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Sorry, is this two villains or three? I'm having a little trouble reading your summery. Assuming it's three though; For the first one, the way I'm seeing it the simplest option is to have some kind of spiritual entity responsible for the proper cycles of life and death cluing them into what the orc's up to, since that probably fucks up the reincarnation cycle or something. Maybe employ metaphors like a river being diverted and the land downstream withering into a desert, if you want to be more vague. For the human supremacist (I'm assuming this one's a separate entity from the king) it depends on the scale of his activities. If it's mostly just political disenfranchisement, you're probably best off having them hear stories of refugees fleeing persecution to neighboring kingdoms, maybe running into someone who escaped. Think the stories we get from people who escape North Korea. If we're going full on genocide, or if the racist policies are causing significant, abnormally heinous suffering, you could try giving visions of the kingdom but in some kind of warped dark-world style, with the explanation that the intense evil being perpetrated is fundamentally corrupting the kingdom on a spiritual level (which will lead to physical changes if left unchecked.) From what you described of the king, he doesn't seem high profile enough to warrant dream intervention. It'd probably be simpler for you to detour the party into a city where everyone really loves the king and have them talk to NPCs who have positive impressions of him. "Oh, see those watchtowers on the horizon? The King, gods bless his very soul, built them for us after hearing about how we've been getting raided by those damned orcs every summer. Now they steer clear of us, and things have really been improving around here! He's even coming to make an inspection next week, everyone's looking forward to seeing him again!"
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Oct 10, 2015 14:55
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The king is the racist, there are 2 "villains" and they have been talking about taking a side. I think you're right, and I'll be doing the "Oh yeah god bless his soul." and the spirit thing, because it still works. Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2015 19:03
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Before I begin, I am running a Hunter: The Vigil game. So, now to my problem. Ok, I am at a point I feel stuck in the campaign. I don't know how to truly follow through after a climatic session of a showdown in Hunter. The players rescued the person who was about to be used in a Occult Ritual so that the evil 800 year old wizard can finally find a book. The group has been chasing after the book as well to stop him. Then, they realized that another Hunter group: Task Force Valkyrie (TFV) wants the book for their own end. They nearly got double crossed, but stopped them. Instead of being all evil, they treated the guy nicely and won a chance die to interrogate him (The players are members of the Modern Day Spanish Inquisition) by making sure he had nice tea and all, really ramping up the Monty Python gag. They were able to then exchange their prisoner for the ones TFV kidnapped in a smooth way. To top it all off, one of the players is now charmed by the wizard's apprentice to do her entire bidding. So, here I am, the main bad guy can now sit back and let the players go on about their business while the other player, who has knowledge he has been charmed, do his bidding until it is time for him to make a move. I need to figure out the steps for them to find the book in Chicago and then make the hidden temple in the city that houses it be something of a fun encounter. I originally plan to take sequences from The Last Crusade, but any other ideas will definitely help. All they know so far is that a Septemi Vampire was responsible for making sure the book escaped when Rome got sacked in 1527. I was thinking of them asking one of the domovois in Chicago that survived the fire and point in the way, but they have to give it various things like its favorite meal and such. Any other suggestions?
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Oct 13, 2015 15:22
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SO my players were like "Yeah gently caress this racist prick, we're going to find fame somewhere else." And went to hunt for the Eladrin's brother. My need of advice is, they killed one person, but it could have been a changeling, the way they killed it, it could have actually been the person the changeling was impersonating. I have not decided which it should be. How long can I keep it ambiguous before it's lame?
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Oct 17, 2015 08:31
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At the core, until your players are tired it. That said, if the players have something they are considering true without acknowledging the ambiguity, then you have the right and duty to have it be the opposite and spring that bit of information on them at the most comedic time.
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Oct 17, 2015 09:46
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Eh, it's kind of lame to just snatch a victory away from them like that (if they considered it a victory.) Unless it was clear to them from the outset that that might have been a possibility? Basically I'm saying don't just spring it on them that the guy they killed wasn't the guy they thought they killed. Leave hints that the death wasn't kosher, rumors of him being spotted somewhere else, etc. Get them wondering and paranoid.
