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Tea Bone posted:I’m about to start my first campaign as DM. For the first session I’m running a pre-made but have a world and story outline to fall into after that. What are some better ways to tie the main story hook into the end of the first adventure which are more interesting than “Local historian reads the documents you found and it’s an ancient prophecy about the end of the world”? "This ancient prophecy is missing a page, go find it!" "There's a foot note here about a golden idol, this prophecy might be hooey but that gold is very real" "Woo we got the pages! Now to return them and get our rewar--- wait where'd that priest dude go with our money?"
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Sep 19, 2019 15:57
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Have there be notes of the translation found with the pages. It leaves the translation in the hands of others still, but makes the discovery of what it says part of the adventure rather than a post script.
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Sep 19, 2019 16:10
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Tea Bone posted:it’s an ancient prophecy about the end of the world”? It’s a very recent prophecy about the end of the world, the prophet is probably still alive. Maybe it’s even a letter with a return address Reveilled fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Sep 19, 2019 |
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Sep 19, 2019 16:40
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Make sure to tie some other element of the premade adventure into your planned apocalypse, even if it's as simple as one of the enemies also being a double agent for the Evil Cult, or mentioning the enormous comet that has been visible in the sky for the last few weeks.
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Sep 19, 2019 16:54
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“Oy, looks like these lads were trying to prevent the end of the world. The villains in this prophecy.... it’s you lot.”
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Sep 19, 2019 17:28
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My Lovely Horse posted:gently caress the Faerie Knight bit is amazing. Really could have used it a few weeks ago when I ran a feywood interlude, but I'm definitely gonna try and remember it for future similar bits. Thank you, I was pretty proud of that one.  For adventure bits that don't involve killing poo poo or solving puzzles I like to dip into the mood of the old Pendragon adventures, where half of the things you encounter are in some way tests of your courage and honor and compassion and virtue. You generally have to rip them apart a bit in order to have them apply to a game that isn't as chivalry-focused as Pendragon, mind you, but that's generally pretty doable. I find a lot of players dig the idea of sometimes getting to explore facets of their character that aren't represented by numbers on a character sheet. (unless they're playing Pendragon then there are numbers on the character sheet, but you get the idea)
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Sep 19, 2019 18:05
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How about their job is actually to bring about the end of the world for extremely good reasons? Or they are working for the person who wants to do that and only find out halfway through?
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Sep 19, 2019 21:34
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The ancient prophecy is about how the world is about to start.
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Sep 19, 2019 21:40
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The prophecy speaks of a great evil that has already arisen and is coming this way. There is no way to fight it (indeed, the prophecy speaks of 'false hope' as one of its primary vectors of infection); the only chance is to sever the world in two and escape with the uncorrupted portion, leaving the rest to fight a losing battle. This is the prophesied "end of the world", and the longer it is put off, the less of the world will be salvageable.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:15
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The world got ended a long time ago, and was better before (maybe it doesn't currently seem awful, maybe it does currently seem awful). The evil gods/adventurers imprisoned/killed an important balancing force and threw the world into darkness/chaos. The prophesy is the only evidence that it didn't used to be like this. A bunch of the powerful rulers of the world (or their ancestors) are actually complicit in the apocalypse and conspired to do this bad thing. Maybe it turns out that the seemingly benign lords are actually very sinister once you dig into the past, and you need to beat them to start fixing the world. Maybe they regret it and will help once confronted. Maybe the "balancing" factor is actually a big problem and imprisoning it seemed necessary, but now there are bad consequences, so whether you free it or keep it imprisoned, something bad will probably happen.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:36
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Tias posted:That does sound amazing. Would it, in your opinion, work with a couple of guys whose only prior gaming experience is D&D? Oh yeah, it's really simple to play/run. The only conceivable obstacle is Histories. Instead of a bunch of tiny lovely skills you have two or three histories for what your character has done ("master huntsman in the court of King Fred" "pickpocket on the streets of dunwall") that give you appropriate bonuses when they're relevant. If your players aren't great on improv and either ignore backstory or have overly elaborate ones it can be kinda tricky to come up with a neat sentence like that. And power gamers might try and push their luck with applicability, it does rely on people not taking the piss. What I did was send the players a sketch of the countries/factions ahead of time (okay way more than a sketch, as I originally envisioned the campaign being very location-hopping) , and then we bounced ideas around for what their characters could be. Which gave me a billion plot threads to exploit, and I think after 10 sessions I'm about to reveal the daisy chain of mysterious figures in one backstory being someone quite familiar in another's backstory and poo poo is gonna massively hit the fan.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:49
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Infinite Karma posted:The world got ended a long time ago, and was better before (maybe it doesn't currently seem awful, maybe it does currently seem awful). The evil gods/adventurers imprisoned/killed an important balancing force and threw the world into darkness/chaos. The prophesy is the only evidence that it didn't used to be like this. A bunch of the powerful rulers of the world (or their ancestors) are actually complicit in the apocalypse and conspired to do this bad thing. this is sort of dark souls? you could easily rip off some dark souls, the quasi implied plot in that is great.
