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Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.
Does anyone who is familiar with d20 know how to make macros that roll on multiple encounter tables.

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My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

Yesterday, my party arrived at a dwarven trading post and was asked to check out the weird mushroom creatures in the old mine shafts.

Today, they got the dwarves out just before an army of mushroom creatures, supported by some drow's warfare skills, would have overrun the place. They're currently on the way to the dwarven inner lands to explain the situation to officials. Trade at this post had primarily gone between the dwarves and the party's own army and neither side will be particularly pleased by this turn of events. Meanwhile the mushroom people and drow will be settling in and looking to establish a firm hold.

The party's wolf druid has also gone stark raving mad after losing an ear in battle, has started going fully literal Fantasy Vietnam on enemies by collecting their ears and is spreading the word of a sinister deity made of amputated ears, but that's mostly unrelated to events, or indeed reality.

I'm currently wondering whether I want to keep things simple here and make this a quick "regroup in the dwarf kingdom, then go back and clear out the mines" adventure, or if I want to dangle this occupied trading post over their heads for a little while longer. But I'm also interested what you think a dwarf kingdom (traditional, but at best vaguely defined at this point) or a "fire and brimstone" zealous religious army would make of this mess, or how you'd approach this situation in general.

e: the way things actually went down is that they fled the final battle with the drow and the mushroom hivemind, because the enemies were clearly about to grind their asses into the dust. Seems like support for the "let it dangle" side of things.

My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jul 22, 2018

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.
I finished my map that I wanted to make for our hex crawl.



I have a raw image I plan to print so I can play with some friends irl so its rather large.

Right now just optimizing for roll 20

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jul 23, 2018

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

Hollismason posted:

Right now just optimizing for d20.

What do you mean by this?

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.

Subjunctive posted:

What do you mean by this?

I meant roll 20.

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

Hollismason posted:

I meant roll 20.

Ah, ok!

Zodack
Aug 3, 2014

Hollismason posted:

I finished my map that I wanted to make for our hex crawl.

This is incredibly cool. I feel like I'd go to an old bookstore and crack open a book to a map like this. Looks realistic too.

I made a map for my game and my players just last session decided to do planar travel so hopefully the map will see some use... much later.

Malpais Legate
Oct 1, 2014

So I've got two bits I'd appreciate a little input on for my 5E game. Scenario cliffnotes: my players are in a voidy/far realm dungeon type area after a hole in reality was ripped open. Because they weren't really expecting this, the party was split when it happened, with three of them in the building and two waiting outside. I'm trying to design the dungeon with two start positions in mind, one for the half of the party that is already inside, and the other for the half of the party that was outside when it started. Should I just give up on that front and hamfist a way to put everyone back together? I'm kind-of fond of the division making them a little more vulnerable, but juggling the crawl from two ends just doesn't sound feasible or fun for both sides.

The other bit is the final boss challenge. My plan was to make it two beholders, passive-aggressively bickering over the artifact at the center of it all that ripped open the hole. When engaged, they'll drop the passive part and try to use this opportunity to take out the competition, taking potshots at each other while fighting the party. The party is 5 level 13s, so I figure they're more than a match for a single beholder, but does two sound like too much? Would the beholders squabbling feel like it cheapens the encounter?

Also I plan on making dumb eyeball and sight puns during the fight. There's not a question here, I'm just excited and wanted to share.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger

Malpais Legate posted:

So I've got two bits I'd appreciate a little input on for my 5E game. Scenario cliffnotes: my players are in a voidy/far realm dungeon type area after a hole in reality was ripped open. Because they weren't really expecting this, the party was split when it happened, with three of them in the building and two waiting outside. I'm trying to design the dungeon with two start positions in mind, one for the half of the party that is already inside, and the other for the half of the party that was outside when it started. Should I just give up on that front and hamfist a way to put everyone back together? I'm kind-of fond of the division making them a little more vulnerable, but juggling the crawl from two ends just doesn't sound feasible or fun for both sides.