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Oct 17, 2015 13:28
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Did the players know that the target was being impersonated, or could've been? If so, they probably killed the changeling. If they didn't, then you have a bunch of interesting stories you can tell with that changeling character where the players weren't aware of him, and he might not be aware that the target was killed.
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Oct 17, 2015 17:09
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They saw both the woman, and the changeling in the same rooma t one point.
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Oct 17, 2015 21:11
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I think it's more amusing if they killed the real guy and the changeling is the one unaware
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Oct 18, 2015 02:06
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So they ended up saying "Well we should probably just leave so we don't make things worse." And left after being imprisoned for a week. They really wanted to leave, so I had a high power wizard cast Words of Truth on the changeling and directly asked a contract-y form of "You're not a changeling or a shape shifter, or someone pretending to be the royal guard yeah?" Then they went to the next country after being locked up for a week while the investigation went. So I couldn't figure out how to make the super cool communist orc a bad option as well. So they're cannibals, and eat people. They also do not own anything, and have all the problems a true communist society has, but their enemies are crazy racists, who hate everyone not vaguely human looking. (Calling them "other-kin") Their totally allowed to quest in Krush if they want, and not get involved, but they want to get involved. I can kind of read my players. Questions, what can I show that isn't just corruption that's bad about communism?
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Oct 25, 2015 07:16
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Second Question, I am running Dread, which is a horror game with Jenga Towers. I need to really work at setting the environment, what is some good ways to brush up on this, and some good sound effects / music that fills the listener with dread?
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Oct 25, 2015 07:31
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Turtlicious posted:I need to really work at setting the environment, what is some good ways to brush up on this, and some good sound effects / music that fills the listener with dread? Play some Lustmord or other dark ambient music on good quality speakers and any sane, reasonable person should be set on edge. BlackIronHeart fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Oct 25, 2015 |
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Oct 25, 2015 08:29
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Turtlicious posted:Questions, what can I show that isn't just corruption that's bad about communism? the dress code Or just do side effects of it that aren't the result of malice; a village not getting enough food because of an admin oversight is just as devastated as one not getting enough food because of corruption, and if the decision-making process is slower than other forms of government you might have e.g. difficulty evacuating people from the path of a time-sensitive menace. Bonus: by intervening to help, your players implicitly destabilise the system.
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Oct 25, 2015 10:34
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Turtlicious posted:I am running Dread. I've had good results with Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV for horror game ambient music. Also turn the lights way down, or use candles or something. Hell, it's Dread - turn the lights off and have a lovely flickery dim flashlight that a player making a pull has to use. Or matches if your friends can be trusted not to burn your house down. e: Creepy sounding nursery rhymes or music box tunes. Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynGBPvDmDSQ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7umg6ZrIEH8 Just search "creepy music box" on youtube. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Oct 25, 2015 |
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Oct 25, 2015 10:38
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DOWN JACKET FETISH posted:the dress code Each citizen is allocated one mandatory ermine per outfit.
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Oct 25, 2015 10:49
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AlphaDog posted:Hell, it's Dread - turn the lights off and have a lovely flickery dim flashlight that a player making a pull has to use. Or matches if your friends can be trusted not to burn your house down. Cheap crank-powered flashlights should be less trouble than manually finding the right combination of crappy flashlights and dying batteries.
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Oct 25, 2015 19:07
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Turtlicious posted:Second Question, I am running Dread, which is a horror game with Jenga Towers. Hah, what do you know, I'm going to run Dread for some pals soon too. For ambient music, depending on what the setting is, I think string instruments at the right pitch can create a lot of tension. For instance, the theme of the Crones from The Witcher 3 creates an uneasy, foreign atmosphere. It evokes a feeling of being in the woods, perhaps seeing something you shouldn't, and not being sure which way leads back home because the path has definitely changed since you arrived. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8J9HXcOxrs If this communist themed game is also your Dread game, industrial music is a good way to go. Either heavy and overbearing, to communicate the monolithic nature of a fascist government, or discordant screeching, which makes me think of the stress of never knowing if today the rules have changed and you're now a "deviant." Another videogame example, but Wolfenstein: The New Order has a few tracks that make me think of an oppressive, urban landscape. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRY0TA-LoCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teJ8NeUORDo Hopefully that's at all helpful.
