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Sanford posted:Thanks again everyone, apologies for monopolising the thread but this is very useful and reassuring - I'm still having a blast but not sure if I'm doing it right, and if that might cause us problems later. If they don't give a poo poo about the dwarf, that's fine. Let them not give a poo poo about the dwarf. Either find some other route to hook them into the adventure (hey maybe Harry's Heroes are working for the Big Bad and that's why Harry is so mad at them), or say the hell with it and toss the adventure out entirely. That's the thing about DMing - your job is to provide entertainment for your players. Follow the poo poo your players are interested in. Following the pre-written adventure might feel important - or, hell, easier - but if the players aren't having fun with it, why should they bother to show up?
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Nov 29, 2017 18:13
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Sanford posted:I think one of the biggest issues with them going off-piste is that the plot hooks as written in the book are boring. We had a Skype catch-up today to talk about what's going on (and so I could ask them to head for one of the routes I have fully prepped, not one straight out the book), and one of the players said "tell me again exactly why I should give a gently caress about this dwarf?" The dwarf is literally the main plot thread of the whole adventure. They're now discussing ways they could find out the info they need from the dwarf without rescuing him, because anyone stupid enough to get captured by gerblins probably deserves it. I just know they're going to try and torture the fortune-telling banshee... Okay, a key part to the banshee in Phandelver is that as-written, she's not omniscient or oracular. She's just very old and knows a lot of poo poo about the area. So she knows the location of several key areas in the module, but not everything. You can certainly change that for your campaign, but I'm just going off the book. That being said, she's still a loving banshee and can probably TPK with a single scream. So let them be cocksure on their way to her lair. Let them think they've got the power to control or force her. So the moment they start talking poo poo or trying to force her to answer, she either fucks off or retaliates. Personally, I'd have her retaliate. Put the fear of god in them. That way they aren't so gung-ho about loving with poo poo they can't possibly comprehend. The whole scenario could even give them reason to go back after the dwarf, especially if he's their only reliable source of information.
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Nov 29, 2017 20:00
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Sanford posted:...one of the players said "tell me again exactly why I should give a gently caress about this dwarf?" You've already written down your answer! Sanford posted:- it was maybe discussed that there was a dwarf member of Henry’s Heroes. Someone might have sung a song that went “the climbing dwarf, there he goes, see him climb with his monkey toes”.
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Nov 29, 2017 20:21
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For crying out loud. The adventure needs them to rescue a dwarf who holds key information to get them back on track with the plot. But the players are too invested in wanting to find the mysterious 5th member of Henry’s Heroes, and all they know is that he’s a dwarf. What a tricky conundrum, I cannot fathom how to combine these two wildly different plot threads. This sudden realisation just caused me to yell “They’re the same drat dwarf!” at my wife. She didn’t care. Edit: AlphaDog, you beat me to it!
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Nov 29, 2017 20:25
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Sanford posted:This sudden realisation just caused me to yell “They’re the same drat dwarf!” at my wife. She didn’t care.
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Nov 29, 2017 20:27
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Sanford posted:For crying out loud. The adventure needs them to rescue a dwarf who holds key information to get them back on track with the plot. But the players are too invested in wanting to find the mysterious 5th member of Henry’s Heroes, and all they know is that he’s a dwarf. What a tricky conundrum, I cannot fathom how to combine these two wildly different plot threads. Welcome to GMing, now you'll play that out and the players will all look at you with jaws on the floor until one of them goes "Holy gently caress! You had this planned all along! You are a genius!" Then you say nothing and think "Thank gently caress that worked out" 
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Nov 29, 2017 20:36
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kaffo posted:Welcome to GMing, now you'll play that out and the players will all look at you with jaws on the floor until one of them goes "Holy gently caress! You had this planned all along! You are a genius!" Saying nothing, it turns out, is an important GMing skill sometimes.
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Nov 29, 2017 20:39
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Sanford posted:What a tricky conundrum, I cannot fathom how to combine these two wildly different plot threads. The terrible secret of GMing is that if you do enough of this stuff, your adventure will be more fun for the players than one that was painstakingly planned out in detail and/or purchased for fifty bucks.
