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Iceclaw posted:So I'm kind of bitter. Both of the games I tried to DM for are probably dead in the water, because none of the chucklefucks in either can afford one effin day a month. gently caress it, I'm done. I know the feeling, very well, so you have my sympathy. Over the summer I had a campaign fizzle out be cause I could never get more than half of the players to show up to any given session. We're coming back together now to play Blades in the Dark but I can't shake the feeling that the same poo poo's going to happen eventually.
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Jan 27, 2016 01:37
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:If they are parents, I can see this happening. My best friend just had a son, and now both of our campaigns I was running have ground to a halt. 
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Jan 27, 2016 09:22
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TheTofuShop posted:My best friend just had a son, and now both of our campaigns I was running have ground to a halt. Just wait until the kids get old enough to pretend to be elves
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Jan 27, 2016 10:19
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The holidays were... unkind to our campaign. We regularly miss a week or two, but I think the long stretch was 6 weeks. I feel your pain man.
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Jan 27, 2016 11:47
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Man, The Witness came out just in time for me to steal as much from it as I can until Saturday's minotaur maze dungeon. e: this appears not to be the chat thread My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Jan 27, 2016 |
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Jan 27, 2016 12:26
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So in a couple weeks, assuming the plot stays more or less unharmed, the players are going to be battling an insane druid, on a "lake" that's really the surface of a giant water elemental, while trying to keep a horde of smaller water elementals from killing the last sacrifice they need. Does anyone have any good music suggestions for this fight? Its the first time I'm using atmospheric music with this party, but since this is the culmination of the first arc of the campaign I thought it'd be appropriate.
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Jan 27, 2016 17:22
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Iceclaw posted:So I'm kind of bitter. Both of the games I tried to DM for are probably dead in the water, because none of the chucklefucks in either can afford one effin day a month. gently caress it, I'm done. I'm lucky to get my group together once a month. Usually everyone can make maybe 2-3 days out of the month but they don't overlap with everyone else. I've taken to sending out a schedule/doodle of days that work for me before the next month so everyone has a few days to choose from and usually find a single day that works. December was a straight no-go though because of parties and trips. Kids and work schedules make weekdays impossible or unwieldy, so it's all weekends which really limits the play. Have you tried the "select one of these dates" tactic? I find it works a lot better than "when are people available?" That usually results in "uhhhhhh, I dunno, pretty busy."
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Jan 27, 2016 17:31
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It's a good idea to just acknowledge that the holidays are crazy poo poo, nobody has time for gaming, and we'll meet up again in January. Otherwise you end up with spotty attendance killing interest, and the game just sort of staggering into February. Then again, sometimes nerds are really bad at giving/talking criticism. "I'm super busy!" might just be a low conflict "I'm not enjoying your game."
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Jan 27, 2016 17:40
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poorlifedecision posted:I'm lucky to get my group together once a month. Usually everyone can make maybe 2-3 days out of the month but they don't overlap with everyone else. I've taken to sending out a schedule/doodle of days that work for me before the next month so everyone has a few days to choose from and usually find a single day that works. December was a straight no-go though because of parties and trips. Kids and work schedules make weekdays impossible or unwieldy, so it's all weekends which really limits the play. Well, yeah. I've sent doodle after doodle for the past 6 months (yeah it's been 4 and 6 months since we last played). I sent a slightly stern mail, to the tune of "I don't want to hound you guys, if you don't have time or you aren't motivated anymore, it's alright, tell me so, we'll work it out or just shelve the game if no one is interested anymore". They all wanted to continue playing. Except we don't have a possible match for february. All of them are friends, very good friends or my significant other, and I know some of them actually have good reasons for being a no show, it's just I'm tired because someone always have a good reason and we end up never playing.
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Jan 27, 2016 18:18
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I live in a different town from my main group, so we only meet once a month to begin with. It works surprisingly well, but one thing we absolutely have to do is set a "next time" date at the end of a session, because half these guys are simply not able to be contacted via e-mail. And yeah, holidays are always crazy. When we met in November I was incredibly surprised we all had time in mid-December to get a session in.