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Oct 25, 2015 20:22
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Turn out all lights in other parts of your house. Put weird art up in the bathroom and kitchen and other parts of the house people will be likely to see. (A picture of a Harlequinn clown, or one of those old 1800s photos with the dead people posed like they totally aren't dead.) Turn the lights down if possible and entirely off at dramatic moments. Play numbers stations and clips of people heavily breathing in the background, but a burner phone and secretly call a player from it during key moments. Edit: When dealing with outsider types, have the really scary ones ignore the characters in conversation and talk directly to the players, occasionally asking them about their family's health. Be sure to still use the voice of the outsider in question. Moriatti fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Oct 25, 2015 |
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Oct 25, 2015 20:29
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Wow, that was some amazing advice, I love all of it. e: And I've figured out the plot so far, They're beat cops and they've been sent to check up on a pair of officers who went missing in a large apartment complex in the projects. This is why 4 of them were sent. Spooky things will happen from there. Either Ghosts, Monsters, or Cthulu Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 02:09
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Turtlicious posted:Wow, that was some amazing advice, I love all of it. For spooky apartment complex, here
Don't take a kitchen sink approach obviously but occasional weird / idiosyncratic things can be even more effective than overt gore/horror. Especially if any of your friends are effete suburbanites like myself.
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Oct 26, 2015 03:48
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I don't think any of these players have ever stepped foot in an apartment building, so this will be perfect.
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Oct 26, 2015 04:10
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Turtlicious posted:I don't think any of these players have ever stepped foot in an apartment building, so this will be perfect. Report back after you have thoroughly spooked your friends.
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Oct 26, 2015 04:28
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My players don't like learning rules. They find it boring, so when we play a new game I need to explain things as we go and/ give a boring spiel at the top of the game that they pay varying amounts of attention to (understandably because it's just me saying boring stuff). They all say they like these games once they figure out what they're doing, but I feel like their characters suffer since as a result they don't put much forethought into them. We come from a university theatre club so the roleplaying's all solid and we've had great success in rules-light games like Fiasco and Law's Out. We've got an upcoming Worlds in Peril game, any ideas for how I can encourage/ incentivize learning about the game and/or creating deeper characters (without setting homework that would inevitably be dull and not get done)?
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Oct 26, 2015 09:28
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The communist orcs ask PCs to sell their magic items to have cash to buy an orphanage. They also institute a tax on loot.
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Oct 26, 2015 09:42
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Glukeose posted:For spooky apartment complex, here See if you can find a recording of the National Weather Service bulletin for Hurricane Katrina, then edit it down so it isn’t obvious where you stole it from. I used this as a repeating sound effect at a haunted house once, to great effect.
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Oct 26, 2015 10:44
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echopapa posted:See if you can find a recording of the National Weather Service bulletin for Hurricane Katrina, then edit it down so it isn’t obvious where you stole it from. I used this as a repeating sound effect at a haunted house once, to great effect. Here you go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkruQZpQ2g8 Use your favorite youtube to mp3 converter, then audacity or equivalent to edit out enough details to obscure that it's katrina.
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Oct 26, 2015 11:57
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Roach Warehouse posted:My players don't like learning rules. They find it boring, so when we play a new game I need to explain things as we go and/ give a boring spiel at the top of the game that they pay varying amounts of attention to (understandably because it's just me saying boring stuff). Definitely don't give a spiel at the top, it's hard to learn that way. If I were you, I'd teach the mechanics concentrically (give them a basic piece of information, then expand out with related information), and teach them through contextual examples ("Let's say Punchstorm wants to Take Down a bank robber. Punchstorm has Smash 2. So take 2 dice and roll them. Good. Add your Smash 2 to the result. What's the total?") If they really struggle with building characters, you might make characters for them. Just ask your friends what they'd like their superhero characters to do, then tell them what they should take. Since they're still learning, you should give them the chance to switch things around in play.
