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My Lovely Horse posted:I like that! But I also like another idea I've had: that one of the very books the warlock is looking for has already been delivered to the dragon. Hmmm. I mean, if it's the Big Book Of Dragon Biology, it kinda makes sense that the dragon is gonna want it as a medical reference and the baron's gonna want it to figure out the dragon's vulnerabilities, so you can still have it both ways there.
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Nov 30, 2018 18:27
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My Lovely Horse posted:I like that! But I also like another idea I've had: that one of the very books the warlock is looking for has already been delivered to the dragon. Hmmm. Well, what's the book? For that matter, could you have the Baron tell them that a different group has found some artifacts and ask them to meet up with them to help guard the loot while it's being transported to him. Also, here's a list of everything they found, make sure everything's accounted for before you start heading back. And then wouldn't you know it, third item on the list is a thing the PC really wants, and which the Baron knows is part of the shipment, how do they steal it without him noticing? Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Nov 30, 2018 |
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Nov 30, 2018 18:31
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Leraika posted:I think TBZ's 'you choose when a fight is important enough for your character to risk it all' mechanics are great and I wish more games looked at death like that. I don't entirely disagree with dreadmojo, but I would say that there are far too many game systems that handle this question very poorly, in two really important ways. The first goes back to something I harp on a lot - there's a lot of methods and modes of play that aren't inherently bad, but become toxic if there isn't buy in and shared understanding going in. And even more importantly, this cannot be an implicit understanding. Someone - the game developer, the GM, the play facilitator, someone - needs to engage everyone playing in an explicit discussion to set expectations. This is something far too many games fail to do, which means it falls on the GM/facilitator. Which then doesn't happen because no one's bothered to explain it to them. The second way many games fail is that they have a significant disconnect between different sets of mechanics establish. Highly lethal combat, paired with lengthy and involved character building (I'm looking at you, Shadowrun) is a classic example. This case does get tied with setting and then undercutting expectations - suggesting players should be deeply invested in their characters but then treating them like they're disposable. But even if players have the correct expectations going in, it's game design problem if players are constantly spinning their wheels and expending effort that isn't rewarded by getting to engage with the game. It's on a scale - part of the point with Shadowrun is to raise tension by exposing something with real value to real risk - but we can still judge how successfully this is achieved, and whether the same effect could be had with less effort. Which is why I think Leraika is so right about TBZ's approach. It's not just that it puts the decision about when to take that risk in the player's hand and thus decreases the likelihood of undercutting expectations and/or failing to return on effort and investment. It's also that it plants a big flag on the idea that the game can and will throw situations at the players where everything could - and indeed should - be on the line. Yes, the player gets to decide when their character is truly in danger, and that's not the same as it always being at risk. But knowing that there will be times where events are so fraught that you would personally and willingly remove the safety net gives you similar benefits while still supporting the other mechanics, tone, and expectations that tell you to invest a lot of effort and emotion into your character.
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Nov 30, 2018 19:03
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Comrade Gorbash posted:I agree 100%. Yeah. I'm spoiled because I have played with the same group for decades, but I started DMing a bunch of bright eyed newbies and they really didn't mind when their dudes got popped so idk - I agree that managing collective expectations is central. I think you see that disconnect between story and mechanics in stuff like eclipse phase, where the story tells you people die like flies, and the opening adventure starts with a deliberate tpk, but making characters and even changing bodies is the hugest pain in the dick. I do think that a bit of character death is good, for all that I don't often do it in my games, because making new characters and bouncing them off the world is fun as hell. Where it gets difficult is (e.g.) in something like call of cthulhu where the entire party has cycled through one or more times and it's really hard to remember why you're collectively supposed to care about this mysterious globe spanning plot... OG Stormbringer is also comically lethal, I ran a one-shot where every single player had to re-roll their character and it was funny, but they become faceless 'Dave the Third' mooks fairly quickly.
