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Have a Gordon Ramsay undead show up in disguise, only to cast off whatever disguise and start screaming at the chefs at the least opportune moment.
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Jul 2, 2018 18:50
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Leraika posted:Have a Gordon Ramsay undead show up in disguise, only to cast off whatever disguise and start screaming at the chefs at the least opportune moment. "This meat is so dry it's been invited as a guest speaker at the arcane university!" "This isn't gravy, it's Sovereign Glue." "My nan could chop vegetables better than this, and her arms fell of 400 years ago!" "You used so much cayenne the guests will need fire resistance!" Not wanting to double post, I did actually come in here looking for advice. In the future stages of my Pathfinder campaign, my PCs will have the opportunity to obtain ancient technomagical prosthetic limbs and wow does that sound stupid when I put it that way. At any rate, I've sorted the prosthetic ideas I have into categories based on ability scores (Strength is arms, Con is AC/DR/resistances, Wisdom is sensory), but I don't have any really solid ideas for Int or Cha. It needs an initial bonus and a progression through four more stages of increasing or additional prosthetics and power. Like Wisdom starts with eyes that grant low-light vision and See Invisibility 1/day, upgrading the vision until they have dragon senses (darkvision 120', blindsense 30', double low-light), while adding scent (prosthetic nose) and more uses of See Invisibility. Fake e: ...Gorbone Ramsay!
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Jul 5, 2018 05:58
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Gore-Bone Ram's Eye
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Jul 5, 2018 06:32
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Syndlig posted:Gore-Bone Ram's Eye He rides a skeleton donkey
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Jul 5, 2018 06:39
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Dareon posted:I don't have any really solid ideas for Int
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Jul 5, 2018 07:34
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For Charisma improving prosthetics I would go with an extremely rad skin augmentation. At the low end it is like having a really nice magic eye picture engraved on your face. You literally catch people's eyes and such. At the high end you are rocking the Mona Lisa or an equivalent world famous piece of artwork as a full body tattoo. Intelligence starts with a mechanical calculator and works its way up to replacing part of your skull with a magical fax machine. Having a direct line to Modron help desks on any calculable subject makes it totally worthwhile.
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Jul 6, 2018 06:13
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So, after some GMing grief with several groups, I came up with an idea that I'd be interested to know had any support. Essentially it would be a group (possibly a Discord or something on Roll20..?) for either * analysis of GMs game transcripts, or * GMs to run or partially run one-shots with a view to improving their GMing as a whole, or helping them become more confident with GMing paradigms they're not used to. Would people be interested in participating? I'm kind of having to ask because I'm only one person and I'm in a weird time-zone so I probably couldn't do that much apart from trying to organize initially, although I could help for UK folks.
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Jul 6, 2018 16:32
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Overemotional Robot just organized a GM Boot Camp for Dungeon World this past weekend, and that went pretty well. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the audio recording 9 minutes into the 3-hour session.  We'll probably do another one in the relatively near future. And while it's intended for DW, a lot of the concepts are applicable to other games, especially the section I did (building on questions, creating immediate situations the players can't ignore, starting sessions in medias res, etc).
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Jul 6, 2018 16:39
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Ilor posted:Overemotional Robot just organized a GM Boot Camp for Dungeon World this past weekend, and that went pretty well. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the audio recording 9 minutes into the 3-hour session. That sounds like the right kind of thing, although I wouldn't really be wanting to do something that would be recorded.
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Jul 6, 2018 17:12
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hyphz posted:That sounds like the right kind of thing, although I wouldn't really be wanting to do something that would be recorded.
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Jul 6, 2018 18:16
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Recording it makes it much more valuable, IMO, but if you aren’t comfortable with it then you aren’t comfortable with it.
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Jul 6, 2018 19:30
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Have everyone record themselves, then replace the audio from the people who aren't comfortable with Peanuts-style instrumentation.
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Jul 6, 2018 20:15
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It might put pressure on the new GM, but moreover, people do not act the same when they are being recorded.
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Jul 6, 2018 21:46
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That’s what you’re worried about?
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Jul 6, 2018 22:45
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Mr. Maltose posted:That’s what you’re worried about? Sure. The idea would be about giving people confidence to run with groups or diagnosing recurring problems, neither of which really relate to anything that would normally be recorded. Plus, you only have to look at videogame coaching channels to see the problem; if they get any popularity at all, they are overwhelmed with submissions - many fake - from people who don't necessarily want actual coaching, but just want their name on a popular channel. And if they don't get any popularity, well, there's no point recording something nobody wants to hear.
