it daunting to make the mystery/web of lies (in this case, Moscow policemen finding out their case is connected to some poo poo way above their paygrade) is ineresting and convincing enough, while not becoming a bloated, impenetrable mess only the GM gets. Make sure lots of characters have secrets they're keeping, most of which are not related to the actual mystery, but provides reason for them to lie to/mislead/avoid investigators. Have a plot that proceeds with or without the players -- like fronts in Apocalypse World-y games -- possibly more than one. For example, there could be a killer on the loose who coincidentally murdered somebody implicated in a larger conspiracy. Some of the clues and revelations will be related to a string of murders, some will point to the high level of the conspiracy, but connecting the two will bedevil the PCs because there is no connection other than that one murder. Ideally, though, both the murderer and the shadowy conspiracy are moved to rash actions by the PCs' investigations. It leaves you all sorts of room for an innocent man to end up on Death Row, or a femme fatale to be killed in a case of mistaken identity, powerful allies to lose their positions due to erroneous suspicions, or whatever.
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Mar 3, 2015 21:19
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