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Nov 29, 2017 20:49
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AlphaDog posted:The terrible secret of GMing is that if you do enough of this stuff, your adventure will be more fun for the players than one that was painstakingly planned out in detail and/or purchased for fifty bucks. Yeah - at the start I was trying to keep all this stuff from the book in my head, now, 10 months later, I'm struggling to keep in my head what the player's know concretely so I can figure out what I'm free to rejigger.
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Nov 29, 2017 21:06
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:so I can figure out what I'm free to rejigger. It's everything. You can retcon anything, as long as it's cooler and more fun than the original version.
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Nov 29, 2017 21:15
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AlphaDog posted:The terrible secret of GMing is that if you do enough of this stuff, your adventure will be more fun for the players than one that was painstakingly planned out in detail and/or purchased for fifty bucks. I thought the terrible secret of gming was stealing plot lines from books/games your players havent read
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Nov 29, 2017 21:22
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It's terrible secrets all the way down.
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Nov 29, 2017 21:27
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^^^ This.
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Nov 29, 2017 23:53
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Saying nothing, it turns out, is an important GMing skill sometimes. In my experience, the one talent that's most important to successfully GMing any RPG is bullshitting. No matter how well-prepared you are for your game, the players' actions (both in and out of character) are going to effectively nullify 75% of that prep work, and 75% of what they actually remember after the fact will be the stuff you made up on the spot. The players never need to know that the linchpin that retroactively tied the whole campaign together from their perspective was pulled out of your rear end when they swerved hard and inadvertently negated everything you'd painstakingly planned in advance.
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Nov 30, 2017 00:56
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And that right there is why I no longer painstakingly plan anything in advance.
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Nov 30, 2017 01:20
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Hey it's called "improvising" - according to strunk and white, pp 47 and 17 U.S.C. § 1069 (1944), for it to be "bullshitting," it has to be written.
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Nov 30, 2017 08:49
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AlphaDog posted:It's terrible secrets all the way down. Games -> Traditional Games -> The GM Advice thread: It's terrible secrets all the way down Related, I had a one shot I ran for a group of 100% newbies using Savage Worlds since it's a piece of cake Part of it was a poo poo quest I made like an hour before where they got asked to pick the sunflower of 10,000 suns from the top of the highest mountain They fought some poo poo to get there and when they did I described how the area around the sunflower was scorched black in a perfect ring around it, while the sunflower itself was undamaged One player tried to get it and got blasted by basically a solar beam from the flower My thoughts to "solve" it was just to tank the damage, since it wasn't really that bad, and puck it before they died One player though stopped me and said "Wait, I've got it! Oh my God, how did we not see this before!" I'm thinking "Um, what?" and he said "I move around the circle until my shadow is covering the sunflower, then I walk into the ring" I sat there thinking "gently caress that's smart" and said "Well done! That was 100% the solution, congratz!" I am a genius  On the topic, I know GMs who come up with really complex puzzles, but can't be hosed thinking of solutions, so just let the players try stuff until they do something particularly interesting/smart or someone looks like they are getting sick of it No, don't do this. It's bad. But it was amazing that he actually got away with it for so long without people realising that he'd never planned the solution to a single puzzle
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Nov 30, 2017 09:34
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:I thought the terrible secret of gming was stealing plot lines from books/games your players havent read I have pulled so much crap from the Final Fantasy series that it's not even funny anymore.
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Nov 30, 2017 09:47
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Does anyone have any advice on running non combat adventures? I've never done that and only realized it's on the table a day before I run. My next game will be a one session mini adventure about a train ride into the major city of the setting. I plan to divide the session into three scenes, and what I'm thinking for the scenes was 1)some socializing on the ride, introduce NPCs from previous games as passengers, have them talk to the party, encourage RP, etc. 2) introduce some non combat problems, intentionally keeping it non-epic, ex: A) unexpected birth on train, B) a passenger being told to leave, C) the party investigating a theft where the item was actually misplaced 3) A large formal dinner on the train where I can work in reactions from NPCs based on how the players acted in 1) and 2). Any tips on general "arcs" I can use in non combat adventures? Like the non combat equivalent of 1) goblins attack the inn at night 2) a posse forms with the party to scour the woods for missing children 3) the players are sent into the old forest cave to get the kids.
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Nov 30, 2017 15:10
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Jack B Nimble posted:Does anyone have any advice on running non combat adventures? I've never done that and only realized it's on the table a day before I run. What system are you using? Mechanics dictate a lot about player behavior, so advice for a non-combat adventure in FATE is going to be different from a non-combat adventure in D&D.