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Nov 30, 2018 19:22
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Leraika posted:I think TBZ's 'you choose when a fight is important enough for your character to risk it all' mechanics are great and I wish more games looked at death like that. i'm trying to google this and can't find anything. Can someone link to a page that talks about these mechanics, or provide a summary?
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Nov 30, 2018 19:57
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It's been a while since someone explained it to me, but I think the basic idea is that every player gets a series of escalating damage boxes that also give a power boost when they're checked. Players can also choose to check off a box to make themselves stronger at the cost of injury (it's pretty much built around making fights anime as hell; you might have guessed from the acronym.) The last box is the one that kills the character, and it can only be checked by the player, but gives an enormous power boost so that they can die doing something stupidly awesome.
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Nov 30, 2018 20:07
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Keeshhound posted:It's been a while since someone explained it to me, but I think the basic idea is that every player gets a series of escalating damage boxes that also give a power boost when they're checked. Players can also choose to check off a box to make themselves stronger at the cost of injury (it's pretty much built around making fights anime as hell; you might have guessed from the acronym.) The last box is the one that kills the character, and it can only be checked by the player, but gives an enormous power boost so that they can die doing something stupidly awesome. basically a character has HP and wound boxes When hp hits 0 the character is out of the fight but a player can fill in wound boxes to take less hp damage there are 4 ranks of wounds too( light, heavy, critical, dead) and the player can choose what gets filled in when they get hit. the third rank is the death box if the player's HP goes to 0 while the death box is checked the character dies. death is impossible otherwise
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Nov 30, 2018 20:33
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Polo-Rican posted:i'm trying to google this and can't find anything. Can someone link to a page that talks about these mechanics, or provide a summary? the game itself is called Tenra Bansho Zero apparently--I was just googling "Tenra Bansho Zero death" and saw a reddit post explain it, but yeah Keeshhound nailed it Never heard of it until now but I love that idea I also like it because it mechanically signals the way that campaigns should be run and what player expectations should be. Like, with a baked in rule like that, the implicit understanding of a game wthin that system would be that there will be scenarios and situations where everything is on the line, and I think that's great
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Nov 30, 2018 20:36
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I've always been of the opinion that characters should only die if it makes for a cool story. Would it be cool for your dude to get chumped by some nameless goblin at level 1? No? Then you were knocked unconscious, let's move on. Would it be cool for your dude to die saving orphans from a burning building? Yes? Cool, you died, make a new character, I would suggest one of the orphans sworn to take up his savior's mantle. I get that the threat of death is what brings stakes to a game, but if those are the only stakes you can bring to the table it's not going to be a very engaging game. Don't TPK the party; just have them all get captured and thrown in a dungeon and while they're there a bunch of their friends are killed by enemy assassins, or what have you. Losing fights should matter - but a life isn't the only thing you can lose.
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Nov 30, 2018 20:40
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I've always been of the opinion that characters should only die if it makes for a cool story. In a way this is D&D's fault, but also not. When you look at the way the original game sessions with Gygax et al lead to D&D, they were about how things like getting chumped by a goblin at level 1 made for a great story about the game, even if it wasn't a great story in the game. And D&D was initially designed to be good - or at least decent - at that kind of play. But it also took off because it could be used as a starting point for other kinds of play, play where the story in the game was the cool part. The problem is that the design of the game wasn't built for that. Which doesn't make it a bad game, just not the tool for every job. And back at the beginning it was forgivable because, well, folks were still figuring this poo poo out and hadn't had a chance to design new tools yet. The frustration today is that a lot of games - both in terms of rulesets and in terms of individual play groups - present themselves as offering one kind of fun, but for a variety of reasons keep using tools and conventions that are for a different kind of fun. And worse acting like the problem is with the players. EDIT: Also there's a lot of people who have lovely regressive opinions about which kind of play is superior.
