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Turtlicious posted:Does 5e have an app like 13th age does? Yes, it's called "Kobold Fight Club". As I don't play 5e, I have no idea what it's like but the people in the 5e thread seem to like it.
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Jun 8, 2019 02:27
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sebmojo posted:insect races in sci fi are normally coded as mindless plagues that can only be destroyed, I don't see how this is worse than genocide. Azhais posted:yeah, at the end of the day eugenics and population control was probably the positive and enlightened solution compared to plan b which was "Exterminate all of the purple people eaters" The problem here is that someone went out of their way to make a situation where eugenics would be the "positive and enlightened solution." Also, this is genocide. Forcibly breeding out undesired traits is genocide, having the population "constrained by the terms of the Combine constitution" is genocide. (Seriously, just think about what that must entail.)
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Jun 8, 2019 02:51
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Ok, sure.
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Jun 8, 2019 03:34
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Turtlicious posted:Does 5e have an app like 13th age does? 
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Jun 8, 2019 10:16
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Couple rudimentary questions here. 5e, if that's important. 1. Last session the party cleared out the majority of an underground dungeon, leaving two rooms unexplored, one of which has the boss in it. They went topside and said they were going to do a long rest in the ruins above the dungeon. The thugs inhabiting the dungeon have been abducting children and bringing them to the place. How much "motion" is fair for the monsters to undergo during the rest? I'm thinking a pair of thugs might show up to the dungeon at the end of the rest and the party has to deal with them before heading back down, but what about the boss and other alive monsters inside? Is it too immersion-breaking to just have those last two rooms be on 'pause' and therefore have no activity from those monsters? Seems kind of silly the boss and her henchmen would just chill in their room for eight hours and not move about the place, finding the bodies and being alerted and such. At the same time, though, I don't want to punish the party just because they ran out of steam and couldn't clear the place. Also personally it sounds annoying to figure out. 2. How obscure should puzzles be in general, and how heavy-handed should I be with hints? There's a nearby town where everyone is aging and is likely the party's next destination. Obviously there's something magical going on here, and a simple Detect Magic will give them a lead, but if my players are either not catching on or, worse, too stingy with their spells to cast it, do I just let them get the info from local chitchat, some "blah blah nearby forest"? On one hand one solution for things is obviously bad, but on the other if they never think to do other things and just question people(because this is not a very creative party, based on combat) then one solution is what we're at anyway, which is pretty dull on my end. On a similar note the druid they find at the end of this will, if she gets an action at low life, will cast Meld Into Stone and jump into the wall screaming about how she'll get them next time. Considering this bluff relies on me knowing my players don't know what that spell is AND me not naming it when she casts it, is this a bad idea? I thought it sounded kind of neat that they could figure out her trick and hack at the wall and pop her back out, foiling her recurring villain potential and getting some bonus xp at the same time. I guess my frustration here is I'm not sure if I can rely on my players to sufficiently question things enough. I want to have intrigue and secret stuff going on in the campaign but I don't want to just get away with it. The players would probably be satisfied with a hack n slash no frills scenario but that's no fun for me.
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Jun 8, 2019 23:34
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Baller Ina posted:Couple rudimentary questions here. 5e, if that's important.
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Jun 8, 2019 23:49
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Baller Ina posted:1. Last session the party cleared out the majority of an underground dungeon, leaving two rooms unexplored, one of which has the boss in it. They went topside and said they were going to do a long rest in the ruins above the dungeon. The thugs inhabiting the dungeon have been abducting children and bringing them to the place. Usually it goes something like this: the adventurers enter a dungeon, fight through it using up their limited resources, and arrive at the boss with just enough steam left to defeat them and pull through. The boss fight should therefore be difficult enough to be a challenge for a party with, say, 1/4 of their resources left. If the players decide "we'd rather be fully rested for the boss fight" they sort of break up this implied social contract about how the game should go. Your boss fight now needs to be a challenge for a fully rested party. Long rests are, to some extent, eight hours long because that gives the DM enough in-game time to justify that. Sometimes, though, you design a dungeon with the idea in mind that the party gets a rest right before the boss - then it's a good idea to provide a clearly safe place and/or justification why they can afford to dawdle for eight hours. I think it's entirely fair to change the situation up majorly if that isn't the game plan for the dungeon, and the party just puts their personal safety and convenience before whatever task they're supposed to carry out. Or in short: "there are terrified children down there and you'd leave them for an extra eight hours?" This is baked right into systems like 13th Age, where four battles entitle the party to a full rest, and if the players decide to rest before then, the DM is supposed to count that as a "campaign loss" - a huge setback not easily recovered from that nonetheless doesn't stop the story. Some ways this could go are: - the monsters called for reinforcements. More monsters from another camp, summoned creatures, more traps. - the monsters take the fight to the party in the night. Essentially, this boss fight is happening, although the party may be in a more advantageous position. (Who rests right outside the dungeon anyway, that's calling for things to come out.) - the monsters flee the dungeon through a secret exit, taking the hostages with them to their actual main camp. - the monsters carry out whatever evil plan they have with the hostages. Potentially the bleakest option. In addition to any of this, the kids could fail to trust the party after their eventual rescue, cause eight extra hours will do a number on you. Apart from all of that: maybe have a brief chat with your group about expectations re: resting, realism, and events during downtime, just to make sure you're on the same page.
