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Regarding talking to him, yes. I have. It significantly decreased the griping back when I did it, but he slowly slides back into old habits. And yeah, it's unfortunate because he's a friend and I like spending time with him, just in this circumstance it's not sustainable. I expected him to just announce he's done playing with us some while back, and because I am a coward at heart, I figured that would be better than confronting it. But now we're over a year into this and while he doesn't make the game unbearable, I feel like it'd be better if he went to the aquarium while we were getting pizza. Thanks for the advice and sympathy, guys. While I like DMing in its game aspect, I kind of hate that I've been thrust into being Mom for five of my friends.
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Apr 20, 2018 14:45
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Some folks are born leaders while others have it thrust upon them when times are dark. Be the light in that darkness, fellow traveler.
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Apr 20, 2018 15:22
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My Lovely Horse posted:I was the kind of kid who'd spend school breaks, and sometimes classes, doing that exact kind of logic puzzle, and I burst out laughing when I realized what I had in front of me. But then I went to check out the district cause I'm leaving no plot stone unturned in games now. Plus there were runes and poo poo. I had no idea about this, could someone spoil it for me?
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Apr 20, 2018 21:54
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sebmojo posted:I had no idea about this, could someone spoil it for me? At the dinner party were Lady Winslow, Doctor Marcolla, Countess Contee, Madam Natsiou, and Baroness Finch. The women sat in a row. They all wore different colors and Doctor Marcolla wore a jaunty purple hat. Lady Winslow was at the far left, next to the guest wearing a white jacket. The lady in green sat left of someone in blue. I remember that green outfit because the woman spilled her whiskey all over it. The traveler from Fraeport was dressed entirely in red. When one of the dinner guests bragged about her Diamond, the woman next to her said they were finer in Fraeport, where she lived. So Baroness Finch showed off a prized War Medal, at which the lady from Dabokva scoffed, saying it was no match for her Bird Pendant. Someone else carried a valuable Ring and when she saw it, the visitor from Dunwall next to her almost spilled her neighbor’s wine. Countess Contee raised her rum in toast. The lady from Karnaca, full of beer, jumped up onto the table, falling onto the guest in the center seat, spilling the poor woman’s absinthe. Then Madam Natsiou captivated them all with a story about her wild youth in Baleton. In the morning, there were four heirlooms under the table: the Diamond, Snuff Tin, the Bird Pendant, and the Ring. But who owned each? Winslow had the ring, Contee had the Diamond, Marcolla had the Bird Pendant, Natsiou had the Snuff Tin, and Finch had the War Medal.
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Apr 20, 2018 21:59
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That problem isn't *that* hard but it's definitely hard if you don't write anything down - 5 dimensions is atypical but doable.
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Apr 20, 2018 22:08
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sebmojo posted:I had no idea about this, could someone spoil it for me? The puzzle swaps names and clues around, but there are guides on how to do it quickly since the format remains the same. Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Apr 20, 2018 |
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Apr 20, 2018 22:32
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Keeshhound posted:The puzzle swaps names and clues around, but there are guides on how to do it quickly since the format remains the same. Oh right, I thought people were talking about the dishonored 2 town with the two factions.
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Apr 20, 2018 23:10
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sebmojo posted:Oh right, I thought people were talking about the dishonored 2 town with the two factions. Thank you, so was I.
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Apr 20, 2018 23:14
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sebmojo posted:Oh right, I thought people were talking about the dishonored 2 town with the two factions. Well now I'm loving confused.
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Apr 21, 2018 02:02
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This is the real riddle now
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Apr 21, 2018 04:15
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They were. That's the puzzle you can solve to skip the level with the two factions.
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Apr 21, 2018 09:55
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Sniper Party posted:They were. That's the puzzle you can solve to skip the level with the two factions. Plz explain
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Apr 21, 2018 11:35
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The level revolves around finding the solution to what's basically a huge combination lock with 2 rows of 5 dials, the top ones with names and the bottom ones with items in them. You can play the level in various ways to find the right combination, or since you start basically right next to the lock you can just walk up to it and solve the riddle (which the weirdo inventor genius guy who made the lock put there to show off) to get the combination.
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Apr 21, 2018 14:39
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Behind the lock is the corpse of a guy who really wanted to start a logic puzzle meetup group but no one ever solved his entrance exam.
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Apr 21, 2018 17:28
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Holy gently caress that's incredible, i am definitely interested in using that at some point.
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Apr 21, 2018 17:32
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Behind the lock is the corpse of a guy who really wanted to start a logic puzzle meetup group but no one ever solved his entrance exam.
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Apr 21, 2018 17:51
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any cool tips/ideas for running mass effect/star trek/star wars-y games? I just got the pre-release pdf for Esper Genesis (a sci-fi game based on 5e). I've only ever run fantasy stuff before.