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Oct 26, 2015 20:22
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Turtlicious posted:Wow, that was some amazing advice, I love all of it. Sounds like it'll be great! The way we've always done Dread is that the character questionairres are filled out a couple of days in advance and the GM makes sure that you've got something you're trying to hide or conceal from other characters. Then that thing comes up as a complication in the story. It's pretty easy to put questions on their sheets that do a little background/world building and/or place restrictions on the characters without just telling them "your guy has <thing> going on". Here's some I can think of for what you've mentioned: * What illegal drugs are you carrying and why would you be in more trouble than usual if someone found out? * What old injury has been badly bothering you, and why have you been concealing it? * What happened in <location> that you've been praying nobody will find out about? * Why are there only <number> of bullets left in your gun, and why haven't you mentioned or remedied that? * What did you do last year that has made you sure that when you need to call for backup, nobody will arrive? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 22:09
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Roach Warehouse posted:We've got an upcoming Worlds in Peril game, any ideas for how I can encourage/ incentivize learning about the game and/or creating deeper characters (without setting homework that would inevitably be dull and not get done)? Look into Masks; each character sheet has 6+ solid questions.
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Oct 27, 2015 00:19
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So friends are spooked by their questionnaires, so this is already great. I paired them up, and made two detectives, and two cops, then they got questions as a pair, and questions individually.Detective Questions posted:You guys, work together and answer these 3 questions. The only limitation I'll give you is that you do NOT know The other two characters, and you ARE Detectives (Partners) of the Los Angeles Police Department. Then they each got 6 questions Detective A posted:1.) How many years have you been on the force? Do you like what you do? Detective B posted:1.)When was the last time you saw your husband? What happened to him? The cops on the other hand, got these questions. Cop Group posted:You guys, work together and answer these 3 questions. The only limitation I'll give you is that you do NOT know the other two characters, and you ARE Police Officers (Partners) of the Los Angeles Police Department. Cop A posted:1.)How do others treat you knowing that you are a cop? Cop B posted:1.) Why do you have frequent nightmares? We're playing this weekend, so I can still tack questions on, I think this is a good set though, what do you guys think?
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Oct 27, 2015 03:53
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Turtlicious posted:We're playing this weekend, so I can still tack questions on, I think this is a good set though, what do you guys think? I would be excited to play in this game, please let us know how it all works out! One minor thing I'd change is that for the "How often do you drink during the week?" question, I'd go with something along the lines of "Why did you start or stop drinking heavily during the week?" instead - some players will try to answer the questions in a way that means they don't have flaws, and it usually makes for boring answers so I try to make sure there's no way to do that. For example, two players were supposed to be truck drivers and had the same "Has your job put you on the wrong side of the law?" question - One says "I used to run guns for the Burning Skulls Motorcycle Club, and I did 10 years for it" and the other says "no".I'd have phrased that question "How has your job put you on the wrong side of the law? Have you been caught yet?" so I'd have more stuff to work with.