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Nov 30, 2017 16:14
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Shadow of the deamon lord, I'd say it's closer to D&D than FATE, despite SotDL speaking in universal terms for it's mechanics. I say that because as I understand it FATE really is universal, whereas both SotDL and D&D have more robust combat mechanics vs social. But I don't really want to...laden the rp with mechanics?
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Nov 30, 2017 16:30
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kaffo posted:On the topic, I know GMs who come up with really complex puzzles, but can't be hosed thinking of solutions, so just let the players try stuff until they do something particularly interesting/smart or someone looks like they are getting sick of it puzzles in general aren't fun. no one plays dnd lusting for rubix cube rooms
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Nov 30, 2017 16:37
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:puzzles in general aren't fun. no one plays dnd lusting for rubix cube rooms The core problem is they're extremely difficult to model in table top. They almost always end up relying on player problem solving in an unfun way. I'm the last to wring my hands over metagaming and OOC information, but most puzzles are a difference in degree that becomes a difference in kind. None of the character attributes come into play meaningfully; it's entirely down to the players working through what is essentially a word problem. Often via brute force. I have seen them work occasionally, though. When they do, it's usually because: • it was foreshadowed and the party given clues/pieces of the puzzle along the way, so there's a "oh that's what this is for!" moment • they're relatively simple - only a handful of steps to accomplish • executing the solution requires character attributes • it's not a hard stop on progress - the party can get by the puzzle without solving it, but either it imposes a cost or leads to a missed benefit A good example of this is the famous golden idol scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now we don't see what the foreshadowing is, but it's clear Indy had some forewarning and had prepared. It's a one step solution. It also relied on some player abilities - his agility and steadiness of nerve. And when he doesn't quite pull it off, he still gets the idol - but now he has to escape the boulder.
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Nov 30, 2017 17:12
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My favorite GM had the same attitude, but instead of puzzles it was a mummy in a sarcophagus on the top of a column rising out of an abyss, in warhammer fantasy. The GM told me that his planning extended to the Mummy rising up from his sleep, grabbing a player, and throwing him off the column. When I asked him how he thought the players would win, he said he didn't know anything but that the Mummy was probably gonna murder a player a turn until they thought of something. Bright wizard killed the Mummy after it chucked one player, everyone loves the fight, but the GM talks about that mummy, years later, as if someone ran over his dog 
Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 17:12
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Comrade Gorbash posted:• it was foreshadowed and the party given clues/pieces of the puzzle along the way, so there's a "oh that's what this is for!" moment Another good one is to combine the puzzle with something else going on, so that the players have to split their attention. There was one combat I ran where the players had to effectively play a game of Mastermind using components scattered around a room while the ceiling slowly descended, but every wrong answer they made brought an enemy into the room.
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Nov 30, 2017 17:25
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Comrade Gorbash posted:People do like the idea of the "speak friend and enter" moment, and riddles and puzzles like that are a pretty typical in fantasy. Of course, the irony is that even in LotR progress ground to a halt after they try to brute force it and Gandalf goes off to pout in a corner. Add to that list situations where the puzzle itself isn't the problem, it's just a timer of sorts while the players are more concerned with other things. It might be incredibly easy to solve a sliding-blocks-onto-buttons puzzle, but then the only fighter strong enough to move it needs to be defended from the swarm of fire imps trying to stop him.
