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Nostalgia4Ass posted:I get the feeling that those cliches are kind of what our group is looking for. Couple things... First, there's nothing at all wrong with your D&D game being about D&D cliches. It can be fun as hell, and there's a reason those cliches exist - most of them are pretty great until they get done to death. I found In Search Of The Unknown to be a goddamn bitch to run - the map's confusing and I just had the worst time keeping track of everything for whatever reason. I didn't enjoy it at all, though the players had an OK time. Keep On The Borderlands is good though! There's a reason it's regarded as a classic. I'd recommend you look at "Little Keep On the Borderlands" for Hackmaster, it's like an expanded version of the adventure and has a lot of cool stuff in it. Since you're going to be converting everything anyway I don't think it'd be any harder to use for 5th ed than a 1st ed module. Like Gradenko said, and in spite of me saying that cliches can be great, old modules can include some very un-fun stuff that amounts to "you die lol". I'd try to avoid that as much as possible, and just turning "100' pit" into "10' pit" or "scything blades shoot out and kill you on a failed save" to "sycthing blades do 1d6 damage on a failed save" will go a long way to un-loving those bits. NPCs... OK, so it took me years to get a handle on making memorable NPCs, but in the end here's what works for me. Give everyone a name and 2-4 features, and improvise from there if the players want to know more. Otherwise you end up doing all this prep work with backstories and interpersonal relationships for your NPCs that never gets used because nobody cares about it. Here are some examples: Bruno the guard captain is a large formerly athletic man running to fat. He has a handlebar mustache. He speaks in his outside voice at all times. Altough he wears a Captain's badge, the old guardsmen respectfully call him Colonel. They won't say why. Tabby the merchant is an old round lady with a russian accent. She talks about her many children and grandchildren. Her shop is crammed full of old imperishables and dust. She claims to be able to get "nearly anything" on order, but specifies that she doesn't sell elf-made items (carefully not specifying if that's "wont'" or "can't"). Reynold the barkeep is a wiry old dude with a bristly grey beard. He'll tell you the long story that ends with him hanging his greatsword over the bar (yep, that's it right there!) every single night if you let him. George and Chrissy are the blacksmiths, and are a husband-wife team, both slim and strong, he with dark black hair cropped close, she with red hair always tied up out of the way. They ask if there's any news of their son Thom who ran off to join the army. For the NPCs they don't care about interacting with, "Bruno with the mustache" or "Past-glory Reynold" is enough. Between sessions, flesh out anyone that they've shown an interest in. Listen to their speculation (even if it's a passing joke or comment) that Tabby's "children and grandchildren" are actually the cats hanging around the store. Incorporate that into the game! - She got cursed by the Elf King and is looking for a way to re-polymorph her kids out of cat form. - The cats are her kids, because she's a cat in human form. - She's a regular human, but her magic cat speaks through her a lot of the time. She has no idea this happens. - She's crazy, but only because she's lonely after all her kids left home. I bet Reynold would also like someone to talk to... Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 10:09
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AlphaDog posted:NPCs... OK, so it took me years to get a handle on making memorable NPCs, but in the end here's what works for me. Give everyone a name and 2-4 features, and improvise from there if the players want to know more. Otherwise you end up doing all this prep work with backstories and interpersonal relationships for your NPCs that never gets used because nobody cares about it. This is really good stuff and helps a lot. I appreciate the advice and am already seeing how easy it could be to use simple plot hooks and compel the players take on quests for NPCs.
