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I'm running a Feng Shui(2) campaign and I've got two concepts I'm trying to figure out a way to bridge together. Concept 1: A Yakuza group in Hong Kong that is interested in learning and exploiting magical things to increase their foothold in the city. Concept 2: 14 drowned, undead imperial concubines, each with a knuckle bone from Guatama Buddha giving them eternal undeath, attacking a floating restaurant. We're in the middle of dealing with Concept 2, next session will start with the players arriving at the restaurant, and dealing with the marauding concubines. I was thinking of having the yakuzas present at the restaurant at the time of the incident, and capturing one of the undead concubines... but for what purpose? I've been trying to come up with something all week and all that keeps coming to mind is Phil Hartman saying "A yakuza thug with an undead concubine is like a mule with a spinning wheel. Nobody knows how he got it, and danged if he knows how to use it." If it helps, the players are members of Hong Kong's supernatural crimes division, they have no knowledge of the yakuzas in question, and are fairly new on the job. Also, the yakuza group is going to be a
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Jul 30, 2015 20:11
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The yakuza know that the concubines are immortal because they've tangled with them before -- so they are trying to capture a live one so that they can figure out what kills them. Once they've figured whether it's silver or holy symbols or whatever, they can make sure they go out armed with it when they're heading out to rub out the rest.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:49
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Does anyone have any advice for running a large scale battle involving 4 factions not including the pcs? Ultimately the encounter centers around the party squaring of against a boss type character in defense of the king. Depending on how the party acts before the battle will determine how they end up getting to the fight. I was thinking that they could engage in a series of waves of low level soldiers as they advance to the king and the abductor. But does anyone have any good ideas to make large scare conflicts interesting?
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Jul 30, 2015 23:05
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Here is a free steam game, ponder at it, wonder what it's place is, in a place like this, and enjoy it. XMY6F-5AVAD-RZRPH
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Jul 31, 2015 01:41
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Turtlicious posted:Here is a free steam game, ponder at it, wonder what it's place is, in a place like this, and enjoy it. Niiiice, had this on my wish list for months. Thanks.
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Jul 31, 2015 01:53
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So I am running a game of Pathfinder and I have a really good friend who is turning out to be a bit of a problem player, I'm not sure if I'm being too strict so I thought I would ask the goons. So, I'm running a Pathfinder Adventure Path. They aren't particularly challenging for a party of 4 characters, especially not for a party of 5. I have one player (who is a really good friend, and probably the best role player in the party) who gets easily bored of his characters, and is a really 'bad' minmaxer. He reads all the guides and does whatever they say, so he tends to have powerful characters that are all super generic. In this game, hes on his third now. The first he got bored of (he didn't like the fact that his character he made solely to deal damage wasn't incredibly useful at everything else as well), the second was a custom force-based sorcerer I homebrewed for him (he wanted to play a blaster sorcerer, but didn't want to deal with the fact that enemies had resistances and that sometimes he would be useless) that didn't even make it into the party because the first thing he did while interacting with the party was "accidently" almost kill the Druid's animal companion, and then refused to care IC that he did that, and treated the party like obstacles in the way of his spells that he could hit if he felt like. His third (and current) character is an awakened half-celestial wild cat. Yes this is ridiculous. Yes, I did do a lot of work to make this work and not be overpowered, while *also* making it fun for him to play by altering the rules for increased level races. I told him as much. I told him the character would have limitations (less magic item slows than a humanoid character, no hands to finely manipulate objects, etc). I started the game off with him with a broken wing only so having flight at 4th level doesn't completely break the game (it would). So far he has refused to talk with the party (they IC assume he is just a smart magical beast that decided to help them), but otherwise played the character really well. That's less of an issue. The major issue, is that even though I have frowned on min-maxing for this game, he is still trying to minmax non-stop with his already overpowered character. He has made ridiculous arguments for why he should be allowed to ignore all of his characters disabilities (having no loving hands) with