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Jul 6, 2018 23:13
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Oh so we’re on some cosmic brain poo poo here, gotcha.
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Jul 6, 2018 23:15
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hyphz posted:It might put pressure on the new GM, but moreover, people do not act the same when they are being recorded. People forget about mics very fast.
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Jul 7, 2018 00:33
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sebmojo posted:People forget about mics very fast.
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Jul 7, 2018 09:17
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Recording for posterity or for non-interactive things is very different to doing it live to an audience. Doing it live has a way higher chance of having people playing to the audience or going "chat made me do it" which is dumb as hell and really bad. Usually just laying down the expectation that people won't do that before you start is good enough to prevent it though. As always, the golden rule is to talk to your group. And yeah, people forget about mics real fast. hyphz posted:Sure. The idea would be about giving people confidence to run with groups or diagnosing recurring problems, neither of which really relate to anything that would normally be recorded. Having it be recorded so you have concrete reference material to point out a recurring problem to someone sounds like a really good idea though? Obviously you ask permission from everyone involved and if anyone is uncomfortable then you don't do it, but if its not going to be made publicly available anywhere and only used for referencing when the GM isn't brilliant so they can improve then there probably won't be many objections. You say the thing could involve "analysis of GM transcripts", surely its easier to analyze recordings of their sessions, so unless they're a court stenographer there's not going to be any details left out that could be useful to helping them improve? I foresee a lot of fixable things being left out because it didn't even enter their mind that it could be a thing and they'll think the issue was caused by something completely different. For example: When playtesting games the expectation is often on having a recording available for the maker to listen through and see what works and what doesn't because players are really bad at deciding that for themselves. If a player says something doesn't feel right there is a good chance they're doing it wrong and if they just say "oh hey, X mechanic doesn't feel very good" then you have no idea whether they're right or not without having to talk it out with them which takes a lot of time and kinda makes the whole playtesting thing not work. At the very least with a recording you can listen to it and tell that they haven't read the rules properly and you need to make it clearer, or if they're doing it right and its just not doing what you want and you need to change it.
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Jul 7, 2018 17:37
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habituallyred posted:For Charisma improving prosthetics I would go with an extremely rad skin augmentation. At the low end it is like having a really nice magic eye picture engraved on your face. You literally catch people's eyes and such. At the high end you are rocking the Mona Lisa or an equivalent world famous piece of artwork as a full body tattoo. I like those ideas. The skin aug could start as the Mesmerist's hypnotic stare with bold stare upgrades at every step along the path, adding Hypnotic Pattern and/or gaze attacks somewhere in there. I'm less keen on replacing a chunk of the brain or skull, but I do like that idea when it's cyberpunk so maybe I'm just being squeamish. I do like throwing a lot of knowledge checks at my party, so maybe if I start with the Investigator's inspiration... Thanks, you've been a big help.
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Jul 7, 2018 17:47
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You did say "prosthetic limbs."  A technological INT enhancer could just as well be a HUD, implanted in your eyeballs or worn as glasses, that feeds you information. Standing line to Wikipedia and professional databases, basically, at higher levels maybe with an AI that can parse and answer questions effectively.
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Jul 7, 2018 17:50
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EthanSteele posted:You say the thing could involve "analysis of GM transcripts", surely its easier to analyze recordings of their sessions, so unless they're a court stenographer there's not going to be any details left out that could be useful to helping them improve? I foresee a lot of fixable things being left out because it didn't even enter their mind that it could be a thing and they'll think the issue was caused by something completely different. Actually, more what I meant is that the GM would have an opportunity to run a session or part of a session - but with players who're on the page with helping them GM. You might say "well, they should be able to do that with their own group" and that would be nice but it isn't always so, and this has some advantages - - With a wider range of people available online they can get someone who's an experienced GM at whatever they're running, even if it's a new system; - If it's a general gaming society or there are multiple candidate GMs in the group they may not have the confidence to sell their game to a vote.