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Nov 30, 2017 17:26
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One of my worst gaming moments was a DM having us suddenly need to solve a Sudoku puzzle in the middle of traversing another plane of existence. I didn’t know how Sudoku worked, so I ended up loving off to another room in the house until the DM realized that nobody could solve it quickly and let us finally roll for INT.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:03
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chitoryu12 posted:One of my worst gaming moments was a DM having us suddenly need to solve a Sudoku puzzle in the middle of traversing another plane of existence. I didn’t know how Sudoku worked, so I ended up loving off to another room in the house until the DM realized that nobody could solve it quickly and let us finally roll for INT. He should have self inserted an obnoxious overlord that built the puzzle and let the party both complain to and murder him.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:08
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how do yall handle group checks I don't know if this is in any official dnd rules but I hate having five different people ask "okay now what do I see in the room?" so i add up all their bonuses and make one roll the alternative was everyone rolls separately and I use the highest number the real secret is I don't really take that roll into account
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Nov 30, 2017 19:13
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I don't know if this is what your players are doing but I don't let players just say "I roll perception" on an area. I just set the expectation that if something is visible I'll tell them about it. If it's not important I don't mention it. If I expect them to look for something I'll call for a roll from whoever is looking but they know plot-advancing stuff isn't hidden behind a roll. That way they don't go around the group seeing everyone's rolls
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Nov 30, 2017 19:17
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Y'all are weak DMs then, because I once presented my players with a short story I had written about an osprey becoming a taoist hermit and then gave them a puzzle based on reading comprehension of the short story afterwards and it was a highlight of the session 
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Nov 30, 2017 19:18
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Everybody rolls, if half the party makes the DC it's a success, if not a failure. It's how 4E does it. Depending on the obstacle, the ones who don't make the DC in a success might still lose a few HP or a healing surge or suffer similar consequences. If all your buddies see the trap and you don't, they can keep you from walking into it. If none of your buddies see the trap and you do, you'll probably get as far "uh guys, what about these pressure pla-" before someone has stepped onto one. If all your buddies are great at climbing, they can pull you along. If you're the only one great at climbing, the group still isn't getting up there. And so on. e: but also for perception specifically, what Spiteski says.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:19
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I did a Wild West game where everyone had Perception rolled individually to spot a hitman following one of their number to the lavatory. Anyone who passed caught sight of him staring at the group, and a critical success meant they saw him conceal a gun and follow the party member. I sent their results individually via PM. The one who rolled a critical failure mistakenly saw an innocent person seem menacing and begin drawing something from his jacket, which I hoped would cause some interesting drama. Unfortunately the player was so cautious that he refused to do anything until he saw a gun, which wouldn’t have ended well in a quick-draw.
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Nov 30, 2017 19:24
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Mighty Dicktron posted:Y'all are weak DMs then, because I once presented my players with a short story I had written about an osprey becoming a taoist hermit and then gave them a puzzle based on reading comprehension of the short story afterwards and it was a highlight of the session no it wasn't your players secretly hate you they're plotting your murder
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Nov 30, 2017 20:20
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Mighty Dicktron posted:...it was a highlight of the session E:fb
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Nov 30, 2017 20:21
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I have the whole party nominate one person. The group gets one roll, for anything. I have 8 players so my priorities may be different. EDIT hey Anyone have quick suggestions for what questions I can ask my players as they build out my capitol city? It's an ongoing Google hangout but I'm running out of ideas. So far I've asked what was there before the city, what unusual district does it have, what is the mayor's preoccupation, and what common item is banned oweing to its association with a past mania. All of these questions have an implied "And how is it spooky" that I may not be conveying in a phone post. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 20:44
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Jack B Nimble posted:I have the whole party nominate one person. The group gets one roll, for anything. i considered that too, but then that dis incentivizes anyone putting any points in overlapping skills 8 players sounds like a cluster though lol
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Nov 30, 2017 21:15
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In my experience, players never get as inventive as when you say "one of you, roll for X" and they try and come up with a reason why the PC with the highest modifier in X should make that roll, even if you don't explicitly make that the group check rule.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:23
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There’s no penalty for firing into combat, right? One of our fighters is a posh sod who refuses to fight alongside the Turkish wrestler because “he’s greasy”. He keeps firing his longbow into combats happening six feet away from him while yelling unhelpful advice on how to grapple a bugbear.
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Nov 30, 2017 21:25
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Sanford posted:There’s no penalty for firing into combat, right? One of our fighters is a posh sod who refuses to fight alongside the Turkish wrestler because “he’s greasy”. He keeps firing his longbow into combats happening six feet away from him while yelling unhelpful advice on how to grapple a bugbear. No specific penalty for that in 5th ed. If you feel that there absolutely must be a penalty, the rules for Cover would be a good place to start. If I were going to write a houserule to cover firing into melee, I would work from the assumption that any penalty that might apply to firing into melee is based on how much harder it is to to hit an enemy without hitting an ally. That is, there's no chance to wound an ally in melee with your target, because if that was going to happen you wouldn't have taken the shot. If I were doing this in a game that used a grid, I'd apply cover only if the shot was taken "through" a space occupied by a creature other than the target - ie, if the attacker has line of sight, no penalty. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Nov 30, 2017 |
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Nov 30, 2017 22:07
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