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IIRC, the big 'thing' with Mishpacha is that it's home to feral nephilim and was also hit with a X'ion bioweapon that mutated a lot of the plant life to be aggressive and hungry. Play up the absence of animal life, no normal background noise. It's just all vague rustling of plant stalks in the wind except sometimes they're moving against the wind and leaning towards the crew. Maybe a couple of encounters with giant venus flytraps that can actually bend down and snap at them, or actual killer tomatoes or screaming yams out for blood. .
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 17:25 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 08:52 |
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Oh, that's a cool idea. I'm definitely planning on using feral nephilim for this session, too, possibly having a huge and extremely deadly one on the loose. Have the players hear about it at the colony, then see its handiwork as they travel--destroyed camps, maybe even a vehicle torn open by huge claws--before eventually encountering it.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 17:31 |
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Harrow posted:I need tips on how to make wilderness adventuring fun. If the main issue with building a hexgrid would be the scale, then reduce that. The players should have a decent idea of which direction to go due to tech, so little more than a 3-4 tile wide strip would be needed. Then, seed an escalating series of obstacles along the way. To keep the pace up, by the halfway point, something (like the Nephilim mentioned previously) begins hunting them, and the amount of other obstacles encountered bring it closer and closer. There should be a clear advantage if they manage to get to the ruin before it catches up; perhaps the ruins have a relative clearing around it that will offer less cover and reduce its stealth. Alternatively, they can hide from it if it's overwhelmingly powerful and come out of the ruin with something that will help to defeat it.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 17:51 |
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Yeah untamed wilderness provides the opportunity to put resource strain on a party. Put them on a track with some predetermined obstacles and see what they're willing to part with in exchange for swift travel through an eerie, alien landscape. I like the idea above of them being hunted, so the question becomes "what are you willing to sacrifice to get away from this thing?" The ruins would be a great setpiece / release for the mounting tension of making an unsure trek through new territory.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 18:04 |
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Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. I love the idea of having the super-threatening feral Nephilim hunt them from the shadows, getting ever closer as they travel. Maybe I'll drop some extremely unsubtle hints/outright state that there's no way they'd stand a chance with something that big in a direct fight and they'll need any advantage they can get, to encourage them to try to travel stealthily and not fight until they can ensure they have the upper hand later.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 18:24 |
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Harrow posted:Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. I love the idea of having the super-threatening feral Nephilim hunt them from the shadows, getting ever closer as they travel. They could find the tattered corpses of an bunch of people with a suspiciously familiar party composition and equipment. Plus extra guns.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 18:29 |
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make a list of stuff they might find, half threatening, 1/4 beneficial and 1/4 just weird. roll to dispense or choose. make sure the players get to choose which they investigate first, eg 'your scan indicates a, b and c (fragmentary data about each) where did you go?'
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 20:35 |
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If you're going to make untamed wilderness a theme, treat that wilderness as a character. Give it a goal and tools and let it loose. For instance, it seems reasonable that a weird, alien jungle full of mutated, carnivorous plants has as its ultimate goal something like "to consume." So how does it do that? Well, plants are (generally) relatively stationary, so it can't necessarily rely on actively attacking the party (though they can certainly blunder into the odd encounter with dangerous flora), so make its "attacks" more subtle - have the jungle do everything it can to weaken them, slow them, separate them, and lure them into dangerous situations. Aggressive slime mold gets into their power packs and/or rations. Everything metal rusts at a furious pace. When they camp for the night, thorny vines wind their way