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Jul 8, 2018 00:59
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hyphz posted:Actually, more what I meant is that the GM would have an opportunity to run a session or part of a session - but with players who're on the page with helping them GM. I was addressing that other option you presented. The one about transcripts. And yeah, having a group like that is a good idea! Its still a good idea to record it! Even having people run a session with players specifically looking to give them tips as they play would only be helped by a recording for others on the helping side who couldn't get in the session for some reason but still have trustworthy advice to give. Or even for the people playing to go over just in case there was anything they missed in the moment
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Jul 8, 2018 01:12
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What do you do when a player is just bad at combat? I'm running a 5e Curse of Strahd campaign and the party was doing the vampire spawn fight in Vallaki. Now this is a tough fight and I expected that player death was a possiblilty, maybe even a guarantee but I was prepared for that, when they got real deep into it I was going to reveal some of the possible NPC allies from Vallaki to save their bacon. The battle did not go well at all for them and a large part of it can be laid at the feet of the party cleric. Going to spoil the next paragraph so I can talk freely about the encounter. He's an Aasimar Light Domain cleric and first off, he never used Turn Undead. I don't know how none of us at the table remembered that clerics should do that but that shouldn't be our job. So instead of potentially some of the vamps cowering for 10 rounds all 6 were engaged. The rest of the party is an eldritch knight, an order of the lycan blood hunter and a fiend pact warlock, and they were joined by Ismark who I have redone as a 4th level Champion fighter to give them help. The battle started with everyone scattered about the room and vamps jumping out of crates. The EK and the BH were surrounded but handling it, Ismark was one on one with a vamp, the cleric was one on one with a vamp and the Warlock got lucky and picked an empty crate to investigate. So the cleric has high AC and the room is small so he could healing word anyone from where he was and he could sacred flame his vamp into eternity since it's a save and thus not subject to disadvantage from casting in melee. What he chooses to do instead is hit it with his mace once and then take repeated AoO's as he tried to move towards the rest of the party, resulting in his vamp getting up next to the warlock and loving her over with disadvantage. He spent one turn using radiant soul but then forgot to do anything with it. He used Sacred Flame once the entire battle. He didn't use Spiritual Weapon until he got to his last spell slot and almost used it on guiding bolt but he ran through his prepared spells with the party and they were all like, uh extra attack per round could have been good. 5 or 6 rounds in he and the warlock were out of spell slots, the warlock couldn't eldritch blast without disadvantage, the EK was down, the BH had like 10 hp left and only 2 of the vamps were even close to dead (despite me cheesing their regeneration to make it not as effective). I had to pretty much have Rictavio save them and had him instantly wipe out the vamps by Word of God since it was late. Again, it's a tough fight that asks a lot of a level 4 party and may not be entirely winnable but if the Cleric had done a lot of things different it could have been a much closer fight. Part of it is him not knowing his sheet which he really should and I've had to tell him to learn his sheet before when he failed to prepare spells at the start of the campaign, but part of it was just boneheaded choices. Do I just flat out say, hey here's what you did wrong in this battle, I hope this teaches you something? Do I just ask him again to try to learn his spells better? Honestly this post is 75% venting, but like if you've got a guy who, despite playing elfgames for 10+ years, played a combat so poorly he was an active detriment to the battle what do you say to him? And do you let them/ask them if they want to try a redo?
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Jul 9, 2018 17:36
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Epi Lepi posted:What do you do when a player is just bad at combat? I would let the combat stand as-is without giving them a do over (since no serious mistake was made, just incompetence on the part of a player) but talk to the player and let him know what he did wrong during combat and how he could play better. If he's a good player who wants to improve, he'll learn. If he just bitches and tries to defend his own incompetency, he's probably just a crappy guy to have on the team. I did one game where we were struggling with an encounter and the GM did nothing but give us a cryptic hint of "There's more actions that you guys can do...." It did absolutely nothing to help us actually improve.
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Jul 9, 2018 17:40
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chitoryu12 posted:I would let the combat stand as-is without giving them a do over (since no serious mistake was made, just incompetence on the part of a player) but talk to the player and let him know what he did wrong during combat and how he could play better. If he's a good player who wants to improve, he'll learn. If he just bitches and tries to defend his own incompetency, he's probably just a crappy guy to have on the team. Yeah if I know there's something they could be doing better I will push in the moment, like the BH hadn't used her Hybrid form yet for story reasons but I encouraged her to make the change to get that resistance and +1 AC to stay alive but in the moment Turn Undead completely slipped my mind and I did not know which spells he had prepared.