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Apr 23, 2018 06:09
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Danger Diabolik posted:any cool tips/ideas for running mass effect/star trek/star wars-y games? I just got the pre-release pdf for Esper Genesis (a sci-fi game based on 5e). I've only ever run fantasy stuff before. I don't know anything about esper genesis, but my advice is not to get caught up in how technology works, because that isn't what the genre is really focused on. Encourage your players to talk about reversing polarity on the tachyon emitters and other technobabble. Keep the tone and genre in mind. Ignore that advice if the tech has more detailed rules. Also I've found that space battles where everyone's in one ship never really work well in any system. Avoid it or push fighters and boarding parties.
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Apr 23, 2018 06:43
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My theory about why space battles don't work: In regular combat, a lot of the interest comes from the changing tactical positioning: people run from one spot of cover to another, manoeuvre past dangerous terrain, etc. Space battles take that all away because (a) you're all in one ship, so instead of five or six tactical positions interacting there are just a few (b) there's no interesting terrain in space.
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Apr 23, 2018 07:00
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Shared world building is your friend here - it'll help everyone get invested in the setting and avoid players zoning out at box text. Agreed about space battles.
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Apr 23, 2018 08:44
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What if you each have your own ship? You can have some overarching terrain like asteroid field, nebula, near big gravitational well of some sort, but agreed it's not great and it doesn't really vary ship to ship.
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Apr 23, 2018 08:48
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You each have your own ship and the tactical maneuvering part comes into play when you line up to form the giant robot.
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Apr 23, 2018 08:54
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I'll form the head
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Apr 23, 2018 13:02
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But you don't meet the INT minimum...
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Apr 23, 2018 14:06
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I’ve played very little sci-fi but my one big memory was a space combat scene. We tracked a band of pirates to a small moon and set up on the opposite side then we split the party with 2 of us going out in salvage ships and the rest remaining behind. We made it look like our ships were just scanning the moon and headed out to the other side to bait the pirates. When they saw us they gave chase and we retreated back to our main ship which promptly unleashed hell on the pirates. It was super fun and tense but short. Sort of how I envision a lot of small scale space combat should be.
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Apr 23, 2018 14:35
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Straight face to face space combat is dull and stupidly dangerous. It only becomes interesting when characters try "weird" stuff like hiding in garbage or hacking the enemy food storage to overheat their engines that things become interesting and even then only in the context of those maneuvers. This is compounded by most space systems wanting space to take forever.
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Apr 23, 2018 17:53
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One-ship space battles can work, at least with a good system (Uncharted Worlds works nicely) but the trick is to avoid any outright slugfests. The ship should almost always try to achieve some goal besides "destroy the enemy ships(s)", like escaping, giving chase, running a blockade, destroying a strategically important target under fire and extracting, stuff like that. If it goes to outright trading photon torpedo volleys it's going to be boring. This is good advice for any action scene, but in pew pew spaceship fights it's essential because of their other limitations. Also, you can make actually being inside the ship and running it during the battle interesting. There's especially plenty of exciting stuff to do with ship damage - you're losing oxygen, the artificial gravity has given out and everyone is suddenly floating, there's a hull breach in the engineering room and someone needs to suit up to operate the shields - and stay tethered while the ship does evasive maneuvers. One thing I want to get around to but never have so far is tacking on a simple puzzle to doing repairs, so the guy running around fixing stuff has more to do than just rolling dice. Edit: also social challenges and opportunitiea can be included. The enemy captain is on comms, gloating or making demands, and you may be able to bluff him/her into making a mistake. You've gained access to an enemy flotilla's internal comms and can sow confusion. You have intel that, from a group of NPC crewmembers and/or passengers, one is working for the enemy. The battle is an opportunity to suss them out, but doing that carries the risk of successful sabotage. The ship's sentient AI has been hacked and is going crazy, someone has to quickly either fix it or talk it back to its senses. Etc etc, my point is that a good space battle, unlike a standard sword-and-spell fight, will never be good as just a fight and needs a lot of moving parts and unexpected turns in out-of-combat shipboard stuff. And it can be pretty taxing to run for that reason. Guildencrantz fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Apr 23, 2018 |
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Apr 23, 2018 18:09
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Anyone know of a good guide or a blog or something like that for putting together adversaries and monsters for the Genesys RPG? I'd try to just eyeball it but I was reminded of the first time I put together a monster for GURPS that was essentially untouchable because of a too high dodge skill.
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Apr 23, 2018 19:19
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My flatmate and I are thinking of starting up a casual, drop-in D&D game where we swap GMing roles. Anybody have any good tips or warnings about this?