Give them a means of talking to each other and getting a vague sense of where they are relative to each other so that you can have the fun of them stumbling towards each other while they're vulnerable, but should still regroup quickly enough that it doesn't drag everything down.

quote:

The other bit is the final boss challenge. My plan was to make it two beholders, passive-aggressively bickering over the artifact at the center of it all that ripped open the hole. When engaged, they'll drop the passive part and try to use this opportunity to take out the competition, taking potshots at each other while fighting the party. The party is 5 level 13s, so I figure they're more than a match for a single beholder, but does two sound like too much? Would the beholders squabbling feel like it cheapens the encounter?

I think as long as you make it pretty clear that they're at each others' sockets, it should work out. The only way it would cheapen things is if you very obviously sandbagged by having them ignore opportunities to attack the players.

Maybe have them start out ignoring the "obviously inferior bipeds" and then start scrambling to work together once it becomes clear that the PCs are winning, then start backstabbing each other if they think they're winning again?

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

Also don't be surprised if they manage to use magic/brute force to force the party back together instead of following the dungeon route back together. If anything let that be an option so that they can feel clever.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Just don't run combat for one of the groups without running it for the other group at the same time. Otherwise you're going to leave half your table doing nothing for long stretches of time.

Like if you're going to do this and you're going to have them fight at all, I would basically run it as one combat with one initiative order, etc., just split into two different locations that aren't directly connected. (And frankly, as far as that goes, it'd be a pretty cool moment if the floor in one combat collapsed and dropped them onto the other fight or whatever.)

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

I've mentioned this situation before, but just as an aside. Turns out it's actually an important GM Advice situation. This is in 13th Age, by way of explaining the explicit setting references.

My one player is pretty new to RPGs. He had a single condition for his character: he wanted to play as a wolf. So we broke out the Druid class for him and made it so he'd always stay in beast form, which actually works very well the way the class is designed. We made it part of his backstory too: he's a former animal companion who inherited his old master's abilities after he died, more or less by mistake, and can now turn into a human (but never wants to). I felt we had a workable, effective, but slightly barebones "race/class combo" character there; I figured we'd find his gimmick eventually.

In a recent battle he took a lethal hit from a confused ally. In order to make this not a bullshit death, we decided that by mysterious druidic intervention he only lost an ear, and started hearing the voice of his dead master through the missing ear. This was a very improvised decision where we went with pretty much every crazy idea anyone at the table suggested, but I thought the character really came into his own then as one with a cool thematic and visual gimmick and interesting plot hooks (you can do so much with a dead druid talking to his old animal companion).

Player was happy with it too, and also had his wolf start collecting the ears of fallen enemies. Fair enough.

Last session the guy came up with the idea of an evil deity made from dismembered ears and the wolf druid started styling himself as its prophet and proselytizing to enemies. He's now thinking about giving himself an extra background to represent his "worship" and maybe even tying it to an icon. This, I initially felt, was when we left the realm of "character concept" and went straight to "lolrandom wackiness".

On the other hand: it's not, as such, a terrible idea as evil deities go. The other characters are down with evil deities. They mostly follow the Crusader, that could take care of the icon idea. We could probably make this work and if he wants that to be his gimmick, I'm game. I just really like the dead druid idea and I think having both is too much and makes for an unfocused character. I'd also like to to avoid continually reworking his character to suit his whims of the day - we'd just introduced the druid voice as a new gimmick. And when it comes right down to it, I don't feel Druid as a class would be a good fit anymore for a dark god-fearing wolf.

The player, for his part, does a ton of random wacky stuff but has repeatedly stressed he's totally ready to tone it down if it annoys us. He's good people and it's not gonna be an awkward talk.

Additional issue beyond just hashing it out with the guy is that I'd like to make this sort of character reworking the focus of a whole play session, and we may have a huge reworking of another character already in the pipeline.

I dunno, I figure I've got a decent idea on how to handle this in general, but input is always welcome.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









I'd roll with it if the other players are enjoying it.

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

The GM Advice thread: I'd roll with it if the other players are enjoying it.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Subjunctive posted:

The GM Advice thread: I'd roll with it if the other players are enjoying it.
This.

