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Why can't a player roll INT to see if their character solves a puzzle? The character's got an 18 int, the player invested game resources in making them smart, let them use the resources they bought. Do you keep a set of weights around for so when a player says their character is lifting a boulder? "It's a 500 pound rock, show me how you're lifting it <gestures at pile of plates>". What's the difference?
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Feb 10, 2017 23:15
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AlphaDog posted:Why can't a player roll INT to see if their character solves a puzzle? The character's got an 18 int, the player invested game resources in making them smart, let them use the resources they bought. Do you keep a set of weights around for so when a player says their character is lifting a boulder? "It's a 500 pound rock, show me how you're lifting it <gestures at pile of plates>". What's the difference? Often, there's either an implicit or explicit agreement that the play experience at the table will involve a tactical combat game or puzzles. I guess including "roleplaying" in that sentence would be a counter argument, but then spells like Charm Person already exist that skip that portion of the game.
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Feb 10, 2017 23:23
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AlphaDog posted:Why can't a player roll INT to see if their character solves a puzzle? The character's got an 18 int, the player invested game resources in making them smart, let them use the resources they bought. Do you keep a set of weights around for so when a player says their character is lifting a boulder? "It's a 500 pound rock, show me how you're lifting it <gestures at pile of plates>". What's the difference? Like, in combat, you don't ask your DM to roll a check to see if you figure out the optimal tactics for fighting this particular monster, you just fight the monster.
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Feb 10, 2017 23:25
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Like, in combat, you don't ask your DM to roll a check to see if you figure out the optimal tactics for fighting this particular monster, you just fight the monster. uh what? you roll knowledge checks to find out their weaknesses / resistsances / tactics
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Feb 10, 2017 23:28
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I will say though that I generally loving hate puzzles at the RPG table. Most of the time they're a horrible, show stopping experience with an answer that's so obvious, come on guys.
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Feb 10, 2017 23:31
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Turtlicious posted:uh what? you roll knowledge checks to find out their weaknesses / resistsances / tactics
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Feb 10, 2017 23:34
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ImpactVector posted:I will say though that I generally loving hate puzzles at the RPG table. Most of the time they're a horrible, show stopping experience with an answer that's so obvious, come on guys. Never come up with an answer to your puzzle. Let the players try to work something out and let whatever the most interesting solution they come up with be the "correct" answer.
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Feb 10, 2017 23:41
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:That's sort of general information about the monster. Why can't you roll a skill for to figure out, say, the best possible actions for your team of 4 to take on the next 10 turns to maximize chances of victory(given what you see) while minimizing resource use? You succeed your skill check, your DM tells you the results of the 10 turns and you repeat or move on. Just as the guy above said, maybe you're proficient in "small unit tactics", why make your ability to work as a coordinated team subject to your players' improv skill? I guess it's just another limitation of the system that this is even a problem. lol. Seriously though, because a combat challenge is a series of rolls, and the risk for failing is death.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:01
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Turtlicious posted:I guess it's just another limitation of the system that this is even a problem. lol.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:10
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Because using your (player) brain to figure out what to do in the situations presented is a major component of D&D and I think it hurts the experience a lot to leave that out. Lifting rocks with your big strong (player) muscles is not. I think they are fundamentally different for that reason. I don't see what the difference is between "I grasp the boulder and heave it aside and unblock the door! <roll strength>" and "I slide the tiles around until they line up properly and unlock the door! <roll int>". A player who's a 90 pound weakling with a PHD can play a character that can effortlessly lift giant rocks and throw horses around by rolling dice. You're saying that it's fundamental to D&D that this can happen, and I don't disagree. But you're also saying that it's fundamental to D&D that a player who can deadlift 600 pounds but isn't very bright can't play as a character who can glance at a puzzle and know the solution. It's the second part I disagree with.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:10
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I dunno if I missed something but it seems like a lot of people haven't heard of the 'you have to do it, to do it' rule which you should follow in basically every single RPG where you roll dice? 1. You have to do it to do it. So you just have to give a quick summary of what you're doing to succeed. You can't say "I roll Persuasion", but you can say "I buy them a couple of drinks and try to flatter them into telling me what I need to know" and then roll persuasion. Just a general idea of what's happening in the fiction. In combat, even "I swing with sword at enemy" is good enough to justify an attack roll. 2. If you do it, you do it. Which means that you can't give a long role-played out discussion of flattery and sweet-talking and bypass the rolling part of it. If you are trying to persuade someone, you must roll Persuasion. Likewise you can't just say "yeah I hit him" - if you are attacking then obviously you must roll an attack.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:16
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I have been messing around with Donjon to make a world map for my game to mixed results. I like the looks of the maps, but they come out pretty pangaea-y even when I use an earth-like percentage of water (in which case there is just one giant ocean in the middle of the map). Any advice for good settings to use to get some distinct continents, or is there a better map maker out there I can use?