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Jun 9, 2019 08:20
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Why are the dungeon's inhabitants abducting children? Sacrifices? Snacks? Ransom? I would have them flee -- without their hostages, they just want to live another day at this point -- and be spotted by whoever's on watch. The PCs then have to choose: do we go into a fight we think we're too low on resources to win, or do we knowingly let the people behind it get away and probably take their best loot with them?
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Jun 9, 2019 09:13
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For what it's worth, even in the pre-written material, most named mobs will have a couple rooms they hang out in, so theoretically they'd be alerted to the carnage or, at least, absences of fellow thugs. There are a few notable places where they explicitly say "if your party dilly-dallies or rests after evidence of their presence exists, the whole loving bandit camp packs up and leaves." Horde of the Dragon Queen is full of that kinda thing, for better or worse, in the name of pacing and handling this very situation. Even the dmg talks about this problem when it talks about rests, but I don't think it says much other than "random encounters, I guess?"
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Jun 9, 2019 09:19
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Glory to Italia!
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To look at rest in D&D more broadly, I ran a 4e D&D game from 1 to 20, and in the very first dungeon, the party wanted to rest right before the necromancer's ritual room, but the reality of the plot's pacing made that illogical, but the mechanics made it a necessity. They went around and around like that before deciding to storm the Place. 4e is designed around very tightly crafted encounters, and I had to improvise to pull a lot of my punches. After that, I said they party would refresh every 5 fights (iirc, whatever the dmg said it should be) and the party should just play out the game without thinking of rest mechanics. It worked well for 4e, but 5e loses some of it's non combat complexity if you take away the rest mechanics (and therefore obviate some classes utility powers).
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Jun 9, 2019 14:08
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I'm painting some cows now, so the next World of Ruin Catering Company game is going to be a cowboy episode. I have a bunch of Malifaux Gremlins that are going to make excellent cattle rustlers, including the big Mice and Men inspired one called Lenny that throws pigs. So I think an escort mission through the wild west would make a cute adventure. We'll have Pesto the Snail Magician joining us, and he's got a little compass on his miniature so i thought it'd be good to send them through unfamiliar territory and emphasize his navigation skills. Maybe they're supposed to bring these important prize winning beefaloes deep into Western Zone for a destination wedding they're catering. And then maybe when they get there it turns out the bride is a minotaur and the beefaloes are her parents! Then they have to change their plans and cater a vegan wedding at the last minute. What would be some fun wild west type encounters or twists? I definitely want to narrate (and possibly have everyone illustrate in crayon) that their characters put on cute thematic wild west outfits. Maybe I could put some weird westworld jokes in there with clockwork cowboys? Being bit by a poisonous snake seems like a good twist in virtually any situation. Especially if it's a recurring thing, and the locations get less and less likely as the story goes on. It's always nice finding a recurring gag or callback.
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Jun 9, 2019 20:19
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They gotta deal with the Pepper Gang. They are the local hot headed rabble rousers, lead by Jalapeño. They even have their version of a prat fall guy, Bell.
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Jun 9, 2019 20:55
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Whiskey golem! Pigapult!