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Oct 27, 2015 05:24
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So a bunch of friends and I are running Fellowship together -- they all have varying degrees of experience with tRPGs, but there's one player I'm particularly worried about and I'm not sure how to deal with it. Her only experience with tRPGs was a short lived D&D 4e campaign she was in. She likes the roleplaying and story aspects of RPGs but not the number crunchy or more rules-heavy systems which is part of why we went with something light like Fellowship since there's no complex equations or dice rolls for her to keep track of and remember. She loves the system so far and is actually remembering and taking on board the rules which I didn't expect her to do. The problem lies in that she is a very very anxious person. Part of the character creation process for Fellowship requires you to be very decisive about your characters background, since its a dungeon world-like, the player is the final authority on the lore of their people. As part of this I asked everyone at character creation to tell me four facts about their race, just for something for me to work off of the the next session. I warned everyone about this a few days in advance so she wouldn't feel put on the spot and she could think about her facts in advance and maybe not feel so anxious about it. It didn't actually work all that well, when I asked her for her four facts, despite being given plenty of time to think about them she still had nothing, and even after several minutes of "ummm"s and anxiety-induced hand wringing it took me and the other three players helping her out for her to finally come up with some. That's fine, some people don't like being put on the spot like that but Fellowship is a game where you are constantly asked to make authoritative statements on various things, and I can't always give her advance warning that I'm going to do stuff like that. I talked to her afterwards and she does genuinely really like the system and want to play, her issue is that her brain completely shuts down when she's asked to make a decision on the spot. Which I told her is a large part of the game and to her credit she said she'd try but I'm not sure how to deal with it while she's learning to get used to it. I can't just not ask her for statements because that doesn't help anyone and it kinda pushes her aside as a player and a character, and I can't throw even more decisions at her because that'll completely overwhelm her and give the poor thing an anxiety attack in the middle of a session. I genuinely can't think of a way to get her to feel comfortable making decisive statements about her character and the world without either pushing her aside, overwhelming her or relegating her to only being asked for input on tiny, irrelevant things. Has anyone here dealt with such a high anxiety player before?
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Oct 27, 2015 11:35
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Try to take baby steps. Ask her small, non-threatening questions first, to ease her into it, stuff like "what would your people drink on such a cold night to warm themselves up?" and work your way up from there. She said she's going to try, so she should be okay with this.
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Oct 27, 2015 11:52
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Try to create a safe environment where if she doesn't come up with something it's no biggie. Sure, you'll be pulling more of the weight but this combined with the baby steps approach posted above might allow her to let go of some of the anxiety. I would recommend being aware of when she's struggling and then coming with suggestions or helping her brainstorm. For example, say she's struggling to come up with a holiday that her people has. You could ask her if it's something like christmas, or a harvest festival. Using the "what do your people drink on cold nights" example, you could suggest things like "It's probably some sort of tea or coffe right?" or "I heard of this cool aromatic wine called Gluhwein, maybe it's something like that?". In short, even if you have to do the legwork make sure you involve her. Hopefully, in time, she'll let go of the anxiety when she knows you're all supportive.
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Oct 27, 2015 12:14
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Careful with that approach though: it's still her character, not one commanded by commitee, and deciding what your race is all about is a big point of Fellowship, so surrendering that to the whole group might sting.
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Oct 27, 2015 12:42
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Basically yeah, that was my issue. In any other system I'd be able to keep it light for her and build it up as she gets more comfortable, but being the authority on your people, race and culture is a key mechanic in Fellowship so I can't really do anything that makes it seem like I'm not letting her do that as much as the other players
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Oct 27, 2015 12:56
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I had a similar thing with one of my DW players -- she had a bit of a social anxiety thing going and always worried that her answer wouldn't be cool enough. One thing that I found helped was disguising questions as multiple choice: "What do you recall from your history about this dragon -- was it an enemy of your people, an ally, or something more complicated?"
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Oct 27, 2015 13:17
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If you know her well, try to ask questions with answers she'd be knowledgeable or passionate about. For instance, if she's an animal lover, ask what kind of unusual animals her people keep as pets. That should take away some of the burden of being completely imaginative in her answers.
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Oct 28, 2015 00:13
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Played my first game of Dread last night, it was pretty fun. I'm definitely going to do more Dread games in the future since the short playtime lends itself to my group's availability. A couple questions though: 1. How frequently should you ask for pulls, ideally? 2. How do other DMs tend to structure and describe each scene, especially in regards to establishing expectations for players? 3. How do you really nail the horror? Or rather, I have slow-burn unsettling horror down, but more sudden shocks are kind of hard at the table. Any help on those points would be cool. I also did a movie style drawing of the game I ran them through. Had to cut off the top because I had put their names on it: 
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Oct 31, 2015 03:52
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If she's open to changing the character around, you might want to suggest playing the Squire, who has a lot less of the declarative community stuff, or keeping their people out of the campaign for a bit while she gets used to the ideas.
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Oct 31, 2015 05:42
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