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Jan 27, 2016 18:45
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TheCog posted:So in a couple weeks, assuming the plot stays more or less unharmed, the players are going to be battling an insane druid, on a "lake" that's really the surface of a giant water elemental, while trying to keep a horde of smaller water elementals from killing the last sacrifice they need. I use stoner metal exclusively for my D&D games to get that classic 1970s Ralph Bakshi fantasy feel. I'd recommend Hawkwind. Specifically Warriors on the Edge of Time or Space Ritual. Black Sabbath works pretty well. Or pretty much anything else that evokes that same feeling. Electric Wizard and Sleep for newer bands with the same sort of feel. There's nothing like spelunking through a volcano to fight a Red Dragon with this as your soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdtATSsw4HQ
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Jan 27, 2016 18:50
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Iceclaw posted:Well, yeah. I've sent doodle after doodle for the past 6 months (yeah it's been 4 and 6 months since we last played). I sent a slightly stern mail, to the tune of "I don't want to hound you guys, if you don't have time or you aren't motivated anymore, it's alright, tell me so, we'll work it out or just shelve the game if no one is interested anymore". They all wanted to continue playing. Except we don't have a possible match for february. All of them are friends, very good friends or my significant other, and I know some of them actually have good reasons for being a no show, it's just I'm tired because someone always have a good reason and we end up never playing. Oh well in that case yeah cut your losses. You're doing all the work to organize and not getting anywhere. I feel your pain. It's enough work actually set up a game you're running without having to corral people. It's a busy world but if you're not going to make time in your month to hang out with people for a few hours you can't really be that interested in playing. (Jobs and childcare are legitimate reasons not to come but if they take up too much of your time you should probably just bow out of anything that should be regularly scheduled) I considered just doing random one-shot games if our schedules ever came to the point of "we can only meet up once every 3 months" or something. More like having people over to play a board game than running an actual campaign.
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Jan 27, 2016 19:49
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So bit of advice I'm after. I run a 5e game with some IRL friends. One of them brought his friend and their SO along when we were playing another system. That game was plagued by inter party strife caused entirely by this new guy and devolved the game completely pretty quick. After the DM from that game ended it in frustration me and a couple others talked to this trouble player and basically told him to cut it out. Now in the new game I am dming, I started with the rules of no rolling against party members. And any action like punching or interfering with the other player can be chosen to be overturned by the target. It is pretty extreme but seems to have curbed the issue. Now however this player recently had his character killed off due in part to his stupidity and in part to the party not wanting to risk a tpk to save him. Now his new character he is doing everything in his power to get the rest of the people killed. Telling guards that catch him snooping that it was the other players if they didn't see his face in time. Killing npcs that the others are trying to follow leads with. He's been talked to after the old campaign and have had a conversation with him before the last session but he says he won't be poo poo, and then continues being a douche. Is it worth nuking the campaign? Him being kicked out will likely take his SO out of the game and leave us with only two regular players so effectively end it, but he's frustrating as all hell.
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Jan 27, 2016 20:34
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Kick his rear end out and tell his SO he is a lovely, disruptive player and they are welcome to leave if they prefer to so instead of not having to suffer a disruptive lovely player. Then invite your old DM as a player, putting you back at acceptable player amount.
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Jan 27, 2016 20:50
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Depends on how much you want to deal with it. You could just mess with him by constantly having his bs backfire on him in a way that constantly seems to benefit the people he's trying to screw over. A guard actually has a grudge against his boss and hands the party a key. The NPC was an impostor and they find the real person tied up in the back and get rewarded or avoid the trap they were being led into. Basically a way to have his dumb actions end up helping everyone. It's harder for him to get butthurt if instead of you throwing him in jail in-game because he keeps doing dumb poo poo, you reward everyone else. Alternately, I'd attempt to talk to his SO. Maybe they can better convince him to stop acting up if they actually like playing with your friends. But you're probably just going to have to tell him he's not welcome anymore. You've already explained that the party needs to work together and shouldn't be doing things that undermine it's goals so there's probably not much else you can do.
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Jan 27, 2016 21:17
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Trying to match that kind of behaviour with your own don't work. Worse, he'll feel validated AND you'll have made him the star of the show. Talking to him SO might work though.