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Sep 20, 2019 00:27
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sebmojo posted:this is sort of dark souls? you could easily rip off some dark souls, the quasi implied plot in that is great.
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Sep 20, 2019 01:00
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Glory to Italia!
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Whybird posted:The prophecy speaks of a great evil that has already arisen and is coming this way. There is no way to fight it (indeed, the prophecy speaks of 'false hope' as one of its primary vectors of infection); the only chance is to sever the world in two and escape with the uncorrupted portion, leaving the rest to fight a losing battle. This is the prophesied "end of the world", and the longer it is put off, the less of the world will be salvageable. And this has elements of FR's The Sundering if you want other divine reality-severing inspiration.
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Sep 20, 2019 01:02
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sebmojo posted:this is sort of dark souls? you could easily rip off some dark souls, the quasi implied plot in that is great.
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Sep 20, 2019 01:12
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Strom Cuzewon posted:It's written by one dude, who got pissed off with WotC loving up the DnD supplements he wrote, and decided to make his own insane passion project - yeah there's some slightly wonky rules, and it needs a drat good editing, but it's absolutely dripping with atmosphere and style in both writing and mechanics. Characters have a stock of "mood" which can be damaged in social combat, but also can be used to absorb hits or boost rolls, which leads to fantastic fiction/mechanic interactions like torturing someone with nightmares to make them easier to kill, or punching a dude so brutally that people watching lose all respect for him. Nobles can get magic too, magic users are either nobility who use it openly or weirdos who use it secretly. Rather than being more consistent and predictable than other ways of doing things, like in D&D, it has a good chance of backfiring and a reasonable chance of doing something unintentional and horrific. People hate and fear magic and using it is essentially saying "I'm ok if this causes everyone in a ten mile radius to turn to dust, or it blights my homeland, I really want to cast sleep!" I feel like for once this balances out. Magic users are more capable of accomplishing any goal than normal folks, but unless you're a psychopath you'll want to explore any other avenue first. I think the real flaws in SK, which generally rocks hard, is that full party combat can turn into a mess to resolve and it lacks material. It needs a lot more equipment, enemies, and styles to support long term play.
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Sep 20, 2019 02:44
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ILL Machina posted:And this has elements of FR's The Sundering if you want other divine reality-severing inspiration. I was thinking more of the ending of Loom by Lucasarts, if I'm honest, but that works too.
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Sep 20, 2019 07:08
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The forces of "balance" are actually just evil but lazier.
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Sep 20, 2019 07:25
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Josef bugman posted:The forces of "balance" are actually just evil but lazier. The forces of Doug
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Sep 20, 2019 08:50
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Josef bugman posted:The forces of "balance" are actually just evil but lazier. The "forces of balance" are actually funded by the evil overlord and exist solely to show up whenever the players complete a dungeon and insist that half of the treasure goes to the evil overlord.