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Feb 11, 2017 00:21
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That situation is pretty far removed from the initial thing described. I don't think it's crazy to just roll dice for a solution if you encounter a literal block sliding puzzle. (Recognizing it as such is still up to the player though. Probably would not ever put this in a game I ran.) Intelligence (or wisdom or whatever) isn't just about solving puzzles though. In general, figuring out what to do is something the players should do and not roll for, the same combat is not resolved with a single combat check. The same goes for communicating with plot-important NPCs.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:22
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bewilderment posted:I dunno if I missed something but it seems like a lot of people haven't heard of the 'you have to do it, to do it' rule which you should follow in basically every single RPG where you roll dice? Yes, this. Socially awkward teenagers get to say "Prancey the Famous Bard (and con-man extraordinaire) fast-talks the stablehand into loaning him the cart horse". Wheelchair-bound dudes get to say "Krarg the Mighty throws the boat at the guards". People who can never find their own keys or wallet get to say "Ts'herlock the Warlock Detective examines the room to figure out if the countess was here recently, making clever observations to his sidekick". Then they roll dice. e: As for the sliding block puzzle, or the lever sequence puzzle, or whatever - I wouldn't put those into a game on their own. They'd be part of an encounter. Using your action to roll a check to see if your character can figure out the solution is already a penalty, especially when everyone's already fighting. Same as the barbarian trying to lift the gate so everyone can get in (or out) while the battle is happening. Or the rogue trying to get to the balcony by running up the chandelier rope while the guards rush at everyone. e2: I never said you should get to roll an int check to autowin combat. If the player makes bad choices in combat, they are, and should be, still likely to win if the character is really good at sword fighting. If the player makes bad choices at negotiations, they should still be likely to win if the character is an excellent diplomat. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 00:26
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:That's sort of general information about the monster. Why can't you roll a skill for to figure out, say, the best possible actions for your team of 4 to take on the next 10 turns to maximize chances of victory(given what you see) while minimizing resource use? You succeed your skill check, your DM tells you the results of the 10 turns and you repeat or move on. Just as the guy above said, maybe you're proficient in "small unit tactics", why make your characters ability to work as a coordinated team subject to your players' improv skill? I actually do run games where that's a thing. If the diplomancing of the king/infiltration of the prison goes so poorly that armed conflict erupts I don't drop into the actual combat subsystem for an hour and a half to resolve what should be an important but swift story beat. I just ask the fighter to roll athletics to see how effective the team chumps the warriors. You know, like the genre fiction. Not every fight is a showpiece and so not every fight deserves the combat subsystem treatment.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:27
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AlphaDog posted:Yes, this. Socially awkward teenagers get to say "Prancey the Famous Bard (and con-man extraordinaire) fast-talks the stablehand into loaning him the cart horse". Wheelchair-bound dudes get to say "Krarg the Mighty throws the boat at the guards". People who can never find their own keys or wallet get to say "Ts'herlock the Warlock Detective examines the room to figure out if the countess was here recently, making clever observations to his sidekick". Then they roll dice. I was the one talking about autowin combat - to me that's as silly as autowin dialogue. Totally agreed on the big setpiece battle thing too - there *are* times where autowin combat is appropriate - combat that's at a different scope than the players and their adventuring team probably shouldn't get the roll initiative treatment, but that's a case-by-case thing. The same goes for dialogue. In general, "I intimidate him" on an important npc encounter doesn't work for me the same way "I use my knowledge of combat to beat the orcs" doesn't either.
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Feb 11, 2017 00:58
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IMO the DM should be designing for characters not players when it comes to puzzles. I can't count the number of times the DM has tried to get players to solve some obtuse puzzle they come up with that just left me feeling frustrated and directionless. I don't really think puzzles should be used in dnd in that sense. Like the idea of a sliding block puzzle or some sort of riddle room. I've just never seen them done well at all.