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Jun 9, 2019 22:02
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Dameius posted:They gotta deal with the Pepper Gang. They are the local hot headed rabble rousers, lead by Jalapeño. They even have their version of a prat fall guy, Bell. As well as their real boss, Carolina Dan, the "Reaper".
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Jun 9, 2019 22:44
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Dameius posted:They gotta deal with the Pepper Gang. They are the local hot headed rabble rousers, lead by Jalapeño. They even have their version of a prat fall guy, Bell. Baller Ina posted:As well as their real boss, Carolina Dan, the "Reaper". Jalapeno is the one who prizes fame and fortune, so everyone lets him act like the leader. Cayenne is the angry one who they have to stop from killing hostages. Ancho and Poblano are twins; they looked identical once, but Ancho has taken to spending more time outside and looks more leathery and 'dried-out.' Shishito is the hand-to-hand specialist and potential Bad Asian Stereotype is you aren't careful. Habanero is a pyromaniac and demolitions specialist. There's one dude who dresses in anachronistic and out-of-place gear like a kilt and even plays bagpipes; he's known only by his nickname of Scotch Bonnet.
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Jun 9, 2019 22:52
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The absolute right answer to D&D resting problems is to copy 13th age, maybe adjust up how many battles per full rest. If for some reason your group doesn't like that method, then you can do an even quicker fix. Cross out 1 hour for short rests and write 5 minutes. Then cross out 8 hours of sleep for long rests and write one week of R&R.
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Jun 10, 2019 01:23
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I'd love some recommendations for "round robin improv questions" about a battle I want to abstract in my 40k Imperial Guard game. Stuff like "Player X, During an Ork assault on the line you ran out of ammunition just as three Ork sappers charged your position. How did [player to your left] come to your aid, and how did it almost get them killed?"
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Jun 10, 2019 14:58
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Jack B Nimble posted:I'd love some recommendations for "round robin improv questions" about a battle I want to abstract in my 40k Imperial Guard game. Separate those out, so one player says how they helped and the next says how it went wrong.
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Jun 10, 2019 20:20
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Should I go around the table like that until everyone has given creative input on something that happened to one PC, and repeat that until every PC has gotten that treatment? My group is a bunch of grumpy olds so these "collaborative narrative" ideas are foriegn to us, but I'm pushing it and the party is receptive, we're just not used to it so I want to make sure I understand what it's going to be like.
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Jun 10, 2019 20:31
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I think twice round the table is fine if people are having fun. You end up making a lot of story very fast which can be exhilarating, then it gets reincorporated later ("oh is that the guy who blew off his own hand and got the artificial arm?") which is neat.
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Jun 10, 2019 22:20
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Could take a page out of microscope and do rounds til everyone passes
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Jun 10, 2019 22:22
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Is there a game that uses round-robin questions like that alongside dice or point/tokens/etc as a primary resolution mechanic? Not Fiasco.
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Jun 11, 2019 01:00
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Hey! I'm going to be running FFG Star Wars Edge of The Empire and it'll be a session 0 in a couple of days. I just need to know what sort of feeler questions I should throw out while they are making their characters. I know to ask what their goals are, what sort of campaign they want, their relationships to each PC, and how they feel about the world. Some questions on what they did before the campaign started and give me three people each like one person who you can trust, one person you fell out of contact with, and one person who is a rival to you. You guys got any good questions that can be asked too?
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Jun 12, 2019 03:55
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Ramba Ral posted:Hey! I'm going to be running FFG Star Wars Edge of The Empire and it'll be a session 0 in a couple of days. A nice thing about SWFFG is that a lot of this stuff should flow from prompts in character creation your players will be asked to give you an Obligation (a ready-made narrative hook w/ mechanical implications) along with the standard abstract backstory stuff like Background and Motivation follow up on those things (particularly Obligation) and you should get most of what you need. beyond that...it's Star Wars, meaning players sometimes have pretty specific expectations and strong likes/dislikes so there's some setting-specific stuff you should establish, if your players are Star Wars nerds If you're playing in the original trilogy era - do your players want to engage with the greater political drama of the Rebellion vs. the Empire at any point, or do they want to steer way clear of that and just be crooks making a living? Do they want to engage with Jedi/Sith Force lore? Do they want to engage with cosmic Force mysteries while avoiding the Jedi/Sith tropes? that sort of thing find out in advance if they've got any pet peeves about the star wars universe that you want to avoid or deconstruct, or anything about it that they particularly like so you can make sure to touch on it. PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jun 12, 2019 |
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Jun 12, 2019 05:48
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I'm running Ghosts of Saltmarsh from the beginning, and it looks like my players are keen on weirdo religions, which is neat. there's already a built in sea god, but I'm thinking I'll make the (very vaguely motivated) Scarlet Brotherhood into more of a cult. Any thoughts on ways to make cults interesting, and particularly how to tweak the haunted house in a culty direction?