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Jul 5, 2016 12:10
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Nostalgia4Ass posted:This is really good stuff and helps a lot. I appreciate the advice and am already seeing how easy it could be to use simple plot hooks and compel the players take on quests for NPCs. The key for me is not to try to plan too much or too far in advance, except for the overarching plot and maps / dungeon sections. Even then, I'll often leave stuff just labelled "goal room" to fill in later once I have an idea what side stuff is going to get done. To clarify, let's say the adventure is about stopping the orcs from raiding the town. So there's a town with NPCs. There's an area map with stuff in it, which when the PCs explore it will include an orc base in a "dungeon" that I map out like a traditional adventure would, and the big boss at the end is obviously a super tough orc + minions + monsters. But there's a few areas on the map and rooms in the dungeon that are "blank" so that they can fit in with the side-stuff that the players determine through showing interest in different NPCs (or they can be disused or empty, nothing wrong with that!) To continue the example from before, I'd want to be able to include some or all of * The cells, which hold prisoners the orcs have taken, including George's son Thom. * The dump cave half a mile away from the orc dungeon. It's full of stuff the orcs think of as junk, including boxes of military records which will exonerate Captain (Colonel) Bruno of cowardice. It's also full of giant cockroaches or whatever to fight. * The Elf King's chief druid's camp. If you help him out with his embarrassing owlbear problem, he'll lift the curse on Tabby. * Reynold The Bold's grave. What? poo poo! Who's that tending bar back in town then? (It's a con-man from the capital city who's been on the lam for years. There's a disproportionately huge price on his head, which should signal that there's even more going on than there looks like). None of that even gets thought about, let alone written down, unless the players have already displayed an interest in the connected NPC, and I try to base it somewhat on what the players think is going on. Not that they should always be right! Like, there's every chance I'll get through the whole adventure and the only interaction the PCs have with Bruno is seeing him at the gate when they first arrive and occasionally hearing his loud voice in the background like "Your planning has continued well into the night. The tavern's candles are burning low, the other patrons have departed, and outside you hear the guard captain's booming voice issuing commands as the gates are shut for the night". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jul 5, 2016 |
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Jul 5, 2016 13:55
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AlphaDog posted:I found In Search Of The Unknown to be a goddamn bitch to run - the map's confusing and I just had the worst time keeping track of everything for whatever reason. I didn't enjoy it at all, though the players had an OK time. Just to echo this. I've tried to run In Search of the Unknown twice, and it went terribly both times. It has a horribly complex map that is super difficult to describe, with loops and dead ends that lead no where, and tons of boring rooms. That sort of stuff can work in Basic, where wandering monsters make dead ends a possible resource drain, but in 5e that stuff is just a time wasting exercise.
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Jul 5, 2016 14:38
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FRINGE posted:In addition to those, theres a few other old classics you could pull things out of: They tend to get overlooked, but I'd also pimp the L series (particularly L1, The Secret of Bone Hill), which give you a nice starting area to play with. The N and I series are ... uneven. Some classic stuff, some absolute dreck.
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Jul 5, 2016 14:48
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That's some great advice, AlphaDog. Thanks for sharing!
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Jul 5, 2016 17:33
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FRINGE posted:In addition to those, theres a few other old classics you could pull things out of: If you do end up adapting the A Series at all tone down the giant bugs in the sewers of the first module. Those things are BEASTS, murdered the hell out of my toughest character (We're talking 18/98 STR and 18 CON here). Those double attacking bugmen and the giant ants are killers.
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Jul 5, 2016 23:49
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thefakenews posted:Just to echo this. I've tried to run In Search of the Unknown twice, and it went terribly both times. It has a horribly complex map that is super difficult to describe, with loops and dead ends that lead no where, and tons of boring rooms. That sort of stuff can work in Basic, where wandering monsters make dead ends a possible resource drain, but in 5e that stuff is just a time wasting exercise. Yeah, I ran the original in Basic way back in the day and it wasn't fun to run, but like I said the players had an OK time. There's some bullshit in there, but that's Basic for you - roll another character and they arrive as soon as you're finished writing on the sheet. It was... fine, I guess, for Basic. There are way better modules that are easier to run. I ran the Hackmaster version in Hackmaster and it... wasn't great for anyone. The extra rules compared to Basic bogged stuff down a lot, the looping and dead-ends were frustrating even though they did their job of taking up taime and resources, some of the stuff felt out of place or weird or just interacted badly with the different rules. The players had a barely OK time but it had me tearing my hair out. I started converting it for 3rd ed then decided not to bother. Keep On The Borderlands on the other hand, is my favorite module. I ran the original in Basic a couple of times, and did a converted version for AD&D which halfway through I converted again to 2nd ed. Then I ran Little Keep On The Borderlands in Hackmaster and it was my most successful long term game ever. The players got interested in heaps of the minor-detail stuff and then got super into the fake gold conspiracy stuff, which is meant to be a fairly minor sub--plot, to the point of deciding that it must be the root of all the problems in the area and therefore the actual main plotline. I'm happy to roll with stuff like that, so I ended up writing a shitload of extra material, and the module lasted us about a year and a half of playing every 2 weeks or so. That's how I learned to let them follow along with whatever they're most interested in and then tie it back to what they "should" be doing according to the adventure. I've played through the T series (Temple of Elemental Evil) in both AD&D and Hackmaster (Existential Evil), and it was great both times, but I can't say how it is to run. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 01:33
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I like everything about B2 except gently caress the caves of chaos. They are pretty boring and pointless unless you tweak the hell out of them or just get rid of them all together and slot a cool dungeon in.