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Jan 27, 2016 21:38
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"Stop doing this right now, Ken. It's disruptive to the game we are trying to run and none of us are enjoying it." *continues doing it* "Ken, we've collectively asked you to stop behaving like this and you refuse. You are breaking the social contract at the table and this isn't cute, funny, or entertaining to anyone outside of maybe your SO. We are ending today's session early. Go home and think about what psychological issues are causing you feel the need to be a disruptive jerk toward your friends in-game after being repeatedly asked to stop." *continues doing it* "Ken, you are not invited back to our next game. Ken's SO, you are free to continue attending although we completely understand if you feel awkward about attending without Ken. Ken, we hope to see you at <some other social event in the future.>"
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Jan 27, 2016 21:43
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System Metternich posted:Thank you for all the suggestions and good wishes, I'm already looking forward to trying out a thing or two with her! I'm late, but there are interactive storytelling cards called "Once Upon a Time" that might help her get into the cooperative storytelling part of gaming without a bunch of rules to keep track of.
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Jan 27, 2016 21:51
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TheCog posted:So in a couple weeks, assuming the plot stays more or less unharmed, the players are going to be battling an insane druid, on a "lake" that's really the surface of a giant water elemental, while trying to keep a horde of smaller water elementals from killing the last sacrifice they need. As a general rule you should avoid music with lyrics and go with soundtracks. I can't not recommend Shadow of the Colossus especially since your players are going to fight on top of a giant elemental!
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Jan 27, 2016 23:02
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Sneaking posted:Just have them go through the hopeless boss fight, get their poo poo rolled in a couple of rounds, and once they're all dead, read them some narrative about their eternal souls awakening on a plane of torment together. Put a gem or a portal or a scroll that can get them back to the mortal planes "within reach" and bam you have a prison break adventure. You can even make it interesting with special mechanics because they're ghosts or whatever. Planar games can be super fun if your players are used to boring old dungeons. This is practically word-for-word what an old DM of ours did and I gotta say we weren't very enthused about it. Especially because it was the first or second encounter of the campaign and seemed to be done entirely to get us out of Eberron and into Planescape. And also it took way more than a couple of rounds because he kept trying save-or-dies and we kept making the saves. I'm not dissing the idea entirely, because it was clever and had its moments, but definitely do it right or not at all. TheCog posted:So in a couple weeks, assuming the plot stays more or less unharmed, the players are going to be battling an insane druid, on a "lake" that's really the surface of a giant water elemental, while trying to keep a horde of smaller water elementals from killing the last sacrifice they need.
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Jan 27, 2016 23:20
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Sneaking posted:Just have them go through the hopeless boss fight, get their poo poo rolled in a couple of rounds, and once they're all dead, This is also the exact opposite of what most people want from an adventure game. Dareon stopped short of condemning it as 100% a bad idea, but it's 100% a Bad Idea. No-win situations, forgone outcomes, and DM dictating a thing happens against all the players' wishes is really loving lame behavior that they should discourage in every Intro to DM section. If you absolutely have to get the characters killed, tell them up front when they agree to play that "This story needs everybody to die, so you're all going to die when I throw an impossible situation at you, and it'll be in the third session after you go through the red door numbered 13. But then something cool happens and you can keep playing."
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Jan 28, 2016 01:13
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If an any point you design a situation where the only way out is for the PCs to fail despite their best efforts, you done hosed up.
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Jan 28, 2016 01:16
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There's no problem setting up a "they fail/die" scenario as long as you immediately, as soon as they fail/die make it clear that this is failure, but... I did a shortish campaign that was going to be about leading a rebellion agains the evil usurper. That's all anyone knew. The first session was about the characters, on a stormy night, failing to defend the walls of the besieged captial, failing to protect the King, failing even to follow his dying order, which was "get the Princesses out throught the secret tunnels", and then failing to escape the evil army of evil, and getting captured and knocked on the head, fade to black... ...fade to white, they have woken up in cages in a camp, it's bright daylight. The camp is in chaos, someone's attacking it! They've easily escaped the hastily built cages and armed themselves, and... we're actually out of time for this session. It set up several recurring villains, it gave them motivation beyond "yeah, these guys are totally usurpers and evil and stuff, you should fight them", and at no point did anyone feel like they'd been ripped off, despite not having explicitly discussed beforehand how the first session was going to be about the failed defense of the capital.