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Jun 12, 2019 12:19
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Cults are sometimes interesting when they're wrong. Either they've been manipulated or set up, or their theology/philosophy is based on wrong information, and the thing they think they're summoning/serving/etc isn't what they think it is.
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Jun 12, 2019 23:56
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Something like Hot Fuzz where the cult is extremely personable and still has their quirks even in full robed sacrifice mode.
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Jun 13, 2019 01:01
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Symbolism should be everywhere, like they should be seeing weird shapes / stuff that denotes a group. Especially over the top things, like the cities road work is actually the clans symbol, or the weirdly built castle is actually super symbolic.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:52
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To me there's two ways cults are compelling. One is playing up the idea of them being potentially everywhere. Who's in the cult? If the idea that it could be anyone gets planted, then it's effectively *everyone*. Even if the cult is in fact fairly small, sowing uncertainty about who is involved can make them into a much bigger threat in people's minds. The other is when the cult is encountered up front, and doesn't initially appear to be a cult at all. It's a charitable organization. It's a free school for troubled youth. In an RPG, something that can be a useful contact and maybe even an ally for the PCs, at first. Yes, of course we'll give you a place to stay for the night. Oh yes, of course we'll look after that important NPC for you. I listened to a podcast a while ago where someone was talking about a youth group they had belonged to for several years, and didn't even recognize was a cult until after they left it. That's the good stuff for your story - gradually uncovering the cult-y part and realizing what they've been involved in is the really good bit here.
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Jun 13, 2019 13:57
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I think you do have to be careful if your have a very adversarial cult who seems like they could be anyone, because sometimes players who get burned once by that sort of thing become paranoid wrecks that are painful to RP with because they adopt a policy of telling literally nobody anything ever. Some players are very good in that environment as fake names and cover stories just roll off their tongues, others just freeze up because they're worried if they say anything it will get used against them.
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Jun 13, 2019 18:15
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I'm currently running a 4e D&D game and I've been thinking about how to rule character deaths. The players don't want their characters to have the possibility of dying, which is a reasonable position. On the other hand, I don't think it would be good for the game to lose that tension in the combat scenes. By the rules, there's a Raise Dead ritual, so they could track down someone who knows it to get it done. That has some big problems, though - they're currently investigating a murder, so why not just get the victim resurrected? This will only get more problematic as they get more powerful - why not just resurrect the dark lord Sauron? It also kinda "devalues" death to the point of a financial transaction and a fetch quest, which isn't great. So I was thinking that when a PC gets "killed" (IE: Three failed death saves or negative bloodied hitpoints) they are instead "taken out" and have to pay some kind of penalty. I was thinking something like: 1. Miss an adventure while recovering (player plays someone else) 2. Take a permanent injury (lost eye, for example - no effect on stats, just some flavour and a reminder the "death" happened) 3. Lose something valuable - get your magic armour ruined for instance It'd be the player's choice what happens to their character, with GM's approval of course. Anyone got any other suggestions for the list, or other ways to deal with a combat game that has no chance of a character dying?
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Jun 13, 2019 18:51
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Gort posted:... This makes me think of the Death Box from Tenra Bansho Zero. This is a fuzzy secondhand description, but in short, there's a Death Box on the character sheet that only the player can check, and then only voluntarily. If the box isn't checked, their character can't die, but can only be knocked out or maybe captured or what have you. Checking the box indicates that their character is pushing themselves to their utmost limit and risking death - you can check the box in response to a save or incoming damage to completely negate it, or to automatically succeed at some task, and while the box is checked the character receives bonuses to checks and attacks and stuff. But if you die, you dead. Un-checking the box requires a non-trivial amount of rest and recuperation, so you can't just pull out all the stops on a whim, or every fight in a dungeon. I like this system a lot; it gives mechanical weight to the usual unwritten agreement GMs have not to let the party get accidentally TPK'd by three kobolds, but also lets your players Get Nuts and put it all on the line in a dramatic fashion.