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Jul 6, 2016 03:48
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This is funny because I actually put up a recruit for the Caves of Chaos. It was the only adventure released for the earliest playtest packet I have. And I got the insane idea to run some of the playtest packets because a lot of people didn't get a chance to play them.
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Jul 6, 2016 05:24
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Babylon Astronaut posted:I like everything about B2 except gently caress the caves of chaos. They are pretty boring and pointless unless you tweak the hell out of them or just get rid of them all together and slot a cool dungeon in. This is solved so hard in the Hackmaster version.
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Jul 6, 2016 05:26
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I don't mean the 5e playtest caves of chaos, I mean the actual location the caves of chaos in b2 keep on the borderlands. I bet hackmaster fixes the caves, because it is obviously the part that needs it the most.
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Jul 6, 2016 05:45
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Ryuujin posted:I got the insane idea to run some of the playtest packets because a lot of people didn't get a chance to play them. They only had like 4 years... Run some Mines of Madness, the best Next adventure. 
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Jul 6, 2016 05:55
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Eventually, when I get that far into the playtest packets.
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Jul 6, 2016 05:58
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I kind of liked fields of lore from the monte cook test packet. That version was close to the worst though. It had the 6 saves, fiddly criticals, but not advantage disadvantage yet.
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Jul 6, 2016 08:43
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What's wrong with the original caves?
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Jul 6, 2016 11:46
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mastershakeman posted:What's wrong with the original caves? On their own, they'd be an OK but unmemorable dungeon crawl module. Nothing's really wrong with them, but they could easily be way more interesting.
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Jul 6, 2016 12:11
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To its credit, 5e's background system is pretty close to the right mixture of crunch and details to give you PC hooks similar to NPC hooks like AlphaDog's excellent examples above. We had a paladin who took the option that they once stood up to a lord or other high status person who was being a jerk. We decided that event and its aftermath contributed to her feeling compelled to stand up to bullies, which is a predictable as poo poo paladin trope but is still quite effective. Giving it a mechanical quality by attaching it to an actual background detail that can grant inspiration for "stepping up" helped me tee up a lot of fun little moments. We had a warlock with a criminal background (and first level was trickster cleric) who had the option that they lost a loved one by a rival trying to get to them, something along those lines. We decided it was his wife who was his partner in crime and went with a star wars twist that she's not dead but captured by his rival and "frozen in carbonite" (turned into a statue) as a monument to his victory. He makes a pact with a devil to get warlock powers and in exchange when/if he frees her and turns her back to normal, the demon gets his soul. We wove that side story parallel to the main campaign and after they heroically free her and slay the rival, the next morning while the gang's having breakfast the sun goes dark, the party sees him speaking with her but can't make out what he's saying, and they see a shadow appear behind him and when the sun comes back out he is gone. She conveniently had the same number of character levels as him / the party so it was a clever way for him to reroll a new character and then she would set out on a new mission to save her loved one from the pits of hell. Anyway I guess what I'm getting at is while I'm not a fan of 5e overall, I think the advantage system and the background options are the two things they did that were pretty on the nose, even if they are variations of existing ideas. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 19:13
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Backgrounds are kind of non-crunch though. Every time I try to invoke Scholar my DM tells me that the information I'm looking for is in the universe's equivalent of the Library of Alexandria on the other side of the world, which is the same as telling me I can't find the information. At least until we go there I guess. I don't think he's thought that far ahead.