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Jan 28, 2016 01:58
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Plot twists I find tend to go a lot better when you let the table or at least the key players in on it, unless it's one of those games that specifically demands secrets be kept (horror, mystery, investigation). Intuitively, the DM keeps their cards close to their chest because that's how you see other media being portrayed as from the outside looking in, but the players aren't (just) your audience, they're your actors, and outside of the finale of Die Hard, you let your actors know what's coming so they can play along with it and target their actions and reactions for maximum effect.
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Jan 28, 2016 02:06
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I had a friend want to do some white wolf game where we became ghosts or went to some afterlife or something. Me and my friends were extremely risk-averse and paranoid players coming from a lot of games where PC death was common. So in his quick-intro that was supposed to have us die, we flipped out at the slightest sign of danger and got the hell out of there then figured out the world seemed to want us dead. Ok great, I guess that's the game, some supernatural conspiracy is trying to kill us, maybe it's inevitable but we're going to go down planning and fighting to out last. He kept throwing worse and worse situations at us and we kept desperately avoiding them, but both sides were becoming more and more stressed. We were getting pissed his "survival" game was throwing increasingly impossible and GM-magicky bullshit at us, and he kept insinuating we were trying to sabotage the game or avoid playing. Managed to kill everyone one by one, but I managed to survive, barely, by jumping out a window and going on the run from... well, everything and everyone. Now the other players are having to sit around waiting. By the time some GM-Magic killed me everyone was fed up and when it was finally reveled that that REAL game was some ghost bullshit no one was interested anymore since we invested so much in staying alive for hours. That poo poo doesn't really work out often.
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Jan 28, 2016 02:09
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If you want to kill your PCs for a specific plot reason without letting them know (and this isn't 100% a bad thing, like if we're talking a Bloodborne-type thing where the PCs end up gaining access to an astral plane or whatever and then respawn), you'll probably want to do it like ripping off a band-aid: very fast. Even just use a "rocks fall, everyone dies" approach like rounding a corner to find a bomb in their face. It makes it impossible for them to drag it out by dodging all your rolls or outsmarting you and lets you rapidly segue into the intended scene before they can call foul. As with almost any plot device or surprise, it can work when you use it carefully: don't use it as an excuse to totally shift the genre in one fell swoop without permission, and just do it quick and get it over with before anyone can sulk or wait around for their friends to die in what looks like legitimate combat.
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Jan 28, 2016 02:34
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Honestly I was probably too firm on including no-win scenarios. But if they're defending a city that's going to fall, telegraph that poo poo. 13A OP introduced me to the phrase "It's obvious that..." which is like the Chestnut Ink of DMing. The walls are a patchwork of repair from from decades of siege, manned by children and the elderly. It's obvious that four gods couldn't save this city, much less you four adventurers. The problem is when you let/encourage players to work toward a thing and then yank the carpet out from under them. And as someone who's read tons of comics and endured  - It's really, really hard to give fucks about a dead character after they're "brought back."
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Jan 28, 2016 02:59
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moths posted:13A OP introduced me to the phrase "It's obvious that..." which is like the Chestnut Ink of DMing. GUMSHOE introduced me to "You realize (for free) that ..." which is also super-useful.
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Jan 28, 2016 03:31
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Baronjutter posted:I had a friend want to do some white wolf game where we became ghosts or went to some afterlife or something. Me and my friends were extremely risk-averse and paranoid players coming from a lot of games where PC death was common. So in his quick-intro that was supposed to have us die, we flipped out at the slightest sign of danger and got the hell out of there then figured out the world seemed to want us dead. Ok great, I guess that's the game, some supernatural conspiracy is trying to kill us, maybe it's inevitable but we're going to go down planning and fighting to out last. He kept throwing worse and worse situations at us and we kept desperately avoiding them, but both sides were becoming more and more stressed. We were getting pissed his "survival" game was throwing increasingly impossible and GM-magicky bullshit at us, and he kept insinuating we were trying to sabotage the game or avoid playing. man if you're going to play Geist that poo poo should start with "You're dead. Here's what happens next."