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Sep 20, 2019 09:00
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The metaphysical force of smug centrism made manifest
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Sep 20, 2019 09:04
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Thanks for all the ideas guys! sebmojo posted:How about their job is actually to bring about the end of the world for extremely good reasons? Yeah this is pretty much what I'm going for. In a nut shell, the party are going to be collecting artefacts belonging to "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" like figures so they can't be used to end the world. Late in the game they're going to find out that they are in fact the prophesied horsemen, and have been being moved by two sects of Angels, one group who want the world to end because "That's what the prophecies say so that's God's will" and a lucifer/devil type character, who doesn't believe the world should end just because that's what the prophecies say. It's going to turn out that the lucifer character was ostracised from the other angels because he tried to gift free will to man so they could make their own choices and not blindly follow prophecies. The party will (hopefully) work with lucifer to fight their destiny to end the world and instead use their power to imprison/destroy the other angels. I have a fair idea about how I'm going to breadcrumb the story to my players once the campaign gets going but it's just the initial hook into "great job stopping those goblin raiders, turns out the world is ending" that I'm struggling with. Reveilled posted:It’s a very recent prophecy about the end of the world, the prophet is probably still alive. Thanks! I think I could do something with this! If both sects of angels are using the players as pawns, it would make sense that they would make sure they have a run in with someone who has had a vision of the world ending and advise them they had to stop it.
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Sep 20, 2019 09:27
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Guildencrantz posted:The metaphysical force of smug centrism made manifest Pretty much. I don't understand "grand balance" narratives all that much in fiction where good is loving physical and measurable.
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Sep 20, 2019 12:35
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Josef bugman posted:Pretty much. Pardon, milord, might you lend me a dram of beneficence?
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Sep 20, 2019 18:04
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Josef bugman posted:Pretty much. There could be balance between, say, the elements. If some embodiment of Fire wanted to make a bigger forge and build the best throne, but the embodiment of Water kept snuffing it out, so Fire got rid of Water, and now the world is a scorched desert, the balance got hosed up, and the poor mortals would probably be happier if Water came back. And vice versa, if Water got rid of Fire, maybe the mortals live in a frozen wasteland. If Life finally beat Death and nothing died anymore, the world would change dramatically, and probably for the worse. Lots of starving people who never die of it, invincible giants sitting on people, all-powerful barons who never let anything change. The grand balance doesn't need to be mysterious, the fundamental forces of reality are up for grabs in a magical fantasy world, mess with those.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:53
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Tea Bone posted:In a nut shell, the party are going to be collecting artefacts belonging to "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" like figures so they can't be used to end the world. I would avoid using prophecies that explicitly mention the players. The whole point of RPGs is that your PCs have free will: if one of them dies, or leaves the party, or the player moves to the Arctic Circle, then you have to scrap the prophecy. You're better off with something like "When the four artefacts are gathered together, their wielders will end the world". It also sounds like you're planning ahead a lot further than you need to. Rather than figure out what the players are going to do in five adventures' time, figure out what's going on in the world now and how they feel the ripples of your grand plot. By the time they arrive at the stuff you have planned out, a whole load of other more interesting things will have developed because of PCs being PCs, and you'll have to throw all your carefully-made plans out anyway. In this case: What's going on in the world is that there are artefacts belonging to the Horsemen, which two factions of angels are both trying to collect: one because they want to end the world with them as per the prophecy, one because they want to keep them out of the hands of the others. Presumably there are also a bunch of mortals who want these artefacts: some because they're working for one faction of angels or another, some because they know the prophecy as well, and some because they think having the sword of War would be real neato. Maybe think about fleshing a few of these factions out, but you don't need to go bananas with this -- just a few bullet points is usually plenty. So now you're in a good place to start thinking about how ripples from everything that's going on here can show up in the lair of some goblins that a bunch of lowly adventurers have started trashing. Maybe the goblins have somehow come across one of these artefacts and they're trying to figure out what it is. Maybe they've learned the location (and that's why they're raiding the place the PCs show up to stop them raiding). Maybe they're in the employ of one of the factions looking for it, but they're so low down the food chain that all they know is they have to go after a magical scythe and they've just been looting every scythe they can find, just to be sure. You don't have to give the PCs the whole story right away -- let them bod around doing PC stuff for a bit (their backstories will have plenty to occupy them and give you ideas for things to throw at them) and whenever they go do something, spend some time thinking how the secret artefact war might have touched this place.