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Feb 11, 2017 01:02
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I was the one talking about autowin combat - to me that's as silly as autowin dialogue. Oh, right. We've been talking past each other. You don't autowin combat and you shouldn't autowin dialogue. The problem's with the way D&D skills are binary pass/fail. Combat rolls are the same, but the problem goes away because there's more than one roll involved and there's more going on than just rolling.
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Feb 11, 2017 01:02
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I'm on the side of letting characters do/know/solve stuff that players can't. Similar to what AlphaDog said, my [STAT] 18 character can (if they roll right) solve the sliding block puzzle/move the giant rock/get four horses for the price of two/walk a tightrope into the castle, even if I can't. I can give a general idea of what they do ("Alright I want to basically confuse the merchant and have him mix up his math so that he charges us less"), but the whole point of the skill system is to make that into some sort of challenge, rather than the DM being the singular arbiter (they still are, setting the DC, but yeah). Personally, I'd allow "Can I roll X for Y?" for something that should be clear-cut and pretty minor (Investigation to search the room for hidden stuff, Knowledge stuff to see what they know about a place/thing, Medicine to check something of medical nature, Insight to see if someone's lying) at times, for the sake of brevity. No need for someone to explain how their character is recalling information they know or something. If they want to be detailed in more minor stuff, that's fine, but other than maybe giving advantage if they mention something specific or something like that, it makes no difference. EDIT: That, to me, means designing puzzles for players, as well as characters, so that a) the puzzles are less clearly puzzles and b) the player gets the solution based on stuff their character knows/does. empathe posted:Ran the first session for a party of 4, of which 3 have never played D&D or any pen & paper. The 4th hasn't played D&D since 3.5. I don't know how much you've run, but from your posts you mention you're a new DM so I hope I'm not being too rude if I say that from one session you haven't exactly seen the entire edition. 5E, at least for me, had the issue of "seeming fine", and then it falls apart on closer scrutiny, as well as comparison to other games (FFG Star Wars's advantage system, in my case). Serperoth fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 01:07
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AlphaDog posted:Why can't a player roll INT to see if their character solves a puzzle? The character's got an 18 int, the player invested game resources in making them smart, let them use the resources they bought. Do you keep a set of weights around for so when a player says their character is lifting a boulder? "It's a 500 pound rock, show me how you're lifting it <gestures at pile of plates>". What's the difference? I am actually extremely excited to set up a vague, complicated series of puzzles that my PCs must solve and I hope someone just rolls to figure it out and I can say "Yep, you solved it" and they continue on without ever knowing the actual puzzle or the solution. And then maybe have a an easier puzzle they actually do solve, but they'll talk about how great it was to work as a team and solve that one big puzzle even though none of us will know what it was. The characters will, though!
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Feb 11, 2017 01:13
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Serperoth posted:I don't know how much you've run, but from your posts you mention you're a new DM so I hope I'm not being too rude if I say that from one session you haven't exactly seen the entire edition. 5E, at least for me, had the issue of "seeming fine", and then it falls apart on closer scrutiny, as well as comparison to other games (FFG Star Wars's advantage system, in my case). I am new to DMing and to P&P RPGs. It's not rude but it's sort of presumptuous? I don't have anything else to compare it to and this is the system we've chosen. My players aren't going to care if another system has better mechanics for something. I wish there was a thread here for D&D that wasn't full of people trying to push other systems at every chance.
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Feb 11, 2017 01:44
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empathe posted:I am new to DMing and to P&P RPGs. It's not rude but it's sort of presumptuous? What would you like to discuss?
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Feb 11, 2017 01:46
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Pleads posted:I am actually extremely excited to set up a vague, complicated series of puzzles that my PCs must solve and I hope someone just rolls to figure it out and I can say "Yep, you solved it" and they continue on without ever knowing the actual puzzle or the solution. Combat is also a series of rolls. Do you just do the rolls and say "you win, you have no idea what happened"? Of course you don't, you describe what happens or you get the players to describe what happens, probably every time a roll is made. Or I dunno, maybe they say "I attack, got 15" and you say "hit, roll damage" and they say "7" and you say "ok you win"? Then yeah, that's maybe a tiny bit less dull than "I try to bribe the guard. Got a 14." "OK you bribe the guard", but only because there's an extra roll involved. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 01:48
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The DM advice thread is good for non bias DM stuff that is just sort of system general and doesn't get quite so riled up on systems as this thread seems to. Though do note that while I'm sayin gthat I'm not current in the thread and I'm still reading posts from like 2013. Thye're still every bit as relevant now as they were then but the current thread might be a total shitpile. I have no way of knowing.