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Nov 30, 2018 21:05
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Polo-Rican posted:i'm trying to google this and can't find anything. Can someone link to a page that talks about these mechanics, or provide a summary? Sure thing! here you go E: it's already been explained pretty well except for the fact that checking the dead box (and you can check it at any time you take injury, not just when you're on your last legs; TBZ lets you choose how you distribute wounds and splits player health between an HP score and wound boxes, where hitting 0 hp just knocks you out) gives you significant dice bonuses to everything you do - so it's not something you're just doing to stay in the fight longer, it's a deliberate choice that you want the BBEG or whatever to go down so hard that you're willing to put your life on the line to make sure it happens. Leraika fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 1, 2018 |
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Dec 1, 2018 02:26
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https://tetra-cube.github.io/dnd/dnd-statblock.html
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Dec 1, 2018 19:32
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To whoever linked to Matt Coleville’s Running the Game series on YouTube - thanks. Lots of cool and good advice.
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Dec 1, 2018 19:47
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Sanford posted:To whoever linked to Matt Coleville’s Running the Game series on YouTube - thanks. Lots of cool and good advice. This. Lot of good stuff.
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Dec 2, 2018 01:45
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Here's what I play at the table as far as converting 5e (and 13th Age) to TBZ HP rules, you calculate your HP as Normal, and then you give yourself the following health bars: (Flesh wounds, scratches, scraped, bruising) Light Wounds = HP/2 (Bone Snapping, Blood Flowing, Muscles Tearing) Heavy Wounds +1/+2/+3= HP/3 (Lungs puncturing, Arrow in heart, hits somewhere dangerous) Critical Wounds +2/+3/+4= HP/4 (-1hp per level every turn) Death +5/+6/+7= HP / HP (This will always be 1) The ability bonuses are for [Adventure / Champion / Epic Tier] in 13th age For DND 5e said levels would be [1 - 7 / 8 - 12 / 13 - 20] Calculating it this way, technically gives you on average 8% more HP, but that's only if you go all the way to death, if you only risk heavy wounds, you will only have 83% of your HP. Your starting HP bar is the Light Wounds Bar, when each injury tracker hits 0, you may decide to add the new injury tracker to your total HP pool 1x per battle, per injury tracker OR go unconscious until you roll a natural 20. If you hit 0 with critical wounds you can only be revived by healing When you check said injury tracker box off, you are at risk for receiving that injury should reach 0 before being healed by the end of a battle. After battle you can change your new maximum to the injury tracker you are most comfortable with. My current group seem to love it, because they know exactly what to do, and what's on the line, and it lets me know whether or not I'm properly setting the stakes. There's nothing better at the table than seeing your players go "I'm willing to die for this encounter, give me +5 to everything!" E: In 13th age this makes the climactic finallies with the players getting +13 bonus to hit and damage slugging it out with ancient capitalistic evils. Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Dec 2, 2018 |
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Dec 2, 2018 03:08
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Random encounter: Start at: Light Injury Get hit to 0 I either go unconscious or take the injury Tick the box Go to Medium Apply status changes Does my health go back up to whatever it says? Maybe I'm just tired, but can you finish the example I started?
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Dec 2, 2018 04:45
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I keep hearing that my encounters in 5e are not challenging enough and I'm really not sure what I'm missing. I'm running my group through Princes of the Apocalypse. They're currently running through an area built for level 7 characters at level 6. They fought the boss of the area who is a pretty strong spellcaster, Gar Shatterkeel, 3 lizardfolk, 2 cultists, and 2 waterwyrds. The room was also trapped so that it was flooding with water with the entire thing becoming difficult terrain in 3 rounds and fully flooded underwater combat in 6. I was told at the end that the combat was fun but too easy. I think a big part of it is that they're all playing spellcasters so they were able to use hypnotic pattern to keep the boss incapacitated and keep anyone who could of snapped him out either grappled or otherwise unable to reach him. It feels like if I want to give them anything that they find challenging I'm going to have to start playing rocket tag or something. Am I right in thinking that a full party of 5 spellcasters, including a hexblade Warlock and a Bladesinger wizard are just breaking the game over their knee? Are there any encounter builder resources that are better then the stuff in the books?