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Jul 9, 2018 18:17
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I’m dealing with this now. I’m running Princes of the Apocalypse for a group where only one person has ever played before. I thought they’d be better at figuring things out on their own but combats have been really tense with a lot of near deaths. And we’ve just started the main quest so it only gets harder from here. I think the best thing you can do is identify that sort of thing early and do a recap of combats every time until they figure out “oh yeah it makes sense to do this sort of action early on” or “my character definitely needs to focus on X so somebody else needs to do Y” Eventually they will figure out what their role is and how best to use their abilities. Our party’s barbarian just figured out what raging was. After he read it he was like “whoa! I need to do this in every combat!” It was funny. Also our Aarakocra paladin is starting to realize why that may have been a bad combination. I gave him the choice to respec but he says he’s gonna make it work.
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Jul 9, 2018 18:40
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Epi Lepi posted:What do you do when a player is just bad at combat? One of my players has been with our group for 20+ years. For as long as I've been with the group (15 years), he has played nothing but bow ranger and blaster sorcerer characters, and was allergic to exposing himself to any risk under any circumstance. After sitting down and talking to him, it turns out he's just risk averse (doesn't want to have a character get killed) and doesn't know how to contribute effectively without being able to just stand back and apply damage. Smart tactical positioning, taking situational advantage of special abilities, et cetera, are generally beyond him. He's playing a rogue now, in a non-standard Pathfinder group comp, and having a blast. But it was rough going at the start, because he would either stand back and avoid damage, or do what amounted to suicidal charges because he would try and flank immediately One thing that did seem to help, though, was sitting down and going over the encounter design with my players as a whole and discussing how I planned the encounters based on what I knew of their capabilities and what I expected them to do. It took a little while for him to make the connection that yes he really could have done some of the things I was saying, but it also informed the other players about theirs and his tactical options - he started getting feedback and suggestions that helped him make smarter decisions that benefited the party as a whole and and also made him personally more effective. "Hey, you can flank now, but if you hold your turn, I'm going next and you can flank with me and you won't be as exposed". Not exactly hugely complex stuff, but baby steps. Talking is important, but nobody is going to be terribly cooperative if they think they're being approached in a hostile or insulting manner. Even if he's kind of being an idiot, if you make him feel like an idiot dragging the group down he's probably not going to be receptive to advice.
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Jul 9, 2018 18:59
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6x4 note cards with the spell written on there in bold and a description of the spell. Have this in front of the spell caster during every combat, could even get like a scrabble tile holder to stand them up or something. I've seen this problem before and when it's come up it's been mainly due to stuff like being utterly overwhelmed and just going "erm erm, I'll attack the nearest thing!!". I'd even go as far as to say it would be good for each character to have a card with a "During combat you can use these skills/abilities/spells:" and a list of them. Think about it like a turn based RPG on the PC, if you had to go through about 6 menus, past inventory then read a full paragraph about the action every time you wanted to use it you pretty quickly just start mashing the "attack" button.
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Jul 9, 2018 23:03
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Hi! I'm going to try running my first ryuutama game on Sunday. I'm thinking the first session will just be character creation and world building with maybe a little bit of sample game play so my players can see how the system works. Does anyone have any general tips for running ryuutama? How much prep should I do and how much should should I leave up to the players? From what I've read/seen a lot of the charm of the game seems to come from the players coming up with their own adventure. Should I just be coming up with small generic encounters to sprinkle in, or does more extensive planning work out?
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Jul 13, 2018 17:08
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You build a scenario for the session based on the input they give you beforehand. There's a sample scenario in the book to show you the sort of stuff you should be making based on what they want.
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Jul 13, 2018 21:20
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Currently running a 5th Edition DnD Eberron Campaign. The party recently required a base of operations, a tower in Sharn. The plan is to grow it by a floor each level, granting a party wide bonus depending on the establishment they choose. For example, they chose a market for the first floor, to gain access to discounted magic items. To help visualize this in roll20, I used Terraria to build a cutaway of the tower. It includes rooms for each of the characters, and NPCs they recruit along the way. 
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Jul 14, 2018 06:21
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That's adorable. Nice work!
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Jul 14, 2018 06:45
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That is really cool, well done.