little to no effort to take as many cheesy, stupid class levels as he wants to minmax to all hell. In particular that either Mage Hand (a spell used to lift and slowly move objects, it *does not* summon a ghostly hand) and Prestidigitation (a spell used to make incredibly minor magic tricks, like a street magician) can be used to completely emulate a human hand in all motor skills and function, so that he can become an alchemist for a single level, to make a potion for every fight that gives him a significant boost to his combat abilities. For reference, this 'potion' takes an hour to make, lasts for 10 minutes per alchemist level (of which he will only have 1 ever), doesn't cost anything, you can only have one at a time, but you can make as many per day as you want. I told him to 1) gently caress off and stop making up effects for spells, and 2) If you really really want to, you can use prestidigitation, but everything you try to manipulate like its a hand takes 6x longer (rounds are 6 seconds, using a 'trick' from prestidigitation takes a standard action which you only get 1/round). He is upset with those answers, obviously. I am honestly not sure if I should even try to make him happy at this point, or just tell him to gently caress off. Hes a very good friend so I would feel bad kicking him from the game. Mairn fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 20:20
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Jul 31, 2015 20:27
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It is ok for people to be friends and not enjoy each others' hobbies. You like story-based rpgs, he likes minmaxing-based rpgs. These are both valid hobbies, but you're not gonna have fun doing them together. Find other excuses to socialise, sure, but it's fine to make a 'play a non-minmaxed character or don't come' ultimatum. That said -- there are plenty of systems where minmaxing doesn't let you break the system over your knee and make the rest of the party irrelevant. If you switch to one of them, he can have his fun optimising his numbers while the rest of the party have their fun too.
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Jul 31, 2015 20:35
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Whybird posted:It is ok for people to be friends and not enjoy each others' hobbies. You like story-based rpgs, he likes minmaxing-based rpgs. These are both valid hobbies, but you're not gonna have fun doing them together. I think the problem is that we normally play min-maxy games, we are just currently playing with some people who are new to the game / don't want to minmax. Also playing a prewritten adventure since I don't have the  to write my own right now.
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Jul 31, 2015 20:39
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Mairn posted:So I am running a game of Pathfinder and I have a really good friend who is turning out to be a bit of a problem player, I'm not sure if I'm being too strict so I thought I would ask the goons. Have you talked to him and told him he's acting unacceptably? You made a valiant effort to help him have fun with this campaign, but it sounds like his engagement is lost if he doesn't do something silly or minmaxy. If you really want him to stay, talk to him and work something out, maybe consider occasionally running goofy one offs (especially in systems that allow for goofiness, Paranoia is a favorite of line for this) to let him get it out of his system. Or like the above posts say, migrate to something that doesn't break engagement min maxed. BurntCornMuffin fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 20:43
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Yeah, sorry, that's the kind of player that breaks 3.5 and derivatives over a knee. You should ask him his actual motives for doing this stuff. If he doesn't want to play a cooperative party-based game where he shares the spotlight and instead wants to play Solo Demigod's Amazing Adventures you should run him through your campaign solo (if you feel like it) or just be straight with him and tell him it's a no-sale. If he's doing this because he thinks he's "winning" the game or because this is his default approach you need to tell him that the goal is to have fun, experience an interesting narrative, and not be a problem for everyone else, so in fact he's losing the game by turning into these dumb arguments and protracted intra-party conflicts and trying to trivialize the interesting conflicts that the rules offer.
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Jul 31, 2015 20:43
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If it doesn't bother the other players that his character is a lot stronger I'd consider just adding 50% more monsters or whatever and calling it a day. If it does bother the other players, he should minmax for good instead of evil into a funny but less powerful gimmick. It sounds like he doesn't even want to cooperate with the other players though (blowing up the druid's animal companion with a souped up magic missile that could easily exclude the companion? really?), and that's probably a much bigger problem than the charop hijinx.
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Jul 31, 2015 22:50
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Sounds like he doesn't like your other friends.