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Dec 2, 2018 06:28
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Keeshhound posted:Well, what's the book? To me that sounds like at least a paragon artifact type of thing so I figure for a while he may find stuff like excerpts of the book, descriptions, reproductions of single pages, treatises on individual chapters, single rituals, you get the idea. Each of which would give him some kind of advantage. He's refluffed his rod implement to a THE END IS NEAR sign, and I already had him find a reproduced page from the book from which he got a rune to paint on his sign that elevates it to a +1 implement. He's also explicitly told me he doesn't care if the book and the creatures from beyond the veil it describes are real, or if he's playing an utter madman who sees deeper meaning in completely nonsensical writings (that still give him magic powers through sheer boneheaded faith), so that's definitely something I'm gonna play around with. quote:For that matter, could you have the Baron tell them that a different group has found some artifacts and ask them to meet up with them to help guard the loot while it's being transported to him. Also, here's a list of everything they found, make sure everything's accounted for before you start heading back.
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Dec 2, 2018 11:05
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Gumball Gumption posted:I keep hearing that my encounters in 5e are not challenging enough and I'm really not sure what I'm missing. I'm running my group through Princes of the Apocalypse. They're currently running through an area built for level 7 characters at level 6. They fought the boss of the area who is a pretty strong spellcaster, Gar Shatterkeel, 3 lizardfolk, 2 cultists, and 2 waterwyrds. The room was also trapped so that it was flooding with water with the entire thing becoming difficult terrain in 3 rounds and fully flooded underwater combat in 6. I was told at the end that the combat was fun but too easy. It's never too late too pull out a "disable the anti-magic field before you all die" encounter to get the group back in line.
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Dec 2, 2018 11:16
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I'm running a D&D 5th ed game. We are currently going through the Tomb of Annihilation. Most of the players are way to cautious all the time about everything, and this didn't start with this particular module, it's always been this way. This often times causes the game to drag on as they sit around and discuss dumb poo poo for 15 minutes and nobody wants to make a decision. It sometimes really irritates me, and I know for a fact it irritates at least one other player who often just throws himself into danger to get poo poo moving, which then irritates everyone else for whatever reason. Any tips on how to handle this? I've often thought gently caress it I'll throw some random encounters at them until they get the point, but that just feels like it would just drag things out even more.
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Dec 3, 2018 00:05
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Make some non-combat encounter stuff that will encourage them to hurry up. As a few examples, maybe their fussing about in front of a possibly trapped hallway makes a boulder start rolling after them and now they have to dodge the traps while running fast enough to outpace the boulder. A poison fog starts coming in from whatever ventilation the room has. The villains the heroes are spying on are about to commit some evil act like sacrificing an innocent so they don't have time to plan this one out fully. Make it believable, obviously, but find a reason for them to rush into things once in awhile. Or go to the old thread standby of "talk to your players about it".
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Dec 3, 2018 00:13
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siggy2021 posted:I'm running a D&D 5th ed game. We are currently going through the Tomb of Annihilation. Most of the players are way to cautious all the time about everything, and this didn't start with this particular module, it's always been this way. This often times causes the game to drag on as they sit around and discuss dumb poo poo for 15 minutes and nobody wants to make a decision. It sometimes really irritates me, and I know for a fact it irritates at least one other player who often just throws himself into danger to get poo poo moving, which then irritates everyone else for whatever reason. First, Talk to your players about it is the obvious thing. At the least remind people it is a role-playing game and they should be planning things in character with the limited knowledge their characters have and not with the meta-knowledge they have. Second, their time spent planning and being cautious is also time that the villian has to plan. Time is abstract in D&D but it shouldn't stop. If they don't want to make a dicision then the environment or the villian should be making it for them. What sort of things do they usually get stuck on? Do you know if they're particularly afraid of something happening?