through/entangling everything (including the wheels and drive shafts and intakes and engine compartments of their vehicles), and while the vines are not necessarily dangerous in and of themselves, they slow everything down - meaning the budget for supplies was perhaps wildly optimistic. The trip to the ruins is supposed to take 3 days? By day 3 they're still less than halfway there. Chasms and rough terrain bar their way, forcing them to find a way around. Do they send out scouts (Yesssss, split the party! Dooo eeeeet!!!), or do they waste more fuel/resources doubling back and forth in order to stay together? Or does part of the team make it across/through/past, only to have a rock-slide or cave-in or whatever separate the expedition? And what sinister hilarity happens when someone in the expedition gets exposed to hallucinogenic spores? Make it feel like the jungle is seriously out to get them. Not necessarily directly with attacks or whatever, but certainly death by a thousand cuts. And once you introduce your Nephilim hunting them, they are forced to make some pretty tough decisions - do they spend an hour hacking their vehicles free of the Throttleweed that's grown up overnight, or do they abandon their vehicles and proceed on foot? And what happens when the Nephilim attacks while they're clearing said Throttleweed? I don't know how the rules for Fragged Empire work, but one really good way to convey how dangerous the setting is would be to use it as the fictional justification for every failed roll or partial success that the players make. So if a player misses a "to hit" roll with his laser gun or whatever, you don't narrate a miss, you narrate that he or she pulls the trigger and nothing happens. A quick check of the weapon's power-pack reveals the aforementioned slime-mold, and that becomes the new reality. poo poo, three-quarters of our power packs are hosed, and we just discovered it at the most inopportune time! Partial success on a navigation roll? Well, we found a ford over this raging torrent jungle river, but it's too deep for one of the vehicles in the expedition. What now? Failed a perception check or similar equivalent? Congratulations, you're the poor unfortunate individual that unknowingly blundered into the hallucinogenic spores! You can and should start telling that player all sorts of paranoia-inducing poo poo. If at some point one of your players says, "Jesus, I think we're going to die out here," then you are doing it right.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 20:49 |
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Ilor posted:If you're going to make untamed wilderness a theme, treat that wilderness as a character. Give it a goal and tools and let it loose. This is some good poo poo. I was going to be content just making it a vaguely dangerous hex-crawl to the destination but these are some great ideas to really drive home why people haven't been able to tame this crazy wilderness, even with all their super future space-tech. Outside of the small Reclaimed Zone, the very environment you're walking through is out to get you, whether actively seeking to destroy you or just by pure indifference to whether you live or die. The planet's whole thing being mutated flora making it totally inhospitable is going to be a lot of fun to mine for threats.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 20:55 |
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Since we're talking about Fragged Empire anyway, and I was planning to run it in the next few months, I may as well ask now- are there any pitfalls of the system I should be aware of? From a casual reading, I noticed that the spare time points system seems to have a bit high of a chance to just expend them and get nothing from it. There's also a lot of options, for characters, ships enemies, equipment- do those ever seem overwhelming? Additionally, are there any specific supplements that are really good?
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 21:02 |
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Zomborgon posted:Since we're talking about Fragged Empire anyway, and I was planning to run it in the next few months, I may as well ask now- are there any pitfalls of the system I should be aware of? From a casual reading, I noticed that the spare time points system seems to have a bit high of a chance to just expend them and get nothing from it. There's also a lot of options, for characters, ships enemies, equipment- do those ever seem overwhelming? The Protagonist Archive and Antagonist Archive are good buys. The Protagonist Archive adds four new races that are cool, and new options for weapons and psionic characters, while the Antagonist Archive is your basic Monster Manual-type supplement and can help a lot with putting encounters together quickly. Yes, the options can get overwhelming. For the first couple of level-ups I've been directing my players to look at the lists of talents for the skills they use the most to try to cut down on the gigantic number of options they need to consider. I've also been slowly rolling systems out. It took a couple sessions before I had them put together a space ship, and it'll be a few more sessions before we tackle space combat for the first time. I want to make sure we all have a good handle on the systems we're already using before we start pushing farther. A few things that are worth taking note of, and/or that might come up if people misread rules:
