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Soup Inspector posted:I suppose the question is this: why do they want the money? Is it to buy something? Do they have debts to be repaid? It's one of those simple questions that folks don't really consider, but the answer can be incredibly revealing - and give you something to riff off of. Oh perfect. As obvious as it seems now that you've said it, this is super helpful. I'm going to have an NPC get those answers out of them during play now.
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Jan 22, 2019 01:28
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kidkissinger posted:i've got a pc who is a Rat Catcher, whose only motivation is money. Don't pay him for catching rats so he has to steal the town's kids in revenge.
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Jan 22, 2019 01:30
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sebmojo posted:Also i wonder if you are getting hung up on having a Whole Coherent Plot? All you need is a thing that happens, and to have spent two minutes thinking about what might happen after that. The end of the plot can come out in play. DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Seconding this. Thirding. It's a cycle. Make up some interesting stuff. Players react to that. You observe their reactions, and with those reactions in mind, (loop) Cycle a few times and you get "a plot". Cycle many times and you get "a big overarching plot".
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Jan 22, 2019 01:31
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kidkissinger posted:Oh perfect. As obvious as it seems now that you've said it, this is super helpful. I'm going to have an NPC get those answers out of them during play now. Glad I could help! It might also be worth considering just straight up asking them out of the game. Since I don't think you saw my edit before you responded, an additional question it might be worth asking is why do they want to buy [XYZ]? What might happen if they fail to repay [ABC] debt (bonus points if it's something beyond the obvious)? Or hell, maybe they want to give the money away to someone(s)? Again, why? Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Thirding. Of course. At risk of repeating myself I think where I'm falling down is that first step and to a much lesser extent the second step, complicated a little by the lack of out of game feedback beyond "I liked/disliked this session (and here's why)". So far as the former goes I won't flog a dead horse. As for the latter, they're very good at telling me what does and doesn't work for them after a session. It's just that when I ask them what they'd like to see or do out of game a lot of the time I just get silence or at most one or two general responses. It's a little frustrating because I'd love to use their responses to fine-tune things or avoid pitfalls.
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Jan 22, 2019 01:49
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Seconding this. 100% Agreedo having in depth histories of your world's is cool though.
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Jan 22, 2019 02:32
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The *world idea of fronts is also really strong, don't think in terms of what happens, think of who acts and how. The vizier got robbed of his magic flimflam, so he has doubled patrols. The filchers guild is feeling the heat, so they want to turn the players in for a reward. The merchants who commissioned the theft want to get the flimflam out of town. Bam, there's a bunch of problems for the pcs to solve, and all you have to do is play one of your plot cards whenever things slow down.
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Jan 22, 2019 03:45
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If you have players who, when presented with a blank canvas with no blatant plot hooks dangling from it, will sit there and do nothing and just wait for the plot hook to show up... this is when you have a grownup talk with them. "Guys. This is a game about doing stuff, not sitting around waiting for stuff to find you. I promise you, there are stories galore right here in this village/city/planetoid/fantasy realm/space station/whatever - but if you just sit here with your thumb up your rear end, they will happen without you. I am not going to just set you on the Plot Train and send you off down the tracks, because that is boring as poo poo for me; I want to be able to react to the things you're doing the same way you get to react to the things I do. So - here is your blank canvas. What are you going to do with it?" Something along those lines. You make it clear that you're saying this, not because they're bad people who're pretending to be elves wrong, but because you want to have fun in a way that doesn't necessitate spewing out plot like the director of the average PCRPG, and that you're hoping to present them with choices more in-depth than "do you want Paragon points or Renegade points?" and that doing so makes the experience more interesting for you - who are, presumably, their friend and/or peer, and whose enjoyment of the game deserves to be taken into account as much as theirs. Now, if they're trying to do that but having trouble, my go-to strategy is always to say something along the lines of "Okay, that's fine - don't stop and think about these choices as a player, don't ask yourself 'well what will find me the best plot/gold/XP?' Think about the situation as your character. Every one of you has background choices and details and personality traits that you can be thinking about. If your character has gold and wants to hoard it, there's a bank; if they want to spend it on stupid poo poo, there's a fancy-looking inn. If you're religious, there's probably a temple nearby. If you're looking for a nice friendly brawl, you could try the tavern by the docks. Whatever you want to do is okay! But I guarantee you, at no point will you say 'I want to do X' and be met with a response of 'yeah there's nothing interesting there, let's not bother.' Some of these will lead into Important Plotlines; some of them won't. But you won't know which is which until you go and do some poo poo. Go do some poo poo." Again, something along those lines. If you get your players into the habit of thinking in terms of their characters rather than thinking about the plot, then those character personalities will guide story better than any on-rails experience you could ever name.