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Jan 28, 2016 05:07
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moths posted:Honestly I was probably too firm on including no-win scenarios. But if they're defending a city that's going to fall, telegraph that poo poo. Crumbling walls manned by children and the elderly was practically the first thing I described, yes. "It's obvious that..." was the exact thing I was going for. "It's obvious that..." or "It's clear that..." or "You realise that..." are really good concise phrases, and although I hadn't thought of them as actual, you know, techniques before, I'll be using them more in future.
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Jan 28, 2016 05:56
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Does anyone have any more good ambient music for a horror game? Preferably music with an industrial or "laboratory" feel to it. I want to run another game of Dread for some friends that can be pitched as "The Thing gets loose in suburbia." Artist and genre names would be appreciated. Searching "creepy ambient music" on youtube is a bit too broad a phrase to yield anything very helpful. Thanks in advance. Alternatively, I'd appreciate some rear end-kicking battle music for a generally low-magic fantasy game.
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Jan 28, 2016 06:19
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My friend's radio station is never the wrong music https://cp8.shoutcheap.com:2199/start/shazbotsyndicate/ Well unless your game isn't a kicking rad 80's cyberpunk setting. But otherwise, universal.
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Jan 28, 2016 06:22
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Baronjutter posted:My friend's radio station is never the wrong music You never know when the campaign could turn into 80's cyberpunk. Best to bookmark this just in case.
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Jan 28, 2016 06:37
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Glukeose posted:Does anyone have any more good ambient music for a horror game? Preferably music with an industrial or "laboratory" feel to it. I want to run another game of Dread for some friends that can be pitched as "The Thing gets loose in suburbia." I like Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I-IV as creepy gaming ambient. Also if you search youtube for "witch house" you'll probably find a thing or two.
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Jan 28, 2016 06:52
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Glukeose posted:Does anyone have any more good ambient music for a horror game? Preferably music with an industrial or "laboratory" feel to it. I want to run another game of Dread for some friends that can be pitched as "The Thing gets loose in suburbia." You could search for "dark ambient" or "ambient industrial", that'd narrow it down somewhat genrewise. Albumwise first things that come to mind is "Gates Of Atlantis" by Phelios and "Starscape" by Gustaf Hildebrand. These very forums have a really good ambient music thread as well that I heartily recommend perusing.
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Jan 28, 2016 11:19
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As ever, I doubt any horror game suffered from heavy doses of LUSTMORD.
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Jan 28, 2016 13:45
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This is frankly more of a player problem than a GM problem, but still. I have noticed that I have an hard time reskinning things; if I am faced with a game, like GURSP or FATE, that lets me build up both the fluff and the crunch of why my character works the way it works, I have no problem; I just use the tools provided by the game to create my character the way I imagine it. But when it comes to stuff like D&D 4e and Strike (which I have only read the pitch in the January month thread so far) I have an hard time reading powers and statblocks and mentally translating them into a different effect in the world of the game. When I read the Cleric's powers from 4e, the best I could do was imagining a shaman who invokes the help of servant spirits to bother his opponents or supporting his allies; not really all that different from a standard cleric. I feel like this weakness could give me some problems if I ever get to play these games. is there any way I can work on it?
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Jan 28, 2016 14:45
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"Okay class, your homework for this week is to choose a class and reflavour all of its powers into something that could be performed by a swarm of bees." EDIT: Realtalk though, is that actually a problem? If you enjoy the existing fluff for something, what's the issue?
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Jan 28, 2016 15:07
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The Crotch posted:"Okay class, your homework for this week is to choose a class and reflavour all of its powers into something that could be performed by a swarm of bees." I feel like I'm missing something interesting. It's not a problem, exactly, more like something that if solved could allow me to create more interesting characters or at the very least give me more options. I'd like that.
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Jan 28, 2016 15:13
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Hm. Well, just spitballing, but have you tried going at it from the opposite angle? Like, instead of looking at a list of cleric powers and trying to come up with alternate interpretations for them, find a concept that you like and then try to map it to a class. Like, say you really want to play Jesse Custer from Preacher. You'd start looking around for what best supports the concept: maybe fireball can become shouting "BURN!", maybe a halfling's second chance becomes "MISS!", etc.
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Jan 28, 2016 15:17
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