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 21:10 |
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Thanks much.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 21:20 |
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these are great suggestions, read deathworld for more ideas
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 21:23 |
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Harrow posted:This is some good poo poo. I was going to be content just making it a vaguely dangerous hex-crawl to the destination but these are some great ideas to really drive home why people haven't been able to tame this crazy wilderness, even with all their super future space-tech. Outside of the small Reclaimed Zone, the very environment you're walking through is out to get you, whether actively seeking to destroy you or just by pure indifference to whether you live or die. Something that might help to convey the lethality of the setting is to make sure that there are a suitable number of expendable NPCs around - porters, technicians, assistants, etc - to die grisly deaths. So maybe you're walking through the jungle and you notice that all the little 3cm long hairs on the shaggy bark of the tree you're walking past are sticking straight out, pointing at the person in front of you in the column. OK, that's creepy and weird, but whatever. Then that dude suddenly gets unceremoniously brained by a bowling-ball-sized nut dropped from a hundred feet up. OK, that's exciting, and maybe I should stand really loving still for a minute. But the most horrifying part is the wet, sloppy cracking noise that nut makes once it comes to rest, and you see the seed's greedy tendrils extend out from the casing and immediately begin laying feeder roots over your erstwhile companion's rapidly-cooling corpse. Not cool, man! But every once in a while, throw them a helpful boon. Like once the rot gets into their rations and they're forced to forage for something edible, they discover this weird, pulsating fruit that is honest-to-god nutricious and delightfully tasty. Like, "maybe we could cultivate this for export?" tasty. But then just make sure that a later failed forage attempt introduces them to the almost identical look-alike that's crazy-loving-poisonous. Heh. Or see above, under "hallucinogenic." Another thing that will be fun is to attack their technological superiority. Seriously, slowly but surely reduce their poo poo to the Stone Age. Like, they depart on their expedition all tooled up, loaded for bear, all glittering chrome and laser-tech. When they stagger back into the Reclamation Zone days or weeks later, they're packing stout clubs and flint knives - because that stuff doesn't immediately rot or rust to uselessness - and wearing only torn, ragged scraps of their original gear.
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 23:23 |
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Ilor posted:If you're going to make untamed wilderness a theme, treat that wilderness as a character. Give it a goal and tools and let it loose. Take some cues from nature itself, carnivorous plants for the most part don't attack, they lure...
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# ? Nov 13, 2017 23:31 |
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I am tooling with an idea for my 6 lvl 8ish 5th edition players for a special Xmas episode. Their party has a little outpost, with all their players residing in their own floors of the main tower. Since they were recently attacked I was going to have each PC set up a security system for their floor. Then, near Christmas I hand them all premade Gnome character sheets(thus Gnome Alone) and have them sneak in to delivery presents(magic weapons) to their PCs. Maybe fight a Krampus and/or the various guard animal and familiars they have accumulated. I am tempted to give them all a taste of DMing and let them design and/or run their individual rooms, and have the gnomes break into two teams to deliver presents, so they are not using their inside knowledge. Sound fun? Can a trap heavy one off be engaging? Any tips? Also what is a good level to shoot for if I am handing them premade characters?
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 00:41 |
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I continue to GM with FATE Core and continue to struggle with the system. It just seems the rails are too slippy for me, per se. Despite having a chill attitude towards rules in other systems, FATE appears to be far too open. Also I suck at compels and rolls resulting in a tie, how do I not suck?