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Sep 20, 2019 20:26
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Whybird posted:I would avoid using prophecies that explicitly mention the players. The whole point of RPGs is that your PCs have free will: if one of them dies, or leaves the party, or the player moves to the Arctic Circle, then you have to scrap the prophecy. You're better off with something like "When the four artefacts are gathered together, their wielders will end the world". give them mysteries and listen to what they think the answers might be, it's quite possible they'll have better ideas than you and you can steal them and make them feel smart
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Sep 20, 2019 23:36
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sebmojo posted:give them mysteries and listen to what they think the answers might be, it's quite possible they'll have better ideas than you and you can steal them and make them feel smart A thousand times this.
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Sep 20, 2019 23:51
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sebmojo posted:give them mysteries and listen to what they think the answers might be, it's quite possible they'll have better ideas than you and you can steal them and make them feel smart I just had a murder mystery for my group and while they correctly determined the murderer, the method of kill and setup they presented was so much better than mine that I just nodded and agreed with the story. I wholeheartedly endorse this.
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Sep 21, 2019 02:34
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I've started incorporating some music in my game for mood and for making battles move along more quickly, and want to incorporate visuals as well- Partially it's because I have a player who can't visualize things in her mind (aphantasia), and while she's used to it enough to get a metaphorical picture through words, I'd like to make it easier on her and spice it up a lil bit for everyone. I use a laptop while running games, and have an extra 17" 4:3 LCD panel lying around to put behind my screen, facing the players- is there good Windows software for being able to see what's on the second monitor, on my main screen? Any must-have software that I should look into, as long as I'm setting this up?
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Sep 21, 2019 05:15
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sebmojo posted:give them mysteries and listen to what they think the answers might be, it's quite possible they'll have better ideas than you and you can steal them and make them feel smart DivineCoffeeBinge posted:A thousand times this. Malpais Legate posted:I just had a murder mystery for my group and while they correctly determined the murderer, the method of kill and setup they presented was so much better than mine that I just nodded and agreed with the story. You don't have to be this freewheeling, but I often don't even come up with solutions to puzzles or plot threads. I'll create the setup, and I'll come up with complications and stuff like that. But during the session/s the players will basically infill all of the details for me based on their actions, and their own plotting. I use a similar approach for planning combats too. For example, I know that I want them to fight this group of monsters and that I want the monsters to have the high ground and that the fighting space will be restricted. I don't know where the players will decide to go though, so if they decide to follow a plot thread into a cave, hey suddenly that cave has a narrow chamber with different elevations. If they end up in the city, then the fight happens at two story tavern instead. Either way the encounter mechanically proceeds as I designed it, but the set dressing is entirely dependent and reactive to the player actions.
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Sep 21, 2019 08:04
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Peanut Butler posted:I've started incorporating some music in my game for mood and for making battles move along more quickly, and want to incorporate visuals as well- Roll20 - actually a platform to play online. Runs in your browser, and you can run a second instance that you put up on the player screen. Maptool - another online client, but doesn't depend on a platform and runs as a standalone application. Run a local server from your PC, put up a second instance on the player screen that connects locally as a client, and you're done. Masterplan - custom software for D&D 4E, but would work well just to display images. Has a dedicated "player view" so no need to faff about with running the same software in two instances. Pretty major drawback is that it's hard to find online these days, but the 4E thread could likely help you out.
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Sep 21, 2019 09:26
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Mr. Prokosch posted:Nobles can get magic too, magic users are either nobility who use it openly or weirdos who use it secretly. Rather than being more consistent and predictable than other ways of doing things, like in D&D, it has a good chance of backfiring and a reasonable chance of doing something unintentional and horrific. People hate and fear magic and using it is essentially saying "I'm ok if this causes everyone in a ten mile radius to turn to dust, or it blights my homeland, I really want to cast sleep!" I feel like for once this balances out. Magic users are more capable of accomplishing any goal than normal folks, but unless you're a psychopath you'll want to explore any other avenue first. There's an expansion with loads of new styles coming out any day now. Any day! It's coming soon! Promise!
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Sep 21, 2019 11:34
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Dameius posted:You don't have to be this freewheeling, but I often don't even come up with solutions to puzzles or plot threads. I'll create the setup, and I'll come up with complications and stuff like that. But during the session/s the players will basically infill all of the details for me based on their actions, and their own plotting. I use a similar approach for planning combats too. For example, I know that I want them to fight this group of monsters and that I want the monsters to have the high ground and that the fighting space will be restricted. I don't know where the players will decide to go though, so if they decide to follow a plot thread into a cave, hey suddenly that cave has a narrow chamber with different elevations. If they end up in the city, then the fight happens at two story tavern instead. Either way the encounter mechanically proceeds as I designed it, but the set dressing is entirely dependent and reactive to the player actions. This is the best approach imo. Narrative sleight of hand.