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Jan 22, 2019 07:13
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"I know you're a boring shut-in, but what would Krorg Beerhammer do?" ...but try not to say the first part. E: for real though, if you've presented a scenario or sandbox with stuff in it and they're going "uh I dunno I sit here I guess" there's not much you can do besides talk to them about it or have guys with swords set the building on fire. The guys with swords have weird accents. They have badges you've never seen before. They all have green cloaks. They smell weird. They have attack dogs but you've never seen the breed. They have exotic thrown weapons. There's a dude in a skull mask with them but he gets away. When you catch one, he's just a confused local kid thay doesn't remember what happened. They're shouting "give us the doctor and nobosy has to die" but there's no doctor. (Pick 2-3). Then instead of waiting till the end and asking them "what were you interested in?" (and them going "uh... like... dungeons and you know... dragons" like 9/10 players), listen to the stuff they're talking about and use it as future plot pieces. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 07:52 on Jan 22, 2019 |
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Jan 22, 2019 07:41
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thegoatgod_pan posted:Does anyone have advice on doing a Haunted House in Mage the Awakening(2nd ed)? Neither of my players knows any Spirit or Death magic, so they won't be able to just hand-wave away all their problems, but they can fly, teleport, light things on fire, turn invisible, warp space and time, etc, and worst of all, easily get accurate information about all occult phenomena via mage sight, which makes me worry that the experience won't be properly atmospheric or scary. This is a tough one, but I have one idea if there is a strict deadline for dealing with the Haunted House. Steal the bit from various haunted house movies where varied groups of investigators are all sent in at once. The players can only access the House as one of these investigative groups. Make the House pull stuff that shouldn't be scary for a bunch of mages when they are in the room with some hapless mundane saps. So half the tension is whether or not risking their cover is worth countering this particular manifestation. The college kids in the house for a dare are probably pretty easy to fool if you don't do anything their majors cover. Those lab coated types with all those gadgets and cameras are another story. The psychic is a fake, and is drat sure that psychic powers and such are all bullshit. Can't help you if they get in the house, go back in time to yesterday, and then walk all over everything.
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Jan 22, 2019 09:39
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Admiral Joeslop posted:
Where are the people that didn't escape? In prison, or a stock yard? If the rats are there for looting and pillaging, they'll have a repository for all the stuff they've taken already. And, if they're settling in, are they occupying peoples' homes or have they created a nest in a former public building?
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Jan 22, 2019 12:05
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Afriscipio posted:Where are the people that didn't escape? In prison, or a stock yard? Most of them are enslaved, some as food, others to build things or get experimented on. Most likely they'll have nests scattered everywhere as they slowly dissolve into petty squabbling between clans, with bouts of the leaders cracking the whip to put them back in line. So, rescuing townsfolk and somehow encouraging infighting are a possibility.
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Jan 22, 2019 13:10
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habituallyred posted:This is a tough one, but I have one idea if there is a strict deadline for dealing with the Haunted House. Steal the bit from various haunted house movies where varied groups of investigators are all sent in at once. The players can only access the House as one of these investigative groups. Make the House pull stuff that shouldn't be scary for a bunch of mages when they are in the room with some hapless mundane saps. So half the tension is whether or not risking their cover is worth countering this particular manifestation. The college kids in the house for a dare are probably pretty easy to fool if you don't do anything their majors cover. Those lab coated types with all those gadgets and cameras are another story. The psychic is a fake, and is drat sure that psychic powers and such are all bullshit. Can't help you if they get in the house, go back in time to yesterday, and then walk all over everything. What if some of the other investigators were also rival Mages? Both sides would like nothing more than settling each others' hash, but there's no way they're going to be able to throw down with all these witnesses, so they end up using their powers to start attacking each other and making it look like the haunted house did it.