Though if it isn't working for you as the GM it's also reasonable to ask if it can be tweaked a bit - add an element or take away an element so that you can worth with the concept more easily, if needed.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger
The One Who Listens would be a pretty solid elder god concept.

the moose
Nov 7, 2009

Type: Electric Swing

My Lovely Horse posted:

I've mentioned this situation before, but just as an aside. Turns out it's actually an important GM Advice situation. This is in 13th Age, by way of explaining the explicit setting references.

My one player is pretty new to RPGs. He had a single condition for his character: he wanted to play as a wolf. So we broke out the Druid class for him and made it so he'd always stay in beast form, which actually works very well the way the class is designed. We made it part of his backstory too: he's a former animal companion who inherited his old master's abilities after he died, more or less by mistake, and can now turn into a human (but never wants to). I felt we had a workable, effective, but slightly barebones "race/class combo" character there; I figured we'd find his gimmick eventually.

In a recent battle he took a lethal hit from a confused ally. In order to make this not a bullshit death, we decided that by mysterious druidic intervention he only lost an ear, and started hearing the voice of his dead master through the missing ear. This was a very improvised decision where we went with pretty much every crazy idea anyone at the table suggested, but I thought the character really came into his own then as one with a cool thematic and visual gimmick and interesting plot hooks (you can do so much with a dead druid talking to his old animal companion).

Player was happy with it too, and also had his wolf start collecting the ears of fallen enemies. Fair enough.

Last session the guy came up with the idea of an evil deity made from dismembered ears and the wolf druid started styling himself as its prophet and proselytizing to enemies. He's now thinking about giving himself an extra background to represent his "worship" and maybe even tying it to an icon. This, I initially felt, was when we left the realm of "character concept" and went straight to "lolrandom wackiness".

On the other hand: it's not, as such, a terrible idea as evil deities go. The other characters are down with evil deities. They mostly follow the Crusader, that could take care of the icon idea. We could probably make this work and if he wants that to be his gimmick, I'm game. I just really like the dead druid idea and I think having both is too much and makes for an unfocused character. I'd also like to to avoid continually reworking his character to suit his whims of the day - we'd just introduced the druid voice as a new gimmick. And when it comes right down to it, I don't feel Druid as a class would be a good fit anymore for a dark god-fearing wolf.

The player, for his part, does a ton of random wacky stuff but has repeatedly stressed he's totally ready to tone it down if it annoys us. He's good people and it's not gonna be an awkward talk.

Additional issue beyond just hashing it out with the guy is that I'd like to make this sort of character reworking the focus of a whole play session, and we may have a huge reworking of another character already in the pipeline.

I dunno, I figure I've got a decent idea on how to handle this in general, but input is always welcome.

Make the player take a paladin, cleric or warlock level. The druid whispering in the ear is really a dark god, demon or powerful wizard. The character didn't die because the dark god has evil plans for the character and intervened! Somehow tie the evil god to the mushrooms invasion.

The wacky poo poo is just the maddness slowly taking over.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

"The druid's voice is actually the dark god" was like the first thing someone blurted out. It's the kind of plot twist I'd write, but I'm hesitant to use it now. Now tying the druid to the mushroom invasion makes a lot of sense thematically...

Hmm. Maybe the Listener in the Darkness is the one who's making the connection between the wolf's "phantom ear" and the druid's spirit.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger
So the spiritual equivalent of an old school switchboard operator?

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you

sebmojo posted:

I'd roll with it if the other players are enjoying it.

Remember that as a GM you are one of the players. If you're not enjoying it/it kills your enthusiasm then that is grounds enough to talk about tweaks.




My Lovely Horse posted:

"The druid's voice is actually the dark god" was like the first thing someone blurted out. It's the kind of plot twist I'd write, but I'm hesitant to use it now. Now tying the druid to the mushroom invasion makes a lot of sense thematically...

Hmm. Maybe the Listener in the Darkness is the one who's making the connection between the wolf's "phantom ear" and the druid's spirit.


That is exactly the reason you should use it! Or at least something close to it like the Listener idea. So at worst you can go "you guys are smart, you figured it out!" or "ooo you were really close!" even though you're just bullshitting. Everyone wins.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger

My Lovely Horse posted:

"The druid's voice is actually the dark god" was like the first thing someone blurted out. It's the kind of plot twist I'd write, but I'm hesitant to use it now. Now tying the druid to the mushroom invasion makes a lot of sense thematically...