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Dec 3, 2018 00:26
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There's two things at work here. One is that there's an out-of-character problem that your group has picked up a way of playing that isn't fun for you and some of the other players. That isn't necessarily to say it's unfun for everyone -- could well be that some of your players are having a blast arguing for fifteen minutes about what to do -- but your fun is important too. If you're not having a good time, say so, and work out like friends how to have one. At the same time, a thing that might help would be giving the players an IC justification to start hurrying. In a lot of D&D modules (and in something that riffs off of Tomb of Horrors especially) there's not much of an IC downside to taking your time and planning everything out, so why shouldn't they? That's why it's important to brainstorm with your players and come up with a reason why their characters aren't going to take the time to argue it out. Ideally this should be something where there are multiple, very visible consequences of failure between "everything's OK" and "time's up guys, roll up some new characters" so that you can keep poking hints at them to hurry up without scuppering the campaign entirely. But don't do any of that stuff without sitting down and talking to the players about how Dungeon Expedition Planning Simulator isn't the game you're interested in playing, or it's gonna feel like you're being a dick and arbitrarily punishing them for playing the game how it's "supposed" to be played.
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Dec 3, 2018 00:49
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I'll have to poke around some of these ideas. One of the interesting things is that the Tomb of Annihilation has a sort of built in time limit. You don't necessarily completely fail when you take too long, but people are out there dying and there are ramifications for it taking too long. I reminded them of this many times before sessions, and they would briefly take it seriously. Now it's far too late. There are going to be lasting repercussions in the world for how much in game time it took them to complete this, but I think the issue is those repercussions aren't felt immediately when you are closed off in a horrific dungeon and haven't seen the outside world in at least weeks. I've reminded the super overly cautious rogue that every time he wants to walk around the room scrutinizing every wall for secret doors instead of just letting his bonkers passive perception do the job it takes more time, but he doesn't seem to care or get it. It's also weird, I thought me just telling him every time there was a secret door that he found it without him having to do anything would solve that problem, but it never did.
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Dec 3, 2018 01:16
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Yeah, you need to talk to your group. Either that rogue thinks he needs to do this everytime and you need to figure out why or he is looking for something specific that he wants out of searching every room. I think you and your players have different expectations of your game.
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Dec 3, 2018 02:22
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It's really sort of a Diablo syndrome in my opinion. The feel like they need to explore every nook and cranny of the dungeon, which honestly is just going to get you killed in a place like this, and it has almost happened several times. I've given pretty strong hints that there is one thing you need to get from each floor, and there are these specific other things that are helpful, but you don't need to catch them all. Literally each person in the party can only have one at a time, there are nine of them and five party members. I'll have a pre session talk with them next time about exactly that and maybe spell it out a bit more and explain to them that they don't have to find everything. It kind of boggles my mind, and I don't think they realize the number of times their characters have almost perished when they could have just said naw gently caress this let's move on.
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Dec 3, 2018 04:06
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siggy2021 posted:I'm running a D&D 5th ed game. We are currently going through the Tomb of Annihilation. Most of the players are way to cautious all the time about everything, and this didn't start with this particular module, it's always been this way. If it makes you feel any better this is a common issue. Some ideas: • Award inspiration to players that take the initiative and make strong decisions. • If you're actually keeping track of food and water supplies, use that to your advantage. If their characters spend hours talking in the dungeon, they waste a ton of food and water. • If, like most groups, you're not keeping track of food and water, you can say something like: "the longer you spend in the dungeon, the more you risk running low on food and water. Waste enough time and you'll need to start rationing your supplies more sparingly." Then each time the group takes an obnoxious amount of time making a decision, you can add 0.25 points of "exhaustion" (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Conditions#toc_16) • When I played with my group, I had a big "clock" with 24 notches—if the players spent time planning, I'd move the dial half a notch. Even if the time of day doesn't have a real effect, it can prod players along when the GM notes that time is ticking in-game. I recommend all games have a clock visible by players... it adds a lot of depth to player decisions. Polo-Rican fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Dec 3, 2018 |
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Dec 3, 2018 16:54
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There are two options: One, accept that people are going to be cautious in a module called the tomb of annihilation. Two, use signs of approaching danger until problems exist that are unignorable. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Mar 7, 2024 |
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Dec 3, 2018 19:58
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I have to admit, knowing nothing whatsoever about the module, which I have never read... if my DM said "okay guys we're gonna play through the Tomb of Annihilation" I would be awfully loving cautious too, because that's a name designed to evoke old-school grognard adversarial DM fuckfests.