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Jan 22, 2019 14:36
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sebmojo posted:The *world idea of fronts is also really strong, don't think in terms of what happens, think of who acts and how. Now it's my turn to kick myself for not thinking of something so incredibly obvious. They've already interacted with a bunch of movers-and-shakers both directly and indirectly. Hell, right now there's literally a crime lord who hired a bounty hunter (whom I'm going to tie into one of the players' backstories) to take revenge on them after they murdered one of the crime lord's favourite lackeys in truly spectacular fashion (said lackey being tied into the same character's backstory). By all rights I should be able to wring something out of that! DivineCoffeeBinge posted:If you have players who, when presented with a blank canvas with no blatant plot hooks dangling from it, will sit there and do nothing and just wait for the plot hook to show up... this is when you have a grownup talk with them. This is good advice, thank you. For what it's worth, I think it might be mostly the latter. They're excellent at playing their characters - absolutely wonderful. I honestly feel somewhat spoilt as a guy who's running his first campaign. But as one of them said when I last talked to them, he tends to follow the flow of a session rather than guide it himself. And I wager that at least subconsciously, something similar may be going on with my other two players. So my game plan is to try to gently coax them into being more proactive, if needed explain it in a similar vein to what you said, and try to reward them for being curious. Elector_Nerdlingen posted:"I know you're a boring shut-in, but what would Krorg Beerhammer do?" Good point. I think I might need to try listening more closely during my sessions. Sure, I can pick up the general mood easily enough (albeit perhaps not as well as if we were in the same room, since we're all playing this over Roll20), but I think it's long overdue for me to note what excites them during sessions and see if there's any common threads. I said it before but I've let too many opportunities brought about by player theorising slip through my fingers because I didn't write down any notes. Thanks for your patience, guys. You've been a wellspring of relevant and helpful advice. If you may forgive my greediness, I'd like to get some ideas from the great goon GMing hivemind one last time. When I cut the session early, they had escaped from house arrest (losing some of their stuff in the process) and were about to investigate a crashed spaceship in the desert. They already know that this planet is being used to stage "pirate" raids against civilian shipping to steal valuable relics and artefacts. However, so far they haven't discovered conclusive proof that an ostensibly allied spy from a different agency is actually being bribed to turn a blind eye/help under the table by an interstellar megacorp's local branch head. The executive in turn has massive debts to repay to the crime lord I mentioned in my response to Sebmojo. It's these corporate goons plus the criminals who are responsible for the raids. The players do strongly suspect that the intel agent is under the executive's thumb, though. The only info they currently have to go on w.r.t. the crashed ship itself is that it crashed a couple of weeks ago, and that on the day it crashed "odd ships" were spotted flying over the capital city. They also know that the exec and his criminal creditors are going to meet near the wreck (haven't really decided why yet though, beyond handing over artefacts/discussing his debt). The intel agent was responsible for their temporary house arrest, and will definitely realise they've escaped by the time they start skulking around the crash site. I'm also strongly considering having the crime lord's bounty hunter show up at just the wrong time to throw a spanner in the works. How could I make the crashed spaceship interesting? What kind of exciting, new information could they learn from the crash site, and what sort of options could I dangle in front of them? Ideally I'd be able to provide an easy way to let the players - if they so choose - head into the megacorp's territory, since that's where the crime lord is currently chilling out.
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Jan 23, 2019 02:33
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Now you can recreate the plot of the first MiB movie, imo. Sugar water and all.
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Jan 23, 2019 02:47
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Glory to Italia!
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What are the components of a good jailbreak adventure? It's the party who has to break out (as opposed to, say, springing someone else from the outside), and they most definitely did Do It (i.e. steal a magic artifact from the wizard guild). I'm thinking a big part of it is that their equipment has been confiscated, and getting it from the evidence locker is a detour from the basic route outside; but of course theirs is not the only equipment stashed there. Other than that, it's Wizard Prison. As in, both "for" and "by". It's definitely a floating island, or equally impressive. Thinking more Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool 2 than Prison Break, but it's all still in the "throw poo poo at the wall and see what sticks" phase.
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Jan 24, 2019 19:51
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Have a bunch of ways they could escape and put a few barriers in the way of each.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:05
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sebmojo posted:Have a bunch of ways they could escape and put a few barriers in the way of each. yeah, it really will depend on what the PCs strengths are. There should be some social option where you can maybe enlist other inmates to help, maybe some locks the rogue can tackle, etc.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:23
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Show that the other inhabitants of the prison are monsters, both literal and figurative. Make it clear they deserve to be locked up here. The guards, on the other hand, treat the party with respect and act professionally at all times. Then however your party bust out, make it start a large scale prison breakout/riot. Have a guard that previously treated them with kindness beg for help - “please, they’ll kill us all! Just help me get back to my wife and little girl!” Then they have to decide to keep making a break for it, or throw in with the guards and try to prevent all this evil getting back into the world.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:33
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Sanford posted:Show that the other inhabitants of the prison are monsters, both literal and figurative. Make it clear they deserve to be locked up here. The guards, on the other hand, treat the party with respect and act professionally at all times. Then however your party bust out, make it start a large scale prison breakout/riot. Have a guard that previously treated them with kindness beg for help - “please, they’ll kill us all! Just help me get back to my wife and little girl!” Then they have to decide to keep making a break for it, or throw in with the guards and try to prevent all this evil getting back into the world. On the other hand... ACAB.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:34
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kidkissinger posted:On the other hand... ACAB. Yeah good point tbf, gently caress the pigs, open all the doors and burn the place to the ground on your way out. (Just now realised that in my current game the city watch are the only ones not trying to double cross, betray or use the players in some way) Sanford fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 20:35
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Have the option to bribe a guard for information, help, or to just look the other way at the right time.