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Aug 1, 2015 22:47
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break his hands irl
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Aug 1, 2015 23:59
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My sessions tend to go one of two ways: - Player subgroup A takes the initiative and takes actions that I can work with very well as a GM, that suggest natural consequences, and if those consequences are bad, they find a way to get out of or mitigate them based on whatever happened, and sessions flow quite well. - Player subgroup B takes the initiative and lays out all the options that exist for actions to take, carefully considers the consequences that could possibly arise, tries to find the ideal ratio of good vs. bad consequences, tries to mitigate or rule out bad consequences before they actually act, and sessions grind to a halt. Player subgroup B is the one that most often takes the initiative. I'd greatly prefer if it was subgroup A. Any tips for fostering an environment conductive to that happening, where players ideally make decisions as a group but without hemming and hawing over every little thing?
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Aug 4, 2015 12:56
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Part of the GM's job is to chair the players' meetings. Summarise things to keep them on task, and if they deliberate over inconsequential details, throw them a bone: "Actually you know where there's a van perfect for this job, that won't be a problem -- the real question is what you're going to do about security."
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Aug 4, 2015 17:28
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You could try to lean into group B's behaviour and encourage it in-character. Describe details of whatever place they're doing the planning in, have bystander NPCs react to their conversations, or encourage conflict and participation by giving some players tidbits of information they can inject into the scene. This won't eliminate the whole over-analyzation but it might make it less boring/slow.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:20
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Flame112 posted:Is there a good tool for making battlemaps for 4e anywhere? Something with like, a bunch of different furniture sprites or different tiles and obstacles and stuff you can place down. Or, if not, is there a good source of already made battlemaps anywhere? I asked about this a couple pages ago, and ended up finding basically exactly what I was looking for: http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/ It's an online tool for making maps, it has a lot of different textures for floors and walls as well as objects like trees and rocks and coffins you can plop down. It's pretty neat, I think!
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Aug 10, 2015 19:37
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http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php some awesome noise generation machines for the GM that likes to insert ambient sounds.
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Aug 10, 2015 22:12
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dex_sda posted:http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php That's great, I happily gave 'em my $5 to support the site (and for full lifetime access.) Also, there's an iOS app!
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Aug 11, 2015 01:58
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Man, I am stuck here. I need to figure out the next session for my players in my Hunter game. It is free form, I don't want to railroad them with only coming up with one idea. There are several ideas I am working on where they help a Mage hunt down a Jiang shi, but the others are ideas such as a cult of various upper crust people meeting together in secret to make deals with the devil and there being an actual demon, to a rogue Ordo Dracul member thinking he is Walter White and making meth while a biker gang he double crossed is out to kill him. The players have to get to him before they do. Got any other suggestions?
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Aug 12, 2015 04:25
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Ramba Ral posted:Man, I am stuck here. I need to figure out the next session for my players in my Hunter game. It is free form, I don't want to railroad them with only coming up with one idea. There are several ideas I am working on where they help a Mage hunt down a Jiang shi, but the others are ideas such as a cult of various upper crust people meeting together in secret to make deals with the devil and there being an actual demon, to a rogue Ordo Dracul member thinking he is Walter White and making meth while a biker gang he double crossed is out to kill him. The players have to get to him before they do. There's one idea I had for a monster hunter game I was writing, based on the story of a serial killer from I think Hungary around the time of World War I who was purported to be a vampire, with a legend that he fled to New York City. The concept I had was that the legend is true and now he's a well-respected businessman in a highly populated city (complete with a loving family)....and still a serial killer vampire. The idea would be to force the players to get creative in figuring out how to dispose of a guy in such a favorable position without being caught, as well as some moral problems with the situation: do you let his family know that the best dad in the world was a vampire who was pickling corpses in the basement of his office building, or do you just put them through the torment of a family member being murdered and keep his supernatural identity a secret? Or do you find another way?