Hmm. Maybe the Listener in the Darkness is the one who's making the connection between the wolf's "phantom ear" and the druid's spirit.

You could have it be that the Listener isn't malevolent or benevolent, it's just an ancient entity that hears and remembers everything, and is so unconcerned with the petty affairs of both mortals and the divine that it will repeat what it knows to anyone for the price of asking, with a comparatively simple ritual involving the ceremonial loss of an ear to hear it's voice. The wolf druid wanted to hear from his master, so the listener is repeating what his master's spirit has been trying to tell him from the afterlife.

The gods hated and feared the Listener not because it held any distaste for them or their creations, but because it would tell the mortals their secrets, and was too powerful even for the pantheon to destroy, so instead they did everything they could to destroy the knowledge of it's existence. Now that the wolf druid is spreading his name around, they'll start taking notice.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Nice. Are you making the player roll icon dice for his new god? A 5 or 6 can be spent to know a secret about an npc or organisation.

habituallyred
Feb 6, 2015

Malpais Legate posted:

So I've got two bits I'd appreciate a little input on for my 5E game. Scenario cliffnotes: my players are in a voidy/far realm dungeon type area after a hole in reality was ripped open. Because they weren't really expecting this, the party was split when it happened, with three of them in the building and two waiting outside. I'm trying to design the dungeon with two start positions in mind, one for the half of the party that is already inside, and the other for the half of the party that was outside when it started. Should I just give up on that front and hamfist a way to put everyone back together? I'm kind-of fond of the division making them a little more vulnerable, but juggling the crawl from two ends just doesn't sound feasible or fun for both sides.

The other bit is the final boss challenge. My plan was to make it two beholders, passive-aggressively bickering over the artifact at the center of it all that ripped open the hole. When engaged, they'll drop the passive part and try to use this opportunity to take out the competition, taking potshots at each other while fighting the party. The party is 5 level 13s, so I figure they're more than a match for a single beholder, but does two sound like too much? Would the beholders squabbling feel like it cheapens the encounter?

Also I plan on making dumb eyeball and sight puns during the fight. There's not a question here, I'm just excited and wanted to share.

Lean into the Far Realm angle with two battle maps but the same enemies are on both. So if either group of players punch a monster the other group can clearly see it. The party can't buff each other or help out with most obstacles but I am sure they will waste no time in setting up a punch based communication system.

Malpais Legate
Oct 1, 2014

habituallyred posted:

Lean into the Far Realm angle with two battle maps but the same enemies are on both. So if either group of players punch a monster the other group can clearly see it. The party can't buff each other or help out with most obstacles but I am sure they will waste no time in setting up a punch based communication system.

Oh how I wish this had been a little sooner! I'll have to keep this in my back pocket for future encounters.

I wound up using a good chunk of everyone's suggestions, thanks. The session ended as they approached the beholders in the room, and after a bit of clever talking, they convinced one of the pair they'll his servants and help in destroying the other. Naturally the moment it looks like he's about to win, he's going to turn on them.

I'm hoping this fight will be appropriately threatening. They've gotten kind-of cocksure with defeating villains relatively safely, so I'm hoping to knock them down a peg or two on the confidence scale. Evil monologues and "I can't let you live" kinda lose their weight when the dudes reciting them keep getting chumped.

Zodack
Aug 3, 2014

Malpais Legate posted:

Evil monologues and "I can't let you live" kinda lose their weight when the dudes reciting them keep getting chumped.

My last mini-BBEG my party waylaid involved them casting Hold Person and me rolling so poorly that they held him for probably five or six rounds. It ended up working out as half the party was cocksure and fighting him and he was designed for all five to fight him and not three, but it still felt a little uninspired when my group every turn and this guy in a corner and were thwacking him with basic attacks over and over

Panderfringe
Sep 12, 2011

yospos

Zodack posted:

My last mini-BBEG my party waylaid involved them casting Hold Person and me rolling so poorly that they held him for probably five or six rounds. It ended up working out as half the party was cocksure and fighting him and he was designed for all five to fight him and not three, but it still felt a little uninspired when my group every turn and this guy in a corner and were thwacking him with basic attacks over and over

Legendary actions and resistances. Use then liberally.