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Dec 3, 2018 20:08
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Polo-Rican posted:• If you're actually keeping track of food and water supplies, use that to your advantage. If their characters spend hours talking in the dungeon, they waste a ton of food and water. This one actually came up at the beginning of the adventure and they started running out of food and spent an entire session panicking and it was good times. Then the Cleric had the sudden realization that they could just case Create Food and Water. Golden Bee posted:One, accept that people are going to be cautious in a module called the tomb of annihilation. It's not so much the being cautious. Being cautious is fine. Searching every god drat wall drags everything down, especially when there is a mechanic built into the game for that already (Passive Perception) and it's already been made clear that your natural 24 passive perception is enough to see anything hidden. It's really a combination of overly cautious and exploring each and everything thing in the dungeon and refusing to move on until you figure it out, even when there is nothing to be figured out. I would think if you were being overly cautious you would just say gently caress it I'm not touching that and move along.  I don't know. I'm just kind of salty right now because in a 5 hour session we got through three smallish rooms of the dungeon instead of nearly two of the small floors like I thought we would.
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Dec 3, 2018 20:19
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siggy2021 posted:This one actually came up at the beginning of the adventure and they started running out of food and spent an entire session panicking and it was good times. Then the Cleric had the sudden realization that they could just case Create Food and Water. Have a spirit/demon/shadow monster of some kind searching for them. If they stall it gets close and finds them, they can fight it back but it won't ever stop coming and they have no choice but to find whatever is summoning it deeper in. Depending on how much you want to scare them off you can scale its power.
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Dec 3, 2018 20:35
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Have it be triggered explicitly by one of their meticulous search routines
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Dec 3, 2018 20:44
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Gumball Gumption posted:I think a big part of it is that they're all playing spellcasters so they were able to use hypnotic pattern to keep the boss incapacitated and keep anyone who could of snapped him out either grappled or otherwise unable to reach him. It feels like if I want to give them anything that they find challenging I'm going to have to start playing rocket tag or something. Am I right in thinking that a full party of 5 spellcasters, including a hexblade Warlock and a Bladesinger wizard are just breaking the game over their knee? Are there any encounter builder resources that are better then the stuff in the books? Are they able to restock their magical nonsense in between every fight? If they have the 5 minute adventuring day then they're going to have a good time, but if they have to stretch their resources out over multiple encounters then they're not going to be able to alpha strike and control everything constantly. You're going to have to get creative because they're 5 spellcasters, but forcing them to stretch their spells further is the go to first step. siggy2021 posted:
You need to tell them that you aren't going to gotcha them and tpk them because they didn't say "I search for traps" every 5 seconds. You need to tell them that you will say if there is anything important or a puzzle to be solved and the various components of it so they don't have to pixel hunt the walls. If they keep doing it, then remind them and say that there is nothing there and they should move on or you're going to start tuning out.