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Feb 11, 2017 01:49
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Turtlicious posted:What would you like to discuss? DMing advice, modules, sessions stories idk Anything other than bashing the game the thread is about
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Feb 11, 2017 01:49
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The most important thing about game mechanics is that they should always function in the service of fun. If you've got a puzzle that's fun for the players to solve, by all means let them solve it. But the justification always has to be that you know the players will enjoy it. If the puzzle exists just to be a change of pace from the constant murder but they're not into, then just let them roll past it. That's just the same principle that has you sitting at the table rolling dice for combat instead of going out to an SCA event, really. With a little care you can combine dice rolling, to let the character with high intelligence shine, with actual puzzles for the players to solve. For instance, if there's some kind of picture puzzle you can start with a pile of confusing pieces, and the successful skill check lets the smart guy say 'We need to make that pile of poo poo look like this sacred symbol', and then it's up to the players to actually DO it.
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Feb 11, 2017 01:54
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Oh, I'll go first. Me and another DM today were talking about motivating players to act how you want and the difference between wanting the characters to be scared and wanting the players to be scared. Like, it's DnD, this is supposed to be a fun nerdy thing to do with friends that makes you enjoy spending time outside your cave. So we were talking about a situation like this. The party is in some scary place, temple of doom sorta thing. The characters should feel scared, they are in a dangerous place, surrounded by dangerous things and in general most PCs would feel scared in this context outside of some particularly brave or stupid ones. The challenge is getting your players to react appropriately without having THEM be scared. See like I want: Characters - scared, nervous, afraid for the lives Players - having fun, drinking dorito flavored mountain dew So there is this kind of dichotomy. How do you get players to control their characters as if they're scared without ruining the fun, and is it possible to do such a thing at all? Is it just down to the players themselves? Maybe good roleplayers will just naturally do the appropriate thing and you as a DM don't need to encourage them. Maybe the sort of people who don't take it seriously and just sorta laugh at danger and do stupid random things will just never act properly no matter what you do. I've been playing for like a decade+ but only DMing for the better part of a year or so and these are the things I think about when setting up dungeons. I've been erring on the side of player fun but now I have a group that doesn't really take anything serious. each session is super fun and everybody is laughing but most of them don't have actual characters. They make decisions 'in character' but the characters themselves are paper thin cardboard cut-outs and I wish there was more to them. Agent355 fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 01:56
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empathe posted:DMing advice, modules, sessions stories idk You didn't ask for any of those things, you came in and said "Man 5e seems fine to me!" Not many people have session stories for 5e, because we're playing better games  Also, the session story thread is here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3460258 I've always thought this was supposed to be like one of SA's MANY iconic mock threads, ala the TVTropes thread, the Starcraft thread, the Dota thread, etc. etc. Agent355 posted:Oh, I'll go first. 5e let's you hand out inspiration die yeah? Say, "You are scared, how does your character act when scared?" and when they do what they just said, hand them d4s or whatever. Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 02:02
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Turtlicious posted:You didn't ask for any of those things, you came in and said "Man 5e seems fine to me!" And it does. I'll go to the other threads.
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Feb 11, 2017 02:04
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Turtlicious posted:
I'm not sure if this is entirely serious or not but this is a real lame answer. 'you're scared because I say so' is real lovely story telling. While inspiration is a great tool for rewarding people who do what you think is appropriate/good for the session it's not something you can use to nudge them in the right direction, only reward them while they're already there. empathe posted:And it does. I'll go to the other threads. don't let them get to you, there's lots of people in here who like 5e, the thread is just prone to shitters for some reason. Agent355 fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 02:05
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If you've gotta have puzzles the players manipulate, what about doing it like this? There's a puzzle - it's a complicated lever driven gate in the wall, or a ritual that needs to be undone in a specific sequence, or a set of candelabras that need to be lit in order, or whatever else. PCs need to solve the puzzle. Bad guys are violently trying to stop them. Give a PC X moves of the puzzle per action spent, where x is their int mod (or 2x int mod, or 1/2 int, or whatever). Characters with <=0 int mod (or with less than Y int or whatever) don't get to manipulate the puzzle. Players of lower INT characters can still help with the puzzle, but can't use those characters to manipulate it, although maybe they could try to bypass the puzzle in other ways. Now you've got a tactical situation where the lower-int characters need to protect the higher-int characters from attack while they solve the puzzle. The party's usualy tactics are going to be messed up by having (probably) the spellcaster distracted by solving the puzzle and unable to do their usual combat stuff. The character gets to show off how smart they are. The players, collectively get to play with the puzzle.