So last session my players defeated a mage-king who was attempting to attain godhood, blah blah blah the usual evil wizard stuff. They managed to secure the wizards throne, which was infused with the accumulated souls of dead gods and archdevil's, damaging it in the process but it wss more or less intact.

The party's dragon descendant sorceror decided he wanted to take the throne and gain whatever power was left in it. I let him, but made it clear that he would lose control of his sorceror as whatever malignant entity had formed in the thrones confines would take control of him. He did it anyway, despite the rest of the party trying to keep him from doing so. I ended the session after taking his character sheet.

Now though, he's messaging me that he wants to walk back on that and keep his character. Should I let him do so, or come up with some quest the players can undertake to return him to normal? Or do I just let him live with the consequences of his poorly considered actions?

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger
Have the throne tear him in half spiritually, giving him an evil doppleganger that he needs to defeat to become whole again.

Alternate idea; the assorted legion just kicks his soul out and uses his body to escape the throne, leaving him as a cursed spirit; as long as his body lives (and since it's being inhabited by the remnants of some very powerful beings, that'll be a LONG time, if not forever)he's trapped in the material plane unable to be restored by magic, or even pass on. Since he's a sorceror it shouldn't completely cripple his role in the party.

Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 25, 2018

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Zodack posted:

My last mini-BBEG my party waylaid involved them casting Hold Person and me rolling so poorly that they held him for probably five or six rounds. It ended up working out as half the party was cocksure and fighting him and he was designed for all five to fight him and not three, but it still felt a little uninspired when my group every turn and this guy in a corner and were thwacking him with basic attacks over and over

Stories like this always make me ask "how did the players respond?" Because if they looked bored, then yes, you gotta spice things up next time. But if they're high-fiving and looking thrilled, then don't sweat it.

There is a lot of pleasure to be had in rolling over a tough fight, sometimes, and if your players are going "oh man that was awesome, we smoked that dude, hey good job casting this spell, no you did a good job with that Smite," et cetera, then you didn't gently caress up at all - they had a good time, and that's the only important thing.

I see a lot of people asking "how do I make my boss fights harder?" but every so often I find it's worthwhile to ask "do I need to make my boss fights harder?"

Ysengrin
Feb 13, 2012

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

I see a lot of people asking "how do I make my boss fights harder?" but every so often I find it's worthwhile to ask "do I need to make my boss fights harder?"

One of my favorite memories from my last game was when my players 2-rounded my big final boss. It was made out of all the other bosses they had killed over the course of the game, fused into a final unholy abomination, had all these moves based on their previous foes, multiple actions, and the arena was them literally falling through a giant magic tower while hopping from rock to rock. It opened up by killing off their NPC companion with this deadly move with a long cooldown, which added something of a soft limit. Everyone was feeling the pressure and despair of a fight where it was very possibly one or two of them would die bringing it down...

Then one player revealed she'd been holding onto a drama card all game called "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies". Boss dead round 2, with almost no fight, from them just exploding the entire tower on top of it.

Sure I didn't get to play out the full fight, but honestly I wouldn't have changed a thing about that. (Also to be clear, they didn't die in the tower explosion thanks to a bunch of good rolls and them working together to ensure the boss couldn't escape like they did.)

Zodack
Aug 3, 2014

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

Stories like this always make me ask "how did the players respond?" Because if they looked bored, then yes, you gotta spice things up next time. But if they're high-fiving and looking thrilled, then don't sweat it.

There is a lot of pleasure to be had in rolling over a tough fight, sometimes, and if your players are going "oh man that was awesome, we smoked that dude, hey good job casting this spell, no you did a good job with that Smite," et cetera, then you didn't gently caress up at all - they had a good time, and that's the only important thing.

I see a lot of people asking "how do I make my boss fights harder?" but every so often I find it's worthwhile to ask "do I need to make my boss fights harder?"