Terratina fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Nov 14, 2017 |
# ? Nov 14, 2017 05:09 |
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Terratina posted:I continue to GM with FATE Core and continue to struggle with the system. It just seems the rails are too slippy for me, per se. Despite having a chill attitude towards rules in other systems, FATE appears to be far too open. Also I suck at compels and rolls resulting in a tie, how do I not suck? Once you've made sure those Aspects have a downside, exploit them ruthlessly. This sounds mean, but it's not. It's how you get Fate Points into the players' hands. Your biggest lever here is going to be the situation at the moment of your compel - what's at stake at that instant? If it's low stakes, the player will generally accept the compel. If it's high-stakes, they're more likely to fight it. But as a general rule, if you can compel, you probably should compel. Advice to not suck on ties: Have you played Apocalypse World? The 7-9 (partial success) result on do something under fire is the maxim through which the entire PbtA system operates, and it applies really well to ties in FATE: the GM is going to offer the player something along the lines of a worse outcome (you get some of what you want, but not all of what you want), a hard bargain (you get what you want, but it costs you something in the doing), or an ugly choice (you can kill the monster or save the kid, but not both). And like Apocalypse World, the best consequences aren't necessarily those that are mean, but those which are irrevocable. Some people struggle with this, but once you get the hang of it, it's really easy. The hard bargain is especially easy - break some gear, suffer some damage, lose the NPC you're protecting, anger the king, whatever. The worse outcome is more situationally dependent - much depends on the measure of "success." But think about what that measure is, and what the circumstance needs to be to only give them part of it (like, yeah, you convince the guard you're on an important mission for the king; but now he thinks it's so important that he's insisting he accompany you to help out, and no amount of convincing seems to be shaking his new-found conviction in the importance of your actions). The ugly choice is the realm of the sadist, and once you learn to use it, your players will learn to lament their poor life choices while simultaneously reveling in the dramatic tension it builds. And do note that one of the choices in the "ugly choice" can absolutely be failure. You're leaving it up to the player to decide how important the outcome is when measured against some cost, and that makes for great character development. Does that help? Ilor fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Nov 14, 2017 |
# ? Nov 14, 2017 07:05 |
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Terratina posted:I continue to GM with FATE Core and continue to struggle with the system. It just seems the rails are too slippy for me, per se. Despite having a chill attitude towards rules in other systems, FATE appears to be far too open. Also I suck at compels and rolls resulting in a tie, how do I not suck? Ilor is correct, read his words for they are good ones Since he brought up apoc world, I feel the need to link Scrape and Evil Mastermind's Dungeon World GM guide. While it's obviously written for DW I personally leaned a LOT from reading it which I apply to pretty much any other game I play now too also you might realise how amazing PbtA is too, but that's only an aside to the main point Sounds like you could pick up some tips and tricks on improv from it regardless
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 09:56 |
Glukeose posted:Yeah untamed wilderness provides the opportunity to put resource strain on a party. Put them on a track with some predetermined obstacles and see what they're willing to part with in exchange for swift travel through an eerie, alien landscape. I like the idea above of them being hunted, so the question becomes "what are you willing to sacrifice to get away from this thing?" Sounds like Hyperion. Blatantly steal from that. Tesla trees, time tombs, the Shrike nephilim, lost colonists.
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 10:11 |
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Been having fun rolling up worlds using the Stars Without Number tables in the revised edition Kickstarter Really looking forward to running a campaign with my group
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 13:43 |
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Solemn Sloth posted:Been having fun rolling up worlds using the Stars Without Number tables in the revised edition Kickstarter I was like so close to backing that, I've never played it but it looks way up my street Please report back one day if you ever get to play it
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 14:30 |
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Solemn Sloth posted:Been having fun rolling up worlds using the Stars Without Number tables in the revised edition Kickstarter I like how the 2 worlds with population in the Billions are Medieval Tech.
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 18:14 |
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cigaw posted:I like how the 2 worlds with population in the Billions are Medieval Tech. Even in space, the 1% keep all the
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 18:30 |
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Heya guys, just wanted a quick bit of advice on ideas for games. At present I am running a very large team (10 people all told) in a game set in Glorantha, specifically Dragon Pass in about the year 1345, this is using the Heroquest system and I have not had a full 10 person group together all at once yet but may do this coming Thursday. The story so far, we have all built the clan (Silver wings) up to strength and had an introduction to some of the key characters. During a feat to celebrate their arrival/survival of winter and the first day of spring the clan has been attacked by tusk raiders, who were beaten back. During this one set of players a) Inspired the defenders and b) skewered a pig person, the other set were off escorting people out to a bit more safety due to the amount of carnage that they feared, they managed to c) Stare down a monster pig and d) scare the bejesus out of some children. Essentially the group got back together and have then set off, beaten up the pigmen (one of them almost killed a member of the party before sheer numbers took their toll) and rescuing any hostages taken. I also introduced them to Astaron Black-oak the man who killed one of the characters sisters (she was vengeful and I had cleared it with her beforehand) and who is going to serve as a constant threat to them as he starts building up a bandit clan. They are just getting back to the clan lands and was planning on using this time as a set up for who some of the movers and shakers in the clan are, who has the most clout who is renowned and who they would back in case of something happening to clan leadership. Does anyone want to point out things I could improve on/ I should be paying attention to?