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Feb 11, 2017 02:06
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:That's sort of general information about the monster. Why can't you roll a skill for to figure out, say, the best possible actions for your team of 4 to take on the next 10 turns to maximize chances of victory(given what you see) while minimizing resource use? You succeed your skill check, your DM tells you the results of the 10 turns and you repeat or move on. Just as the guy above said, maybe you're proficient in "small unit tactics", why make your characters ability to work as a coordinated team subject to your players' improv skill? Yes, these situations are directly analogous. The locked puzzle door to the ancient elven library has 253 Mystery Points and a Quibble Class of 19, and your brain is a +3 deducer that deals 4d8 points of conclusions. D&D is a binary task-resolution system. You are given a task, with a specified difficulty rating, and you succeed or fail at your task depending on how you roll. How well it operates depends on how structured the framework is that you're doing the task in. And when it's given tasks like "get a guard to back away from you" or "convince a guard to take off from work early", there isn't the kind of preset framework with ready handles that there is for tasks like "jump the spiked pit" and "don't die from poison". There are systems like Torchbearer or Fate Core where it is possible to stat up the locked puzzle door to the ancient elven library and run your party's attempts to get past it with roughly the same degree of complication and refinement as you would for the fight with the ghost of the ancient elven king that shows up when your party screws up solving the locked puzzle door to the ancient elven library. But these systems were designed that way from the beginning. D&D was designed out of a combat game to be a dungeon assault game and then a wilderness survival and exploration game. There's so much inertia in that direction, and so much invested in the identity of D&D -- as not only that kind of game but possessed of specific tools for that kind of game -- that building a framework with anything like a comparable amount of handles would be a tremendous undertaking and building one that doesn't dilute the nature of D&D is nearly impossible. So there isn't a formal framework. There are tasks, there are difficulties, and DMs are left to make their own framework. bewilderment posted:I dunno if I missed something but it seems like a lot of people haven't heard of the 'you have to do it, to do it' rule which you should follow in basically every single RPG where you roll dice? So let's talk about story-resolution systems, which Torchbearer and Fate Core both employ to some degree and Apocalypse World, which is quoted second-hand or unattributed here, employs extensively. In a story-resolution system the thing at stake from a particular roll is not whether you succeed or fail at some discrete task, but rather which way the story goes from here. So if, for example, Fightgar is cracking some knuckles and advancing menacingly on a guard, here's the rules for what happens next: Apocalypse World 2nd Edition, page 138 posted:When you go aggro on someone, roll[ 2d6]+hard[, a number between -2 and 3]. On a 10+, they have to choose 1: Well, they're kind of the rules for what happens next. They're subject to the do it/do it fork up there. Part 1 is "is Fightgar in a situation where these rules apply?" "Going aggro" is more broadly defined in the rules as "taking things to violence". Is Fightgar escalating the situation, and are they a credible and immediate threat? The answers to both are usually obvious from context, but if Fightgar has a different opinion than the MC in these matters (Apocalypse World calls its GM the MC because it's one of those games that just takes a bath in its theme) it's important to hash out those differences before the dice hit the table. And likewise, part 2 is "is Fightgar looking to actually accomplish these outcomes?" If you'll notice, the guard gets to decide what to do, so is Fightgar fully willing to break someone's arm if it comes to it? Likewise, part 1 and part 2 provide a path forward out of a possibly-uncertain story situation, where the MC might not be sure what to ask Fightgar to roll, or what to do with the results. Is Fightgar an established threat trying to escalate the situation? Ask Fightgar if they're trying to go aggro, and if so see what happens. Is Fightgar looking to force someone to back off or get punched? Ask Fightgar if they're trying to go aggro and how they escalate. The initial story conditions of what's happening are important in order for the resolution of the roll to make sense and be satisfying to everybody involved, because the roll is trying to resolve the question of how the story goes. In a task-resolution framework, establishing story conditions is much less important, sometimes nearly unnecessary, and trying to force people to come up with story conditions that have no bearing on how the task plays out is kind of a dick move. Glazius fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 02:10
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Agent355 posted:Oh, I'll go first. I think you just trust your players to react accordingly, with slight nudges here and there. It's a similar concept to having the party go to a royal ball or meet the king. There will be players (often newer ones) who will immediately act like goobers and flip tables or insult the king to his face or any number of things against the expected decorum in that kind of setting. So then you can either roll with it and go full wacky, have some reasonable consequences for these actions (that's not immediate player death or jail, because that gets boring fast) or just talk to the players OOC. Let them know the situation they're in and encourage them to act appropriately. In my experience, after the first time or two most players will want to act according to the situation. All that applies to spooky situations as well. Put em in a haunted house, some will start by trying to blow the whole thing up. So either talk with the players about expectations (my favorite) or introduces some roadblocks or complications to the blow it all up plan. You can also do inspiration rewards and stuff, but I've found that once players get into it, they don't really need a huge carrot.