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Jan 24, 2019 20:58
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Opportunity to steal some uniforms and try and blend in with the guards.
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Jan 24, 2019 21:02
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My Lovely Horse posted:What are the components of a good jailbreak adventure? It's the party who has to break out (as opposed to, say, springing someone else from the outside), and they most definitely did Do It (i.e. steal a magic artifact from the wizard guild). The biggest thing with a jailbreak adventure is that it kind of changes the dynamics of adventuring because you can't really retreat and you can't really prepare. So to echo what others have said, it's important to have multiple avenues of escape with different kinds of challenges, especially if you're playing a system that's based on combat attrition or resource management. And if they manage to blow everything, try to design fail state that isn't "okay, you're back in your cell." This may seem obvious but don't separate players from their belongings / powers for any real length of time, even if you kind of have to fudge the fiction to make it make sense. It might be good to have some kind of optional secondary objective other than escape, so that the players are tempted to stay a little longer even if they beeline to one of the escape conditions (making your prep more efficient than if they just cleared one route and skipped everything else). Avoid three-way fights. Having the other inmates act as a wildcard is fine, but abstract it, don't do it at the level of tactical combat, there's nothing more boring than spending 1/3 of the action on the GM playing with themselves.
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Jan 24, 2019 21:27
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If you're running a jailbreak adventure on a floating wizard island and there's no opportunity to crash the island into the headquarters of the wizard police and then leap off the island as it's turning into rubble, then I don't know what to tell you.
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Jan 24, 2019 23:36
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:If you're running a jailbreak adventure on a floating wizard island and there's no opportunity to crash the island into the headquarters of the wizard police and then leap off the island as it's turning into rubble, then I don't know what to tell you. Nice
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Jan 25, 2019 00:00
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cool things to put into a dream vision cave that leads into a dwarven vault?
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Jan 25, 2019 05:14
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Maybe it has elemental versions of base instincts like greed or fear. Maybe the dream cave is designed to prevent Intruders from taking the loot, but does it in a way that makes them think it's their idea. Visions of cursed treasure, suggestions that it's where it is for good reason, sympathetic pleas from those who left it there, etc. All can be false or misleading as you see fit. I'm imagining a five-room dungeon style thing where each room plays to a particular PC and has dreamy visions that might appeal to them and somehow relate to them personally. A dreamland is cool because it can overtly relate to the characters personally without straining credibility.
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Jan 25, 2019 08:34
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My party of jailbirds is very slightly evil anyway. I can see playing the guards as the good guys. Crashing the floating islands into wizard police HQ is obviously great. The thing about it is, we started this game playing premade adventures until we hit our stride, and one revolved around a crashing floating prison island. Definitely would've saved that for now if I'd known, but it's what it is. I could easily say "of course the wizard police has a few of those things" and revisit the idea, but I also had the thought, since this is 13th Age, of placing the prison on the back of a Koru behemoth. Just so we don't retread the same ground. Functionally it's the same idea of inaccessible ground high in the air, anyway, which already suggests a few ways to get on and off - teleport magic, airships, and gathering all the available bedsheets to make a really long rope.