Oh yeah, it was certainly more of a funny anecdote about my last miniboss and not me complaining about my capacity as a DM (questionable) and the way my players play the game.

It ended up working out very well as he was a vampire and the regeneration kept him alive for quite a while, if he had been mobile the entire time it would have been bad news. After he finally broke free they entered a more conventional fight and had done enough damage to finish him off. At the end of the day everyone came out of it happy and amused.

Malpais Legate
Oct 1, 2014

Panderfringe posted:

Legendary actions and resistances. Use then liberally.

So last session my players defeated a mage-king who was attempting to attain godhood, blah blah blah the usual evil wizard stuff. They managed to secure the wizards throne, which was infused with the accumulated souls of dead gods and archdevil's, damaging it in the process but it wss more or less intact.

The party's dragon descendant sorceror decided he wanted to take the throne and gain whatever power was left in it. I let him, but made it clear that he would lose control of his sorceror as whatever malignant entity had formed in the thrones confines would take control of him. He did it anyway, despite the rest of the party trying to keep him from doing so. I ended the session after taking his character sheet.

Now though, he's messaging me that he wants to walk back on that and keep his character. Should I let him do so, or come up with some quest the players can undertake to return him to normal? Or do I just let him live with the consequences of his poorly considered actions?

On one hand, don't be a dick to your friends. You want everyone to have fun.

On the other hand, sounds like a case of buyer's remorse. You gave him all of the warning signs. I'd say give them an opportunity to reclaim the character, but have some fun or interesting consequences for it. Make it engaging for him and the party. Like above, evil doppelganger or making him into a soulghost could be cool. His body is now the host for a new recurring villain, and his new quest is to get his body back!

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger

Malpais Legate posted:

His body is now the host for a new recurring villain, and his new quest is to get his body back!

Pretty much what I had in mind, yeah. That said, you should also clear this with the rest of the group, too.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost

Panderfringe posted:

Legendary actions and resistances. Use then liberally.

So last session my players defeated a mage-king who was attempting to attain godhood, blah blah blah the usual evil wizard stuff. They managed to secure the wizards throne, which was infused with the accumulated souls of dead gods and archdevil's, damaging it in the process but it wss more or less intact.

The party's dragon descendant sorceror decided he wanted to take the throne and gain whatever power was left in it. I let him, but made it clear that he would lose control of his sorceror as whatever malignant entity had formed in the thrones confines would take control of him. He did it anyway, despite the rest of the party trying to keep him from doing so. I ended the session after taking his character sheet.

Now though, he's messaging me that he wants to walk back on that and keep his character. Should I let him do so, or come up with some quest the players can undertake to return him to normal? Or do I just let him live with the consequences of his poorly considered actions?

The problem as you describe it is OC: a player decided to do a thing in the heat of the moment, you told him the price was his character would become an NPC, he went full steam ahead and now he's feeling remorse.

A lot of people have suggested an IC remedy for this, like having his character be split in two or something. I disagree: you shouldn't ever meet OC problems with IC solutions.

Logistically, the way you describe it you could roll things back without affecting the plot much, since you ended the session after taking his character sheet. The question is all about whether you want to set the precedent that players can call backsies on important character decisions, and that's not a question with a clear yes-no answer. It depends on what your players want to do.

The way I would deal with it is this: talk to the player group as a whole -- have the player explain that they're having second thoughts about having their character heel-turn and talk about how they feel and why they're uncertain, explain your concerns, and make a decision as a group: not about what you should do in this case, but what you should do as a general policy going forwards when a player thinks they've made a decision that is going to result in them not having fun.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger

Whybird posted:

The problem as you describe it is OC: a player decided to do a thing in the heat of the moment, you told him the price was his character would become an NPC, he went full steam ahead and now he's feeling remorse.

A lot of people have suggested an IC remedy for this, like having his character be split in two or something. I disagree: you shouldn't ever meet OC problems with IC solutions.