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Aug 12, 2015 05:13
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Been a while (and thanks for the tips), and I think I have an idea on how to deal with group B's antics to an extent: whenever someone points out the dire consequences of a plan, I can make it clear that "yes, that's what could happen if you gently caress it up, but you can always try and find a way to do this where the chance of loving up is low." Maybe that at least will get them to try something slightly risky occasionally. In the meantime, I could use some pointers on things they could gently caress up. They'll have to travel to a city soon, and I need some brief noncombat vignettes to pad out the journey. Nothing really big, just small obstacles that can be circumvented with one or two skill checks. It's the middle of winter and they can go either across the mountains or over the plains. So far I've written down: Plains: The weather turns towards heavy snow; a patrol of guardsmen stops you and demands to see your travel passes; you need to find shelter for the night Mountains: Heavy snow; the shelter problem; there's an avalanche; you have to cross a chasm aided only by an ancient rope bridge Not very inspired so far.  I was thinking I'll prompt them for some obstacles as well and draw from a hat. They'll probably tell me stuff they already thought of a solution for, which will save planning time.
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Aug 21, 2015 18:40
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They are tracking someone or something through the snow, or they are being tracked and have to conceal their tracks. They are crossing a plain with high snowdifts, when they hear a crack beneath their feet--it is a frozen lake that is starting to weaken. They find the aftermath of a battle (wild animals or other people) and someone has survived, but is in hypothermia and they need to make a shelter and warm them up, if they want to help. The group of wolves from The Grey are stalking the group, and they need to quickly build a fire to keep them at bay.
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Aug 21, 2015 19:16
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Takuan posted:I'm running a Feng Shui(2) campaign and I've got two concepts I'm trying to figure out a way to bridge together. Those concepts are so cool that I want to shamelessly steal them for my Shadowrun 4 Hong Kong game. With your blessing, of course 
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Aug 22, 2015 09:36
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My Lovely Horse posted:Been a while (and thanks for the tips), and I think I have an idea on how to deal with group B's antics to an extent: whenever someone points out the dire consequences of a plan, I can make it clear that "yes, that's what could happen if you gently caress it up, but you can always try and find a way to do this where the chance of loving up is low." Maybe that at least will get them to try something slightly risky occasionally. For stuff like that I like to just ask the players what happened, I'll usually pick one or two of the quieter players and say something like "So something strange happened on day two, what was it and how did you react?" you'd be amazed at what people can come up with!
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Aug 22, 2015 15:30
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Takuan posted:Concept 2: 14 drowned, undead imperial concubines, each with a knuckle bone from Guatama Buddha giving them eternal undeath, attacking a floating restaurant. This is about a million times better than anything I could think up (my first adventure is beating up some local toughs in a supermarket and at a billiard hall, followed by a fight with a Sorcerer in a basement) so I'm just gonna say good job on this one, you rule.
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Aug 24, 2015 17:10
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Thanks for the earlier advice on my Monsterhearts game. Now the game is starting to take shape, and I've figured out the main antagonist: A mind-controlling entity centered in the local insane asylum that feeds off of mental anguish. The problem is I don't know how the PCs can beat it. If they come up with their own plan to defeat it, I'll go with that, but I'd like to have some idea in reserve in case they can't come up with anything on their own. Thanks in advance.
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Aug 31, 2015 22:22
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Pththya-lyi posted:Thanks for the earlier advice on my Monsterhearts game. Now the game is starting to take shape, and I've figured out the main antagonist: A mind-controlling entity centered in the local insane asylum that feeds off of mental anguish. The problem is I don't know how the PCs can beat it. If they come up with their own plan to defeat it, I'll go with that, but I'd like to have some idea in reserve in case they can't come up with anything on their own. Thanks in advance. Start a Pay It Forward style social awareness campaign to promote positive thinking until it has to either leave or starve? More seriously, you're going to have to give us a little more than that; does it have any particular weaknesses/idiosyncrasies?