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Apr 25, 2018 20:23
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Consider structuring things like a monster of the week tv series, perhaps with a looming larger threat that players can receive hints about and maybe prepare a bit for but isn't the focus of the adventures, at least at first. You want to be able to share focus effectively, assuming you'll each play in each other's gm-weeks. If you're alternating GMs within a quest/dungeon, either both of you already know everything you're going to see, or one of you will step on the other's toes. Equally valid is the alternative where you decide in advance that you will be unattached to your setpieces beyond what you've done with them within the session, and are happy for the other guy to imagine what he thinks might happen, and make it so next time, like a game of telephone but with a dungeon. Just don't try to mix styles - either your dungeon is a baby to be preserved as you intended, or it's the set of an improv scene, set to be washed away and rebuilt each session. Doing the latter to a DM expecting the former might be upsetting. Doing the former to a DM expecting the latter might be boring. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Apr 25, 2018 |
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Apr 25, 2018 20:28
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The most useful tip that I can offer, based on the experiences of my group, is swap at natural breakpoints, don't change out every session.
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Apr 25, 2018 21:06
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Consider structuring things like a monster of the week tv series, perhaps with a looming larger threat that players can receive hints about and maybe prepare a bit for but isn't the focus of the adventures, at least at first. Breaking things down to mostly one shots let you shift the flavor week to week as well. One week's one shot may be "you come upon a stone door" and is a straight dungeon crawl, while another's might be going to a market and collecting ingredients with some bartering/petty thievery. Then at the end of the run you have an Avengers-esque team up where you do a saturday afternoon potluck with all of your various players from the campaign.
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Apr 25, 2018 21:23
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If you roll a 1 your character fails so hard you become the DM.
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Apr 25, 2018 21:26
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:If you roll a 1 your character fails so hard you become the DM. Please do this I want to see what happens
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Apr 25, 2018 23:31
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various people posted:Good advice Cheers! Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:If you roll a 1 your character fails so hard you become the DM. This sounds hilarious and I will do everything I can to make this happen.
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Apr 26, 2018 00:51
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I've been having some trouble managing the difficulty of my game. This isn't about encounter design or anything, but just about the narrative threats I'm deploying. My problem is related to the system, but isn't really system specific, so I could use a hand thinking it through. I'm running a Godbound campaign (which is a great system), and the way Godbound ends up working is a typical session has very few dice rolls outside of combat - since the players are mega-powerful demigods, their divine portfolios basically let them spend daily resources (Effort) to do cool stuff within their spheres, and they only really have to do attribute checks to attempt things that aren't within their spheres. This means the Godbound of Knowledge can spend Effort to instantly know anything that is written down anywhere, the Godbound of Wealth can summon gold and food and livestock at will, the Godbound of Beasts can talk to animals and commands utter loyalty from them, and so on. And so, in most sessions, the players find ways to use their divine influence to solve problems. Barbarians are invading the city? Well, as a Godbound of Journeying I will dump a bunch of effort into moving the city somewhere else. There's no roll for this and it's something the players can just do at level 1 (and I'm not complaining about this, it's awesome). So the way I as a DM introduce challenge into this system is by scaling up the threats to things that have comparable power, or introducing threats that aren't easily solved by the powers the PCs have. For the first few sessions, I kept the threats intentionally low-level so that the players would get a grip on the kinds of things they can do, and the scale of power they can get away with. I thought this would be a nice way to introduce the system for people who are used to 'gritty' D&D adventures and such. It worked well, the PCs only had to deal with a bunch of mortal soldiers and vain nobles, and 2 hours into the first session they'd already overthrown a city and declared themselves the god-kings of a new divine empire. The players enjoyed this, but recognised they were having a pretty easy time of it. This carried on for a couple sessions until I decided to ramp it up a bit and introduce some new threats. The new city they took over is infested with a devious network of witches empowered by a distant parasite god, who have cursed the land so that no child survives birth. The city is in turmoil, the public accuses their new god-kings of bringing ruin upon them, and none of the PCs have the divine powers to lift this curse directly - so they have to figure out who's doing this and put an end to it. I thought this would be a nice investigative session that would test the players' ability to use their powers in new ways, but I could tell that most of them found it frustrating because it felt like the rules had suddenly changed. So far they'd been getting by by mind controlling generals and building city districts from nothing, but when encountering Worthy Foes who could spend their own Effort to resist having their minds read or their dreams tampered with, the players felt like their powers were no good anymore. In a way this is a problem with the system (the line between Lesser Foes being utterly helpless before the PCs' divine mind-affecting powers, and Worthy Foes being effectively immune to them, is a bit too stark), but I have a couple ideas to smooth this out. I made a bad call or two myself (I handwaved that a key NPC managed to escape, when really the PCs said they were keeping a close eye on them) so I take some of the blame for this too, but in general I'm finding it hard to figure out how to make narrative encounters (that do not necessarily rely on diceroll resolution) being challenging and interesting without being frustrating, or cheating the players out of the use of their considerable powers. Can anyone offer any advice on this train of thought? Maybe it's a playstyle thing, and the players are still adjusting from 'being able to use their powers directly' to solve problems, stuck on 'cannot use their powers directly to solve these problems', and still need to progress to 'have figured out how to use their powers indirectly to solve these problems', which is probably how this game is meant to work. But if they don't get there by themselves, then it feels a lot like I'm running an investigative game and not throwing out enough clues, which is a dull experience for everyone.