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Feb 11, 2017 02:17
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Agent355 posted:I'm not sure if this is entirely serious or not but this is a real lame answer. I mean, I guess I assumed you already laid the ground work. You talk to your players, you bring up your expectations from the game before hand, and you reward them for meeting those expectations. You're not going to scare players who are together and hanging out with friends, unless you make them feel like death or something they care about is on the line. You gently caress that up, and you get players jumping down your throat about "unfair deaths." It's a tightrope. gently caress it I'm breaking it down. Be descriptive. There's little things you have to do to create a spooky atmosphere. You've got to use a ton of descriptive language. Every description should touch all 5 senses like a text box. Cold breezes, doors that smell like rotting wood, but look perfectly fine, the way your foot steps echo, are all super important. Don't pressure for rolls too much until they do something, it keeps them out of it. Ask them what they want to do, and let them guide you on what interests them. Suspense is better than surprise Taking damage is rote and normal in DnD. No-one is really freaked out when you deal damage, unless you pull out 5 d12's and a calculator, even then they think "Well that's bullshit." So what do you do instead? Leave'em in suspense, they hear the monster, they smell it, it's slamming doors. The ghosts are leaving messages on the walls, there's death around every corner. You've got to build suspense, things you can see coming but don't know what they are are way tenser then being in the situation itself. A covered pit trap just deals damage against a guy, an open inky black that requires traversal gets the player thinking "what happens if I fall in that pit?" Get them to run away. If players think they can beat everything, they're going to fight anything. You want to put them in situations where a fight here could mean defeat later down the line. Time limits are good for this. Tell them a round counts as a minute, and they can either kill the beast in 3 rounds, or escape the room. If they decide to fight now, and be full of bravado, make sure you show them why that would be a bad idea. (Dudes entering the room through paintings, mist filling the room making you light headed. The sudden inexplicable urge to stay in the room forever. TALK TO YOUR PLAYERS If you want a scary game, but Jimmy Bo-Bob had a rough day at the factory, and doesn't want to commit to that, it's something you should talk about. If not then Jimmy is going to want to crack wise all night and roll his eyes at your attempts. If everyone wants to play a game where they are scared, they will psyche themselves out to get scared. That's why Haunted Houses work, people go there with the intent to be scared, if they don't they end up just getting startled a few times and feel like they wasted their money. Let me know if you need more advice, or want me to go into specifics more on a specific issue.
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Feb 11, 2017 02:23
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Agent355 posted:Oh, I'll go first. You're not wrong for wanting that. And it can fit inside of D&D. But that doesn't really fit with the genre fiction that D&D is supposed to emulate and is advertised as emulating. The fictional characters that inspired adventurers are the kinds of people who feel a twinge of fear and then bury it deep under their sense of purpose. And the player's handbook section in retro-clones and earlier editions (maybe 5e itself) reminds you that you're not playing the kinds of people who are scared of a little mortal peril. So the first thing to do, is you have to be upfront with your players that you want them to act out scared adventurers, and not resolute badasses. And then you need to provide a rational for these scared people to actually go and adventure. And as much as your knee jerk is to try and avoid "I the DM decree your character to be scared" that DM advice tells you never to do, you have to. You have to lead with that when you're recruiting. You have to lead with "Hey guys, what if we play a game of D&D where our adventurers actually are scared of what they're doing and will quit the first chance they get?"