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# ? Nov 14, 2017 20:36 |
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Ilor posted:Good Words kaffo posted:Words About DW Thanks to both of you. Really. Regarding Powered by the Apocalypse systems, I encountered Apocalypse World waaaay before FATE Core. So yeah, phrasing ties and other outcomes as success at major cost, success at minor cost, etc. helps a fair deal and I know how awesome those games are - just running with FATE Core in the setting of L5R and FATE Core is at least a system that can be straightforwardly hacked (School Techniques as Stunts, etc.). Another habit I have, from my time with Savage Worlds, is if I see a player with all 3 Fate Points/Chips/Noodles/Whatever, often I wait until they're low on that resource before restocking them. Also, I find myself compelling if there is a major lull in the action, i.e. if all they're doing is talking at each other when an NPC is just standing there or whatever. Are those bad habits in FATE Core? Or should just say flat out that part of the economy is using those Fate Points, and be frank with that little bit punishing strategy?
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# ? Nov 15, 2017 01:25 |
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Terratina posted:Also, I find myself compelling if there is a major lull in the action, i.e. if all they're doing is talking at each other when an NPC is just standing there or whatever. Are those bad habits in FATE Core? Or should just say flat out that part of the economy is using those Fate Points, and be frank with that little bit punishing strategy? The FATE Core book has a really good section on building scenes, and it might be worth a re-read. Specifically, when constructing a good scene, it's important to get in, handle the central conflict, foreshadow the consequences, and get out. You don't want to cut players off if there's good role-playing going on, but sometimes players can get wound around the axle about something and just want to discuss things to death. This poo poo needs to be nipped in the bud. Keep people focused by keeping the session pacy. Further, it's almost more important to know what parts of the story don't merit a scene. Avoid scenes or interactions where there's no conflict (and by conflict I don't necessarily mean "a fight," could be just any obstacle that needs to be overcome), no tension, or in which nothing happens. It's totally cool to elide these sequences with a few sentences of exposition: "OK, after you recover the guns from the old armory, you bring them back to The Stand. Conserving precious ammo as best you can, you try to train the citizens how to shoot, how to fight. You know they're not really ready, but it'll have to do. Because the smoke on the horizon says the Datsun Cannibals are coming. What do you do?" Essentially, know when to switch from discrete scene to montage. So give players an opportunity to play their characters, but make sure "play" means more than just "talk."
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# ? Nov 15, 2017 03:49 |
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Ilor posted:FATE things I've read through FATE a few times and, despite running PbtA games a bunch (mostly Dungeon World), I never really understood it. This helped a ton and now I'm really excited to give it another look.
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# ? Nov 15, 2017 15:30 |
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Yeah, FATE seems to occupy a nice little spot between crunch and narrative. Like, you have skill ratings and NPCs have stats and the GM rolls dice and whatnot, but the flexibility of Aspects (which again, are essentially just free-form situational modifiers), the open-ended degrees of success or failure, and the fact that you can use skills in a variety of ways really give the GM a lot of tools to use to tell cool stories without getting bogged down in needless detail. At their core, Aspects are simply a mechanical effect for something that has been established in the fiction. So whereas in Apocalypse World you might need to act under fire to cross open ground under suppressive fire before getting into a position where you can roll to seize by force (both parts of which might come with consequences), in FATE the Aspect of "Holy poo poo, suppressive fire!" mechanically increases the difficulty of your attack (probably with those same potential consequences in the now-more-likely event of a failure or a tie).