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Dec 3, 2018 20:49
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EthanSteele posted:You need to tell them that you aren't going to gotcha them and tpk them because they didn't say "I search for traps" every 5 seconds. You need to tell them that you will say if there is anything important or a puzzle to be solved and the various components of it so they don't have to pixel hunt the walls. This is good advice, and should be the first thing you do, but if it doesn't work then another way to look at it is that they are telling you they want pixel bitch insanity, so give it to them. Have them find intricate traps, some of which conceal rewards. Put an explicit in-game timer on them. Read the (amazing) Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and steal a bunch of its gloriously rear end in a top hat ideas (e.g. HSOT is full of poison gas that will literally kill you if you gently caress around)
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Dec 3, 2018 21:08
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I have to admit, knowing nothing whatsoever about the module, which I have never read... if my DM said "okay guys we're gonna play through the Tomb of Annihilation" I would be awfully loving cautious too, because that's a name designed to evoke old-school grognard adversarial DM fuckfests. It is exactly that. In canon, it’s made by the same rear end in a top hat lich that made the Tomb of Horrors. You get sealed in when you enter and can’t teleport out, and resurrection magic doesn’t work. It features fun things like “make a Dex save or be ground to paste”, a room that instantly destroys all non-living, organic matter (such as your component pouch and the straps on your armor), a mirror that traps you inside it with no way out when you look at it (and a variety of teleportation traps that leave you facing it), golems that show up to interrupt your rests... and, of course, a fountain that reverses your sex. That said, it was real fun to run as a DM and my players had a blast. Everyone went in with the understanding that the module had a ton of unfair bullshit in it and approached it very creatively, and I did my best to reward them for it while still keeping the spirit of the module.
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Dec 4, 2018 00:36
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blastron posted:It is exactly that. In canon, it’s made by the same rear end in a top hat lich that made the Tomb of Horrors. You get sealed in when you enter and can’t teleport out, and resurrection magic doesn’t work. It features fun things like “make a Dex save or be ground to paste”, a room that instantly destroys all non-living, organic matter (such as your component pouch and the straps on your armor), a mirror that traps you inside it with no way out when you look at it (and a variety of teleportation traps that leave you facing it), golems that show up to interrupt your rests... and, of course, a fountain that reverses your sex. Wasn't there a let's play thread where someone ran Tomb of Horror with a bunch of level 1 posters who brute forced it via deaths.
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Dec 4, 2018 01:24
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Nephzinho posted:Wasn't there a let's play thread where someone ran Tomb of Horror with a bunch of level 1 posters who brute forced it via deaths. I'd love to see that if it indeed happened.
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Dec 4, 2018 04:43
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Update on my setup: I did a little thing where I suggested what everyday jobs PCs could have around the village while they get their adventurer career going. Just as a fluff thing, but the warlock player suggested he could get hired as the town librarian, which is such a staggeringly good idea. I told him, yeah, the baron hires you, and impresses upon you very strongly that your tasks are: - sort and catalog the books - put the magic books on an extra shelf - put the dragon books on a super extra shelf - beyond that, do not talk to anyone about what you do in there, or you've seen the inside of the library for the last time, but will see a lot of the inside of my dungeons That basically sets up everything I could potentially do and reveal, and it lets me drop plot hooks, magic item rewards and backstory-relevant knowledge at will. Fantastic stuff. And obviously, people like the smugglers will now sooner or later realize someone's going in and out the library, and could he have a quick peek at something for them...?
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Dec 4, 2018 10:53
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siggy2021 posted:It's really sort of a Diablo syndrome in my opinion. The feel like they need to explore every nook and cranny of the dungeon, which honestly is just going to get you killed in a place like this, and it has almost happened several times. I used to be in a PF game where all the players (including me) were there mostly just for the adventure and story. It went pretty alright, but I'll never forget the DM complaining to us when we hit level 4 saying we "never looked around" his dungeons enough and missed so much loot. so yeah gotta open up with those expectations
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Dec 5, 2018 01:32
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| # ? Jun 12, 2024 00:22 |
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I'm taking my players to an "adventurer training arena" (an indoor play place, like Discovery Zone) and I'm wondering if you guys any playful variations on traps or puzzle rooms in a dungeon. For example, I have a pit trap but they fall into a ball pit. I also need some things at a ticket redemption zone, like what's the big prize junior adventurers save up for? Or even midtier prizes.
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Dec 6, 2018 09:34
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