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Jan 25, 2019 08:58
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kidkissinger posted:cool things to put into a dream vision cave that leads into a dwarven vault? In my last game my players went through a dream vision cave and one room was all people criticising them. I gave each of them an individual little note saying what they experienced. * The rogue had taken revenge on his former partner who double-crossed him, and was presented with visions of his deceased thieves guild comrades going "why us? he betrayed you, we didn't. we were your friends!" * The Turkish Wrestler saw Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior and Big Daddy telling him he'd broken keyfabe and would never be a true wrestler, and would never lift the championship belt. * The wizard, played by a young woman some fifteen years our junior and well out of her comfort zone playing D&D, got a note saying "I've discussed it with the others, and although we appreciate you making the effort to be honest you're just spoiling it. It's probably better if you leave." I was especially proud of that one - it worked in-character, but by god it had exactly the impact I hoped. Other rooms had illusions that turned out not to be - "this room is somehow full of trees, stretching into the distance. You can't see the walls. As one, the trees turn to you and wave. Pulling yourself together you remind yourself they are just trees and press on" *immediately get attacked by a treant*
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Jan 25, 2019 09:05
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kidkissinger posted:cool things to put into a dream vision cave that leads into a dwarven vault? - visiting a specific person's dream, encountering representations of their different character traits, and having the person's character change depending on what traits the party supported or suppressed - contacting denizens of the dream world - a combat that changed from one scenario to another, with no break in the action; not in a sense of "oh, X was Y all along" but in the way dream scenarios just switch gears sometimes, basically I thought of a way I could refluff the whole encounter, monsters and map, on the spot. Don't acknowledge or explain the change. - generally, inexplicable or at least unexplained changes or transitions between scenes, and scenarios where they simply know things the way you do when you dream - surreal surroundings; once my party dreamed they were on a moving train, and I introduced a cart that was a T-crossing. - uncertainty whether you're still in the dream or back in reality. Or: whether you're already dreaming or still in reality. - specifically, a dream spirit that captured the party in a dream that felt like they were awake, eventually appearing in the shape of a spider, the dream being its web - definitely encountering the party's own deepest fears and secrets, at least some of them - specific to your scenario: what if there's an actual cosmic plane of dreams, and the dwarves simply moved their riches there for safekeeping? The dream vision is the vault.
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Jan 25, 2019 09:14
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The dream is also a form of defence: it's there to protect the dwarves' riches from misguided do-gooders who think their cause is more important than the dwarves' legacy. The PCs relive the events of how the vault's centrepiece was obtained, and in the process get to see the dwarven civilization at its height and how much value it's people put in the treasure that they're about to loot.
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Jan 25, 2019 11:11
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Whybird posted:The dream is also a form of defence: it's there to protect the dwarves' riches from misguided do-gooders who think their cause is more important than the dwarves' legacy. The PCs relive the events of how the vault's centrepiece was obtained, and in the process get to see the dwarven civilization at its height and how much value it's people put in the treasure that they're about to loot. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Jan 25, 2019 11:55
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These are all excellent suggestions. I want to incorporate the legends of the Dwarven gods into the dream visions and apparitions, but we're playing in Warhammer and Grimnir, Grungni, and Valaya are kind of lame and have pretty boring backstories as far as I can tell. Anyone have any better ideas for Dwarf gods/legends?
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Jan 25, 2019 16:18
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If you go with ancestor ghosts you can have dwarven gods of any stripe you like. My setting has a dwarven god of things you can find to eat in caves (mainly mushrooms and blind cave fish) and he's the great[...]great grandfather of one of the players.
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Jan 25, 2019 16:22
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Sanford posted:If you go with ancestor ghosts you can have dwarven gods of any stripe you like. My setting has a dwarven god of things you can find to eat in caves (mainly mushrooms and blind cave fish) and he's the great[...]great grandfather of one of the players. Just got get Dwarf Fortress running for a couple days and pull from there haha
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Jan 25, 2019 16:23
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kidkissinger posted:These are all excellent suggestions. Terry Pratchet had some neat ideas about dwarves believing in a set of quasi-demonic entities called "Darks." They're kind of a cross between Eldritch Horrors and mine spirits that can be called upon by drawing the proper mine runes under the appropriate circumstances. Specifically, in Thud a dying dwarf manages to call upon (spoilers) the Summoning Dark, to get revenge on his murderers. Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Jan 25, 2019 16:55
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Give them really intense and specific dreams about mining and following ore veins with the various ore veins (that they can choose during the dream) leading to different metaphorical ends. Could be the segway to the dream sequences someone postes earlier of visions of the past civilization. Some of the veins could lead to the Pratchett gods, etc..
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Jan 25, 2019 17:21
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kidkissinger posted:Just got get Dwarf Fortress running for a couple days and pull from there haha You'd need DF and DFhack to get to the legends browser, but a long history could get you some fun stuff. Like "Sodel (Shield) Oxsnuggle the Soapy Bunny," god of trees.
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Jan 25, 2019 19:27
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Dameius posted:Give them really intense and specific dreams about mining and following ore veins with the various ore veins (that they can choose during the dream) leading to different metaphorical ends. Could be the segway to the dream sequences someone postes earlier of visions of the past civilization. Some of the veins could lead to the Pratchett gods, etc.. Segue. Segway is the scooter. I love the idea of the dreams being sort of glorantha style heroquests that mark out the history of the dwarves, and you can win by doing what they did but if you are clever and skilled enough you can also do it differently, and at the end you have to pass an arbitrator with the great book of grudges
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Jan 25, 2019 21:32
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Phone posting stikes again, but that format will give you a lot of leeway in plugging in whatever ideas you like and being flexible enough to let them help influence the direction of the dreams.
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Jan 25, 2019 23:33
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