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Sep 21, 2019 13:40
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Peanut Butler posted:I've started incorporating some music in my game for mood and for making battles move along more quickly, and want to incorporate visuals as well- I wouldn't duplicate, I'd just extend your desktop over there and have a fullscreen PP slideshow or YouTube links up on the monitor
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Sep 21, 2019 18:59
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My Lovely Horse posted:Outside of just duplicating the display across screens, which has a bunch of obvious drawbacks, there's a bunch of software made specifically for displaying RPG maps which all, in one way or another, allow you to manipulate a map on your screen and simultaneously show it to your players on the second screen. The map can obviously be any kind of image so you can put up mood images too and simply ignore all the RPG stuff like grids, tokens, HP tracking etc. that come with the software. The main ones I know about are: nice, thanks- was thinking about roll20, and might end up using it, but also kinda wanna go even simpler. That said, after a couple sessions with the new setup, I might start using it for fight encounters. We don't really use grids, instead opting for more vague descriptions, but it can get a little repetitive describing the scene ILL Machina posted:I wouldn't duplicate, I'd just extend your desktop over there and have a fullscreen PP slideshow or YouTube links up on the monitor yes, of course- what I'm looking for is, like- a preview pane? that'll show me what's on the screen facing the players so I don't have to also bring a mirror, lol
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Sep 21, 2019 21:41
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Peanut Butler posted:yes, of course- what I'm looking for is, like- a preview pane? that'll show me what's on the screen facing the players so I don't have to also bring a mirror, lol PowerPoint has that, along with room for notes on the preview screen, but you probably cant do anything else on the preview computer. My other dumb thought was to stream pictures with OBS
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Sep 21, 2019 22:13
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Can anyone recommend a good system-agnostic guide to writing and running a murder mystery in a TRPG?
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Sep 22, 2019 04:17
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Can anyone recommend a good system-agnostic guide to writing and running a murder mystery in a TRPG? Everyone plays a butler.
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Sep 22, 2019 04:30
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Can anyone recommend a good system-agnostic guide to writing and running a murder mystery in a TRPG? I haven't found the kind of guide you're looking for, but I can offer some advice, at least: Be flexible. Don't have a single 'big reveal' in mind where there's only one person it could be and all the clues are built to point in that direction. If you do, one of two things will happen - the players will miss a vital clue or three and never be able to solve the mystery, at which point no one is having fun, or they'll figure it out in ten minutes flat and now what the gently caress are you gonna do for the rest of the game session? Instead, try to have a cast where at least three or four characters could be the killer. This is important because you want to... Throw curveballs. Let the players settle on a suspect... then produce a piece of evidence that casts doubt on their conclusions. Have them settle on a second suspect... then indisputably prove their innocence. Have them settle on a third... then have that third suspect mysteriously murdered too! The whole idea is to upend your players' expectations just when they've started to get comfortable thinking "oh, this is the person who did it!" In order to do that, though, you'll want to... Encourage tabletalk. Players are, by and large, fantastically creative people. They will think of poo poo you never thought of. That is an enormous resource for you. So encourage them, every so often, to take a break from the investigation and discuss the evidence so far and what conclusions it's leading them to. Then strip-mine everything they talked about for ideas. If they say "oh the chambermaid is from Freedonia, obviously, you can tell by her accent," then yes, let the chambermaid be from Freedonia! Which is at war with the Principality of Campaignsetting! Oh poo poo! Maybe she's the killer - or if not, certainly nothing she says can be trusted, as Freedonians are inveterate liars. Did you have the chambermaid provide anyone's alibi? Congrats, you have a new suspect! Maybe even a new killer! In effect, it all boils down to the flexibility. Your players will either fail to figure out your mystery, or they'll succeed too fast. So the only way to counter that is to not have a solution in mind and let them narrow down your choices for you.
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Sep 22, 2019 09:02
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