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Apr 26, 2018 13:18
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I would assert that if your players became frustrated at the first real obstacle they've faced then they really ought to try harder. You're telling me one of these people can instantly know anything written down anywhere and they haven't figured out a way to use that against a cult? Even if the opposing forces block their efforts, wouldn't it be logical for them to say "well the enemy god blocked me from reading something inside that mountain, I'm thinking maybe some important poo poo is in there, let's roll." The witches can be Worthy Foes while still being lesser than a straight-up opposing god, because they require infrastructure. Your party, as gods, definitely have the power to gently caress with their supply chain and magic, which would draw them out to where they could be defeated.
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Apr 26, 2018 13:32
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I'm actually running Exalted 3E right now, so I know how you feel. Here's my thoughts on it: The characters are bad rear end and should be - Making stuff harder by saying "your stuff doesn't work because I've got a power on my dude here who says your power doesn't work" is pretty boring and not engaging. I agree that "I'm the God of Fire so I use fire to solve all my problems" isn't that interesting either, but what you need to do is make stuff more difficult through narrative and consequences In your case, what if the witch cult are stopping children being born because they are tainted, malformed children born of a curse? (or at least the witches think/claim they are and people believe them) Uhoh! Sure the God of Fire can burn down the witch cult, but that ain't gonna help out the evil baby taint kicking about now Likewise, pick at the stuff they care about. If the God of Fire utterly hates babies, is he going to burn down the witch cult which is stopping babies being born? Maybe the witch cult has some members he actually likes or respects? Maybe the evil corruption god actually has some good reason for what he's doing? There needs to be a couple of gears in the machine here, because Demigods are just going to do what they want when they want. Sadly just saying "you can't use your power, now what?" isn't very fun for the players who just made characters who are entirely about their powers You want to establish some relationships and then use them for your own goals. Make sure you have at least 2 or 3 other entities involved in this too with their own goals and reasons. Most (but not every) character actions should have some kind of reaction. The players should have some idea about what they are doing and how it's effecting the world around them If they run around mind controlling generals, raising/razing cities and being God Emperors of their own state, there's gonna be repercussions of some kind. Those repercussions can be interesting repercussions rather than slapping player's greedy hands trying to dip into the cookie jar Right now your witches sound a bit too "just evil and they need to die" and in real life this is almost never the case. Also maybe consider how you can introduce some other Demigods who aren't too keen about these new kids on the block too. That was a bit rambley, and this is like 90% opinion, but I hope it gives you some ideas!
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Apr 26, 2018 14:16
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Strictly in terms of the Effort vs. Effort issue, my knee-jerk solution is to turn the witches' resistance from negation into partial failure. If your Godbound of Journeying wanted to jump right into hostile territory to find out what the enemy is up to, but the witches expend resources to throw them out, then the Godbound should get a glance at what they were seeking, perhaps with a check to get the full view. Plus, those resources should stay gone, or their use should at least have lasting consequences.
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Apr 26, 2018 14:23
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Though I'm regrettably unfamiliar with the system in question, I'll second kaffo and Zomborgon here - I also like Glukeose's suggestion for how they could be lured out of hiding. Meanwhile, I'm just mulling something over for my next Age of Rebellion session. To cut a very long story short, the party have infiltrated a base (though they haven't kept it quiet for long) and are now blasting their way to the reactor room. Their objective is to take out the commander (who's supervising some work on the base's reactor and power systems) and destroy the base (probably by monkeying with said reactor). All well and good. Now, one of my players ended up giving me an idea for the finale of the adventure: holding off waves of baddies in flight control until their droid buddy can swoop into the hangar with their ship and spirit them off to safety. However, the big sticking point is this: how can I do a "last stand" like this without it starting to get repetitive or risk killing off the group through sheer attrition? The latter is my major concern, though, since there's only so many ways to justify the presence of healing items. As for the former, thinking of keeping it short and sweet and maybe having some spec ops guys try to storm flight control for the climax. Optionally, if anyone's got ideas for how to make the reactor/power room fight more interesting, I'd be all ears - right now all I've got is the commander himself, a few random mechanics (who will run for some nearby blasters if not stopped - otherwise all they've got are tools), and a few soldiers.
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Apr 27, 2018 01:11
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