I have to disagree with this interpretation; first, as the situation is described, I would say the issue isn't an in or out of character problem. The only thing that the player wants to take back is the loss of the character, as I'm reading it. If he's actually asking "can we renege on the whole throne thing?" then yes that's a different issue. But if all he's bothered by is the loss of the character, it sounds like the whole group was ok with it since they roleplayed a scene where the party tried to stop him from doing the dumb thing. The proposal that he should wind up with a different consequence for touching the evil thing was to provide a way to roll back on that issue with as minimal an undoing of the story as told so far.

Again, just to be clear, this should absolutely be discussed with the group as a whole. But it sounds like everyone was happy to go along with the story "sorcerer does dumb thing, goes power mad, becomes a villain," so the question shouldn't be "can we undo all of that," it should be "can we walk back the character loss bit?" In that respect, having an evil power steal the character's body lets you keep the plot as told so far, with the slight adjustment of the sorcerer being around and now everyone can say "I told you so, now let's fix this mess you made," which is a fine plot as long as everyone's ok with it.

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

And if people in the world think this dude is a big bad because of some throne mark, well, that’s just something he’ll have to deal with.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
Edit: post ended up in the wrong thread.

thetoughestbean
Apr 27, 2013

Keep On Shroomin
One of the members of the gaming group that I'm in is a really bad role-player. I'd like to GM for this group, but when one of the other players isn't interested in the combat systems that I enjoy, the roleplaying becomes the crux of the games we play, and it becomes a real slog then when one of the people in a roleplaying focused game is almost incapable of roleplaying. To make matters worse, when the focus isn't on her character, she takes out her phone and plays around on it, which I find really disrespectful. She also gets angry when she feels like she gets ignored, but the combination of her obviously checking out and having characters with no discernible character traits (they all are just Her But Maybe An Elf) makes it really hard to include her, especially when there are other more dynamic and engaged players.

I'm at the point where I flat out don't want her in the party when I GM, but excluding her is a problem when a.) having her not show up leaves only three players (there's a sixth member of the group but he's an awful flake) when I would prefer four people and b.) having the group meet without her is not only a dick move, it's a real social problem because she introduced me to the group in the first place (this was a couple years back, but still).

She's actually a good friend of mine, but this situation is a genuine strain on our friendship. I'm not a good enough GM to organically lead her into making better characters, and she's very sensitive about the whole situation because of how I bungled talking about this to her in the past. Any advice?

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost
Talk to her OC about it.

Something like 'Hey, I noticed you are on your phone a lot when we play, and I'm finding that makes it really difficult for me to have fun. It makes it feel like the stuff I'm doing as a GM is less interesting than whatever you're reading on Facebook.'

Be ready to accept compromise on this -- I have a 'no phones' ground rule when I GM and it was a real problem for one player, because they use their phone as a way to deal with social anxiety, so the prospect of taking away their lifeline made them really uncomfortable. These conversations are all about finding something that works for both of you.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
This thread tends to have amazing out-of-the-box ideas when brainstorming, so I'd love to humbly crowdsource a curse idea from you guys.

The players, a band of pirates in the not-Caribbean have stolen a bad mojo object/entity that is about to go cause trouble during their shore leave. I'm not set on what will happen exactly, so I'd love to hear your input. The known, canon facts are:
- The mcguffin is a statue/sleeping man of pure gold, sleeping in a stone coffin locked from the inside.
- The black coffin is roughly as heavy as it should be, yet it floats on the water.
- It's been dug from some native ruins like a proper indiana jones artifact should be and was about to be used by a colonial nation to curse-bomb a rival port.
- It caused an iceberg to pop up in the middle of not-Caribbean to mess up the ship it was transported on.

I'm loosely thinking it being an arrogant attempt at immortality of some past not-Aztec gone horribly wrong, but I'm still pondering what exact plagues him waking up should cause.

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thetoughestbean
Apr 27, 2013

Keep On Shroomin
Can't go wrong with a plague of locusts. Seriously, it's called a "plague" for a reason. Imagine a black, buzzing cloud descending on a city and eating everything. The food, the paper, even some of the wood. The city's basically destroyed if it can't get food soon (something your pcs might be guilted into doing, they'll definitely need to restock) and the whole place will be in chaos, which could be fun.

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