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Jul 14, 2018 09:55
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Running a part two of a short series of games set in our custom DnD world to give the DM a break. Players have been tasked with investigating a rogue ziggurat as it enroaches upon their city from the wasteland to the north. I've kind of been inspired by Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but have been asked to keep high tech stuff to a minimum. Since we're giving Shadow of the Demon Lord a go for these sessions I've taken on board the the parasitic and invasive reality trying to enter ours. I've hinted at it being summoned by some kind of cult, that was trying to either change history (and loving it up by creating a jungle where none should be, the kind that's pre-historic). After cutting their way through the jungle, and encountering a lot of disturbed monsters, including some malformed and corrupted elvish warriors. Getting to the ziggurat they killed the gatekeeper, and ended the last session by willingly entering it. I've kind of seeded the idea of the ziggurat not working according to the same laws of physics, it not moving so much as the rest of the planet moves around it, and the gatekeeper not so much as walking as just being where it needs to be in a way that has the PC's thinking that it was always there. So I'd love some advice on how to make a dungeon that seems unnatural, without going too lovecraft. I've been looking at 1994 x-com too for the sort of mood I want, terrified soldiers doing their best against foes beyond mortal ken. Just no plasma, and a teensy bit fewer squad wipes. Also how do y'all lay out your 'dungeons', as that's usually something I'm never happy with.
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Jul 14, 2018 12:40
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Epi Lepi posted:What do you do when a player is just bad at combat? If I feel like a player is missing out on a course of action that their character would absolutely be aware of, I'll sometimes offer a skill check (or intelligence check, or whatever) to have a chance of it 'occurring to them'. Obviously they're still free to ignore it, and sometimes I've gotten a 'yes, but I didn't want to because X', but it stops me fretting over whether a player has missed something.
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Jul 14, 2018 15:44
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Cassa posted:Also how do y'all lay out your 'dungeons', as that's usually something I'm never happy with. Shadow of the Demon Lord encourages you to actually track durations of spells, light sources, buffs, etc. as time is spent (and you're even supposed to roll for random encounters if you're playing RAW, although I often don't). Most buffs in SotDL either last a minute (short enough it only matters in combat) or at least an hour, so I make each tile in my dungeon represent 10 minutes of exploration. It doesn't really matter how much distance that actually represents, it's just an abstraction for the players exploring carefully or avoiding patrols or whatever. With that in mind, I build my dungeons for it like so: 1. Place the objective of the dungeon -- final boss, rescuee, hoard of treasure, all of the above, whatever. 2. Lay out the path to that objective, and place "mandatory" encounters / scenes along it. This can be fairly linear, for a couple reasons. First, this is where most of the combat encounters are going to go, and the players need to have a certain total difficulty value's worth of these to be challenged, but if there are too many they'll probably die, so there's budgeting pressure from both sides. Also, if you make it too non-linear, yeah that feels kind of cool but now you're either designing encounters that might never get played or you're fudging it (i.e. it's the same encounter either branch you take, just reskinned.) So do it if you want, but keep it manageable. 3. Put optional branches off the main path. The idea of these is that they should cost the players time, but give them extra resources or information. It's okay to occasionally put combats out here but be careful, if your players are the type to explore every nook and cranny this can make it difficult to budget for the dungeon as a whole. Lore about the dungeon and one-time use items like potions or scrolls that are relevant to the upcoming encounters / boss are especially good things to put here.
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Jul 14, 2018 16:01
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I want to steal a good murder mystery and plug it into my campaign. Any suggestions? I can modify it to fit the setting, just looking for a fun mystery.
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Jul 15, 2018 01:45
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CubeTheory posted:I want to steal a good murder mystery and plug it into my campaign. Any suggestions? I can modify it to fit the setting, just looking for a fun mystery. I can’t recall the name now, but there’s a series of mystery/food books about a pair of women with a catering business solving murders. Like they cater a wedding and suddenly the bride is shot with a crossbow.
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Jul 15, 2018 02:05
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chitoryu12 posted:I can’t recall the name now, but there’s a series of mystery/food books about a pair of women with a catering business solving murders. Like they cater a wedding and suddenly the bride is shot with a crossbow. https://www.goodreads.com/series/41803-a-goldy-bear-culinary-mystery ?
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Jul 15, 2018 02:33
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