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Feb 11, 2017 02:26
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TheBlandName posted:You're not wrong for wanting that. And it can fit inside of D&D. But that doesn't really fit with the genre fiction that D&D is supposed to emulate and is advertised as emulating. The fictional characters that inspired adventurers are the kinds of people who feel a twinge of fear and then bury it deep under their sense of purpose. And the player's handbook section in retro-clones and earlier editions (maybe 5e itself) reminds you that you're not playing the kinds of people who are scared of a little mortal peril. Well you could replace scared with any emotion really, I'm just kinda talking in a general sense. I'm totally down with DnD being mostly just power fantasy about empowering players to do cool stuff. And any time I'm going for scared would just be a portion of the campaign, not the entire point, or I would have definitely opened with that when I proposed the campaign. Turtlicious posted:*snip* Yeah thats the stuff. I'm not solely interested in just being scared but eliciting any sort of desired emotion for the given scenario. Having characters who care when the person they knew dies, or actually wish vengeance on things when their betrayed by the quest giver they thought was on their side. But this is pretty general sort of advice too so thanks for that. Agent355 fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Feb 11, 2017 |
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Feb 11, 2017 02:29
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Glazius posted:So there isn't a formal framework. There are tasks, there are difficulties, and DMs are left to make their own framework. I may have mentioned this earlier in this thread but I did something like this in my last session during a shipboard navigation segment. The party was sailing from one location to a city and they crossed an inland sea through deep water. I rolled random encounters for sailing from the DMG and came up on a whirlpool. I described them as starting to accelerate beyond the speed of the wind and listing to the right. The player navigating the ship described how he would tack towards the vortex and then try to use the acceleration and inertia to get out. The fighty-type players took to oars to help accelerate. The dexterous player was on sail rigging duty, climbing up and down masts to adjust the sails while the druid cast conjure wind or whatever the spell is that does that. I had them each roll checks related to the stat their activity stemmed from: Navigator's Tools for the navigator, str for the oarsmen, acrobatics/dex for the rigger, and concentration for the druid. I treated it like death saves where they had to make DC15 checks across the board, majority of rolls dictated a success or failure overall. 3 successes and they escaped the vortex, 3 failures and they would have been pulled further in with 1 chance at a dc25 group check to escape back to the "safer" area, and 3 more chances to roll at dc15 majority to escape. Your post reminded me of this and is a good example of a situation where I used a fixed DC, but also in a group task framework. I liked how it played out overall and what would have been a rather mundane RP encounter was a tense 15 minute event that everyone seemed to enjoy and were able to participate in.
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Feb 11, 2017 02:30
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empathe posted:Ran the first session for a party of 4, of which 3 have never played D&D or any pen & paper. The 4th hasn't played D&D since 3.5. I just started DMing a group of newbies in Phandelver as well. We're all complete newbies - I've played one abortive session of Pathfinder years ago and nothing else. One guy has the PHB and DMG and has read them a bunch, but never played. The two others had never played at all and basically everything they knew about DnD was from the Community episode about it. It went really well though! We went with the premade characters from the starter set so we could just jump right into it. I was worried that people wouldn't really get into the RP aspect of it, but everyone was super into it right away, and had a really good time. Unfortunately the guy with the least familiarity with the game got kind of stuck with the cleric and got kind of bogged down reading spell descriptions and stuff. I think I'll try to streamline that a bit for him next session. I was a little surprised at how hard the first dungeon was as well. Or maybe just at how squishy 1st level characters were. I definitely ended up faking a few attack rolls for the boss, and reducing his damage a bit as well. I didn't really want anyone to die on their first ever DnD session. Now I'm basically obsessed and have been trying to rope some other friends into starting a game that I can play in rather than DM.
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Feb 11, 2017 02:32
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empathe posted:I am new to DMing and to P&P RPGs. It's not rude but it's sort of presumptuous? The thing to understand is that there are plenty of places on the internet where saying mean things is an offense. That's not the case on SA, where the people who made the game stalked, harassed, and doxxed goons. If you don't like the thread, you can go to enworld. They'll be happy to justify your purchase to you.
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Feb 11, 2017 02:32
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Arivia posted:The thing to understand is that there are plenty of places on the internet where saying mean things is an offense. That's not the case on SA, where the people who made the game stalked, harassed, and doxxed goons. If you don't like the thread, you can go to enworld. They'll be happy to justify your purchase to you. Wait really, can you post the posts or tweets or whatever?
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Feb 11, 2017 02:35
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