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Jul 6, 2016 20:10
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Mendrian posted:Backgrounds are kind of non-crunch though. Every time I try to invoke Scholar my DM tells me that the information I'm looking for is in the universe's equivalent of the Library of Alexandria on the other side of the world, which is the same as telling me I can't find the information. At least until we go there I guess. I don't think he's thought that far ahead. In most D&D editions your class determines the entirety of your capabilities. If you want to be a Noble Rogue in 3e for example you have to burn a bunch of your precious skill points taking cross class ranks in Ride. It's actually kind of a major departure from the "found religion? take a level of cleric" class-as-identity prevalent in 3e and towards a mindset that encourages reskinning and outside the box character concepts. Plus the way the Inspiration rules interact with your character's Flaw act as a kind of meta-currency that's entirely new to vanilla D&D (I'm not really up on all the extended UA-ish stuff).
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Jul 6, 2016 21:56
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Yeah not meaning any offense but it sounds like your DM is refusing to engage with your background option rather than some failing of its design. That said, divinations and things like that has always been categorized (by my group) as "gently caress with the DM abilities" because they can be so open ended and offer such direct, unopposed access to absolute knowledge that it can be hard to plan around it as a DM. But unless he's trying to set the stage for a big adventure to Alexandria, he's really not doing anything close to "yes, and...".
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Jul 6, 2016 23:26
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Bhaal posted:Yeah not meaning any offense but it sounds like your DM is refusing to engage with your background option rather than some failing of its design. That said, divinations and things like that has always been categorized (by my group) as "gently caress with the DM abilities" because they can be so open ended and offer such direct, unopposed access to absolute knowledge that it can be hard to plan around it as a DM. But unless he's trying to set the stage for a big adventure to Alexandria, he's really not doing anything close to "yes, and...". It's absolutely a failing of design, since the DM is doing something the book explicitly calls out as OK. quote:When you attempt to learn or recall a piece of lore, if you do not know that information, you often know where and from whom you can obtain it. Usually, this information comes from a library, scriptorium, university, or a sage or other learned person or creature. Your DM might rule that the knowledge you seek is secreted away in an almost inaccessible place, or that it simply cannot be found. Unearthing the deepest secrets of the multiverse can require an adventure or even a whole campaign.
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Jul 7, 2016 00:38
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It depends what he's invoking scholar for. Just because you have that background doesn't mean you have access to every piece of info in the world instantly. After all, that's what divination spells are for!
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Jul 7, 2016 01:53
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mastershakeman posted:It depends what he's invoking scholar for. Just because you have that background doesn't mean you have access to every piece of info in the world instantly. After all, that's what divination spells are for! Divination spells are for guaranteeing results ahead of time. You just have to phrase your questions right, like 'will the first offensive spell cast in the next combat beat the enemy's defenses?' If it's 'yes' then you whip out your save or die spell round 1 and know you don't have to worry about their save. If it's 'no' then you delay and let the enemy spellcaster waste their first shot. After all being able to forcefully obtain narrative control is the point of being a wizard right? Tunicate fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 02:03
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The DM and his wife couldn't make it to League tonight due to a hospital visit. Rather than all of us just going home I volunteered to run something; the Back Of The Book adventure from the 13th Age book. While they made new characters, I fluffed up a 5E version of the adventure and flew by the seat of my pants and it turns out everyone had fun! I managed to fill up the remaining two hours after character creation and waiting around, and the new characters gave everyone a good laugh. Feels good to know that I'm able to do a somewhat decent on-the-fly session in a system I barely know. EDIT: On that note, what Official Adventures are decent and don't cost an arm and a leg? I don't want to run anything with Curse of Strahd so I don't step on the DMs toes but I also don't want to not run official League stuff so the store doesn't (in theory) get in trouble. The League page pointed me to (http://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45470_0_0_0_0_0_0) which has a bunch of things that cost money. I don't want to spend money unless I know an adventure isn't garbage. Admiral Joeslop fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 03:35
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Curse of Strahd DM talk: So after reading the whole book... there's basically nowhere for the PCs to buy good gear or to really sell anything. I mean I guess I could hassle them to try and sell stuff to some of the nobles, but this seems like a pain in the rear end for the players and me. Plus I feel it makes it that much more likely for my party to try and rob said NPCs, which could be a pain in the rear end for me to try and balance what equipment they have as well as quest NPCs. I kind of need a dedicated store guy. Looking up music for the game, I ran across creepy RE4 music. Then it hit me: poo poo, I'll just rip-off the merchant from RE4. He's creepy, he's weird, probably magic?, and he has a ton of good stuff to sell. Plus if the players kill him, it's totally within the merchant's fluff that he comes back, and he'll show up when and where I need him to. It works out pretty nicely.