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Aug 31, 2015 23:44
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Keeshhound posted:Start a Pay It Forward style social awareness campaign to promote positive thinking until it has to either leave or starve? The entity, which I'm calling Ataraxia (from the Greek for "tranquility") is trying to give the entire town moral treatment. It's a big believer in 19th-century psychology and attributes the recent (PC-caused) tragedies the town has experienced to ethical decline. It's trying to "fix" the problem by enforcing the middle-class values of industry (i.e. industriousness or work ethic), sobriety, and respectability on the town. For instance, a PC's mother is already affected and is forcing her son into carpentry and her daughter into embroidery. Soon more and more people in the town will dress modestly, pick up wholesome hobbies like singing temperance hymns and taking long walks, abstain from alcohol, eat lots of unsweetened bran and warm milk, wear anti-masturbation devices (masturbation was considered a serious problem back then), etc. Non-conformists will be forced into the asylum, where Ataraxia and its agents are most powerful; the worst offenders (like the PCs) will spend hours in the tranquilizer chair:  The thing is that Ataraxia means well and believes it's "freeing" the townsfolk from the evils that plague it. The problem is that the entity's idea of "freedom" is alien to most people today and should be especially horrifying to the teenage PCs.
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Sep 1, 2015 00:54
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The gently caress are you asking us for? The eighties have you so covered.
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Sep 1, 2015 01:17
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There's a few possibilities that often come up. I can't think of specific ideas immediately, but the general basics: 1. Appease it: Give the monster exactly what it wants, often something that distracts it from the task at hand. Basically bribe it to leave. 2. Destroy it: Actually physically attack and kill it. May not be possible depending on the nature of the entity. 3. Overload it: Fill it with so much of something (in this case maybe extremes of anti-Victorian depravity) until it metaphorically "bursts."
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Sep 1, 2015 01:19
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chitoryu12 posted:3. Overload it: Fill it with so much of something (in this case maybe extremes of anti-Victorian depravity) until it metaphorically "bursts." Eeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssss Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 01:38
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I don't know much about monsterhearts and what would fit in there but maybe there's some artifact in the world that is a vessel of collected anguish or some such that needs destroying but doing so would, under normal circumstances, be Really Bad? But maybe this monster and that thing can annihilate each other if the PCs get wind of it, the acquisition of which could be a whole arc in itself.
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Sep 1, 2015 01:39
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Bad Munki posted:I don't know much about monsterhearts and what would fit in there Basically teenage monster melodrama in the style of Jennifer's Body and Ginger Snaps. chitoryu12 posted:3. Overload it: Fill it with so much of something (in this case maybe extremes of anti-Victorian depravity) until it metaphorically "bursts." Keeshhound posted:The gently caress are you asking us for? The eighties have you so covered. Keeshhound posted:Eeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssss The game's actually set in 199X (the X is for extreme!) but I like the general idea
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Sep 1, 2015 01:57
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Pththya-lyi posted:The game's actually set in 199X (the X is for extreme!) but I like the general idea Hey, "evil entity brainwashes town, is defeated by the power of rock" is 90s as hell. It's just that the 80s (and mid to late 70s) had the best music to rebel to. Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 02:15
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Keeshhound posted:Hey, "evil entity brainwashes town, is defeated by the power of rock" is 90s as hell. It's just that the 80s (and mid to late 70s) had the best music to rebel to. Now you can use Soundgarden.
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Sep 1, 2015 02:24
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Hell, it's so repressed you might be able to defeat it by holding a sock hop.
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Sep 1, 2015 06:49
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Keeshhound posted:Hey, "evil entity brainwashes town, is defeated by the power of rock" is 90s as hell. It's just that the 80s (and mid to late 70s) had the best music to rebel to. the 90's is actually just 80's as hell.
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Sep 1, 2015 07:33
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Obviously the PCs need to organize a massive town dance party until the creature overloads. Adding to the 80's video list. e: This actually sounds really fun and do you mind if I borrow this idea for a short adventure? Soylent Pudding fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 11:03
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