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Jun 13, 2019 19:14
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It may not make sense for your game but the consequences could be more... fantastic? Dungeon World's move for being reduced to zero hit points has, as the success-with-consequences result, "Death will offer you a bargain. Take it and stabilize or refuse and pass beyond the Black Gates into whatever fate awaits you." Replace "death" with whatever makes the most sense for that character. Depending on the context there may also be completely obvious narrative consequences for a death in that situation. As long as you're not losing a PC in every combat you can probably handle it on a case-by-case basis and fall back on mechanical consequences when nothing else makes sense.
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Jun 13, 2019 19:19
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Sometimes it is narratively appropriate for a character to die, and if you don't want to make that call by fiat, you can give a character the option to make a heroic last stand(with some manner of mechanical support) upon being dropped in exchange for real proper death happening or being on the table. (Not sure if this would be declared when they hit 0 hp, or after the death saves, since it'd be a little weird if they were unconscious for 3 rounds and then stood up and had a last stand.) Being able to choose the moment to go out in a bang probably feels a lot better than "alright that's an 8, sounds like you die".
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Jun 13, 2019 19:19
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:Is there a game that uses round-robin questions like that alongside dice or point/tokens/etc as a primary resolution mechanic? Yes, it's called a penny for my thoughts.
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Jun 13, 2019 19:39
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Gort posted:Anyone got any other suggestions for the list, or other ways to deal with a combat game that has no chance of a character dying? A houserule I've heard is that at any time during a combat, the party can declare a rout. This ends the combat with no possibility of further harm to the players, but the party decisively fail at what they were trying to achieve with the combat. (Ideally you should clarify at the time you're rolling initiative what the consequences of a rout will be.) The corrollary to this is that if you're running this system, you need to design combat encounters so that there is always something at stake more important than "Do the party survive?". But that's kind of a good thing to do in any case.
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Jun 13, 2019 21:54
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Yeah that's the 13th age approach, it's smart. I don't think I've seen a party run away from an encounter ever though.
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Jun 13, 2019 22:28
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sebmojo posted:Yeah that's the 13th age approach, it's smart. I don't think I've seen a party run away from an encounter ever though. I've played a lot of 13th age with different groups and I've never seen a party run away either. I've also never seen anyone even mention resting early at a campaign loss. But I think those rules are brilliant. They do their job by being there but never being used.
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Jun 14, 2019 10:04
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13th Age also has a rule attached to its resurrection spell where any given cleric (it's clerics only) may only cast it four times total in their life, with penalties for both caster and recipient getting rapidly worse each time. There are interesting implications, including how anyone powerful enough to cast it has probably had to cast it once or twice already and will be wary of doing it again or indeed advertising they can, or how anyone who can cast it fresh will therefore be in the focus of a whole lot of factions. Had a whole character concept built around that once, with a Unique Thing of "has been resurrected", posing the questions a) by whom and b) why resurrect a level 1 nobody? Campaign fizzled, unfortunately. So in 4E it's a 6th level ritual and hardly the kind of ultimate spell a caster can learn that games like 13th Age imply. To some degree, I'd argue that "cheapening death" is its entire point and the revolving door afterlife is a feature, not a bug, of D&D. But obviously you also want to keep tension high. It helps to think of alternate setbacks to "death" - for example, if a character "dies" in combat they're actually badly injured, can't rejoin this fight, and the party has to find a way to get them back into action again (for this, you could refluff the entire Raise Dead ritual into something like Restoration that heals broken limbs, mends otherwise career-ending injuries etc., all while keeping the mechanics and penalties intact). If the entire party "dies", they could actually be captured by the enemy and have to fight their way out of that situation. Or if you prefer a more epic approach: if a character dies "Raise Dead" means the others have to travel to the afterlife and get them back (or in a TPK, the whole party has to fight its way back out of Hades).
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Jun 14, 2019 10:25
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Mr. Prokosch posted:I've played a lot of 13th age with different groups and I've never seen a party run away either. Me neither, so the other thing is that you as a GM have to frequently remind your players "Remember, you can always rout at this point".
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Jun 14, 2019 10:52
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