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Jul 8, 2016 03:45
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Wow. They're doing another MtG crossover - this time Innistrad. http://io9.gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-is-heading-to-magic-the-gatherings-1783442350
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Jul 11, 2016 17:55
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dwarf74 posted:Wow. They're doing another MtG crossover - this time Innistrad. About god drat time. I've been wanting a Ravnica D&D campaign book since it came out, 10+ years ago. D&D rules for Tempest or Mirage would be day 1 buys for me. Can't wait to crib this for my CoS game Dre2Dee2 fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 18:23
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dwarf74 posted:Wow. They're doing another MtG crossover - this time Innistrad. Yawn. The fucks I give about settings is approximately 0; the number becomes negative when we're talking about MtG settings.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:30
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P.d0t posted:Yawn.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:32
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I just wish they had started this up one set earlier, so we could've had Plane Shift: Tarkir. 
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Jul 11, 2016 18:34
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Now we need a system where every spell is matched up to a mana color, and everyone plays a planewalker. Or just roleplay stuff out, and pull out actual mtg decks to resolve fights.
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Jul 11, 2016 18:39
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ritorix posted:Now we need a system where every spell is matched up to a mana color, and everyone plays a planewalker. This would be way more interesting than the way D&D 5e actually resolves fights
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Jul 11, 2016 18:40
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ritorix posted:Now we need a system where every spell is matched up to a mana color, and everyone plays a planewalker. You could probably just take the magic schools and just match them up to colors. Illusion is blue, evocation is red, enchantment green, etc
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Jul 11, 2016 18:42
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ritorix posted:Now we need a system where every spell is matched up to a mana color, and everyone plays a planewalker. Splitting wizards into multiple different types would actually make 5e much better.
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Jul 11, 2016 19:10
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Gort posted:Splitting wizards into multiple different types would actually make 5e much better. Magic's mana system is already a pretty good way to limit wizard versatility. You can run a monocolour deck and never get colour screwed, but if you want more versatility, you're gonna have to suffer a deckbuilding cost.
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Jul 11, 2016 19:14
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ritorix posted:Now we need a system where every spell is matched up to a mana color, and everyone plays a planewalker. The fighter gets one card, but he can play it as often as he wants.
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Jul 11, 2016 19:27
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Serperoth posted:Magic's mana system is already a pretty good way to limit wizard versatility. You can run a monocolour deck and never get colour screwed, but if you want more versatility, you're gonna have to suffer a deckbuilding cost.
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Jul 11, 2016 19:36
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Serperoth posted:Magic's mana system is already a pretty good way to limit wizard versatility. You can run a monocolour deck and never get colour screwed, but if you want more versatility, you're gonna have to suffer a deckbuilding cost. Have you seen the dual lands they put out these days? The only cost to running more colors is financial 
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Jul 11, 2016 20:54
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So is this Innistrad thing going to actually have gameplay details this time? Or is it going to be like the Zendikar one and just be pretty pictures appended to an MTG setting bible?
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Jul 11, 2016 21:13
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