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# ? Nov 15, 2017 20:34 |
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Ilor posted:Yeah, FATE seems to occupy a nice little spot between crunch and narrative. what would you even consider an actual narrative game, at this point
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# ? Nov 15, 2017 22:19 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:what would you even consider an actual narrative game, at this point Microscope
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# ? Nov 15, 2017 23:08 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:what would you even consider an actual narrative game, at this point Pantheon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(role-playing_game)
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# ? Nov 15, 2017 23:34 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:what would you even consider an actual narrative game, at this point
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# ? Nov 16, 2017 00:45 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:what would you even consider an actual narrative game, at this point Fiasco.
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# ? Nov 16, 2017 05:35 |
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I’m DMing for the first time and reading through this thread but I’m only on page 104 so skipping ahead to ask a question. I’m running Phandelver for a few colleagues, none of us have played before. They cleared Cragmaw Hideout and have spent ages in Phandalin, basically going door to door and forcing me to make a lot of stuff up on the fly. They’re currently trying to get rid of the townmaster so Halia from the miners exchange can take over. I’d a general idea of how it could go - they could kill him, threaten or persuade him to stand down, or stir up the villagers to demand his resignation/run him out of town. What they actually did was wander round till they found three redbrands then froze them, shattered them, stacked the pile of bits outside the townmaster’s office, and walked away. Didn’t knock or wait to see what happened or anything - just wandered off up the road to speak to the man at the orchard. What should I do? I’m pretty sure the townmaster should skip town when he sees it, but it doesn’t feel right to just let them get away with something so obviously naughty.
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# ? Nov 16, 2017 22:26 |
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Sanford posted:I’m DMing for the first time and reading through this thread but I’m only on page 104 so skipping ahead to ask a question. Is the town master in league with the redbrands? If so it definitely makes sense for them to get the gently caress out if there are murdering vigilante wizards on the loose. As for the rest of the town though, how do they react to the brutal murder and display of three local toughs? Not everyone in Gotham was down with Batman’s vigilantism and he wasn’t even killing people. Also, how do the redbrands themselves react? Are they now on high alert? Do they call for backup? Do they take things out on the town, going door to door for information on who did this? Launch a massive preemptive strike on the dangerous looking newcomers next nightfall? Solemn Sloth fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Nov 17, 2017 |
# ? Nov 17, 2017 00:54 |
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My players are about to head into a lab in our 5e game which has been overrun by genetic experiments. What are some good/interesting monster combos to throw into this? So far I've thought of: - Displacer velociraptors - Half-dragon giants - Two/three headed dragons, each a different colour - folks with undead limbs grafted on
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# ? Nov 17, 2017 02:02 |
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I don’t know the level range but Flesh Golems are the classic choice.
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# ? Nov 17, 2017 02:37 |
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Ilor posted:More Good FATE Words Noted. Never really was one for planning scenes and such, but it seems to be a judgement thing. Anyway, am I right in thinking that I should be handing out Fate Points only once PCs are below their max? Ibblebibble posted:Monster Mashing The possibilites are somewhat endless there but what level is the party? Off the top of my top something mixed with a gorilla would be funny. I would also go the whole hog with the graft theme and have each half of the creations have different resistance and weaknesses but I can see how that would slow things down mechanically.
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# ? Nov 17, 2017 02:51 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 08:52 |
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Terratina posted:I would also go the whole hog with the graft theme and have each half of the creations have different resistance and weaknesses but I can see how that would slow things down mechanically. One patchwork monster is "3 monsters" with separate hp, resistances, and abilities. It gets 3 initiatives and, can target different opponents easily, and each of the component monsters can be "killed" separately and then just flop around useless and dead for the rest of the combat. Signal this to your players by asking them which bit they're targeting. You could go for silly sounding stuff (a giant owl / owlbear / bear patchwork) or get really horrific and gory with the descriptions. Or both. Mess around with combo ideas until you think of something cool, but one thing that will definitely work is to have the bits with the powerful abilities (eg, a tail that's a snake that poisons opponents) use lower defenses and hp so that the players can feel clever about targeting the most dangerous pieces first. Also try to combine melee and ranged pieces in the same monster. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Nov 17, 2017 |
# ? Nov 17, 2017 03:20 |