|
Helical Nightmares posted:Like Cthulhu would have wanted. Yes! Top tier GMing and PC banter made it my all time favorite rpg campaign. Another party scheme was fighting a star vampire in a small desert town and realizing crashing characters’ cars into was more effective than shooting it and failing to dynamite it. Our poor unpaid intern/writer did more damage too himself and the ex-IRA soldier with the explosives than the star vampire.
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2020 02:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
Elendil004 posted:but also Ken Hites personal politics Not really fond of depicting the "chad" Lovecraft "fans" as literal blonde-haired wanna-be Viking dudes. That's probably what Lovecraft would've wanted and that's the last thing you wanna do.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2020 02:30
|
|
|
Secret Machine posted:Yes! Top tier GMing and PC banter made it my all time favorite rpg campaign. Another party scheme was fighting a star vampire in a small desert town and realizing crashing characters’ cars into was more effective than shooting it and failing to dynamite it. Our poor unpaid intern/writer did more damage too himself and the ex-IRA soldier with the explosives than the star vampire. God this is one of those moments that I will remember forever. I completely forgot to calculate crash damage on the drivers, so at least one of you should have died 
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2020 02:58
|
|
|
Lumbermouth posted:God this is one of those moments that I will remember forever. I completely forgot to calculate crash damage on the drivers, so at least one of you should have died DJ and Captain Bernard were just living on borrowed time till that inopportune yachting accident vaporized all of their molecules. Also, I like the latest RPPR CoC/Delta Green episodes. They have been very fun and I’ve been appreciating the players’ solutions that don’t immediately escalate to dynamite and setting buildings on fire. I mean, besides Sundown. Big dynamite moment in that one.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2020 03:28
|
|
|
Secret Machine posted:After conferring with my keeper (who is also a goon), we determined you’ve followed the Cthulhu blueprint perfectly. The party should always be in a near state of disaster, committing crimes to cover the previous crimes, then going mad and/or dying. This is exactly what is happening as they have already executed, like literally had him kneel and put a bullet in the base of his skull, one of the high ranking cultists... with no witnesses other than the investigators themselves. So to the police... they just gang-land style executed an old man  They also JUST(like my session ended ~5 minutes ago) beat the ever living poo poo out of a cultist at 8am in broad daylight, dragged him into one of the investigator's store, force-fed him alcohol, then vigorously threatened him with such lines as "how bloody does your tongue have to be to be in this cult? Cause I can right bloody yours up if it'll help you get that promotion..." 
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2020 03:33
|
|
|
It doesn't even have to be violent, just chaotic! Our follow-up to the LA campaign is set in 1960s San Francisco and the investigators were at a party trying to track down an occultist's library. The staircase was being guarded, so our professor decided that the best course of action would be to break the toilet on the first floor and then ask to use the bathroom upstairs. Not clog the toilet. Straight up break it with his foot. So imagine you're the host of this party and all of a sudden you hear a porcelain smash and see a bunch of water start spraying out of the bathroom and then you're confronted with someone saying "hey the toilet is broken." Thankfully, another character used this gigantic argument as an opportunity to sneak upstairs.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2020 20:40
|
|
|
Lumbermouth posted:It doesn't even have to be violent, just chaotic! Our follow-up to the LA campaign is set in 1960s San Francisco and the investigators were at a party trying to track down an occultist's library. The staircase was being guarded, so our professor decided that the best course of action would be to break the toilet on the first floor and then ask to use the bathroom upstairs.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2020 20:51
|
|
|
Anyone have tips/pointers/house rules for group luck rolls? The 7e book just says "the person with the lowest Luck score should roll it" but then... it's not really a group roll, is it? I'm thinking of assigning each of my investigators a number, 1-6, have them ALL perform a group roll, then privately roll a d6 to see whose roll I use. Anyone have other ideas? It also gives them a sense of not knowing whose roll is being used, so they'll assume they fail most of the time
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2020 02:06
|
|
|
Johnny Truant posted:Anyone have tips/pointers/house rules for group luck rolls? The 7e book just says "the person with the lowest Luck score should roll it" but then... it's not really a group roll, is it?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2020 02:54
|
|
|
Does Ubbo-Sathla appear in any of the official adventures?
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2020 10:37
|
|
|
Has anyone tried fantasy ground with this? The Steam Summer sale is coming up and fantasy ground at times get big discounts on the modules. Thinking it might be fun to have during these still self isolating times.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2020 16:05
|
|
|
Waterfall Watcher posted:Has anyone tried fantasy ground with this? The Steam Summer sale is coming up and fantasy ground at times get big discounts on the modules. Thinking it might be fun to have during these still self isolating times. I use FG a lot, and it works well, the CoC module is well written and its fairly easy to use. I've just started a trail of cthulhu game doing the Eternal lies campaign - thats fan made and a bit more janky, but works well enough. have a few videos on my youtube if you want to see it in action. or don't - I'm not your boss.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2020 12:48
|
|
|
Grey Hunter posted:I use FG a lot, and it works well, the CoC module is well written and its fairly easy to use. I've just started a trail of cthulhu game doing the Eternal lies campaign - thats fan made and a bit more janky, but works well enough.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2020 16:12
|
|
|
Nessus posted:This is making me contemplate if there would be any other good straightforward "lenses" for a cosmic-horror game in this general field of things. Like, the OG CoC clearly sort of assumes that you're a club of Lovecraftian Protagonists of whatever sort - which has a range of action but does assume a certain scholarly-antiquarian bent. Delta Green similarly is looking at federal law enforcement/three letter agency types. Pulp Cthulhu is mostly the OG version with the action factor turned up so you hit Doc Savage/Indiana Jones. I've been thinking a lot about this and about ways to make the default setting for cosmic horror games more progressive -- if it's about defending your home from a dangerous and invasive Other then no matter how carefully you frame it, there's always going to be this nasty tinge of xenophobia working its way into your work. I played Night in the Woods recently and one of the things it does really well is drawing parallels between the cosmic horror destroying your hometown and the market forces destroying your hometown. It got me to thinking about how horror reflects the anxieties of the time, and how a lot of the fears facing our world (capitalism, the rise of fascism, the dehumanising influence of technology) feel like these vast, unknowable entities with inhuman motivations that we can't control or defeat, and which groups of people slavishly worship in the hopes of getting rewards. So a set of assumptions for Low Lovecraft: * Eldritch abominations aren't invading: they're already here. They've always been here, and they are part of the status quo. * They are reflections of the worst parts of humanity's psyche (or perhaps the worst parts of the human psyche have come about because of them; it's ambiguous.) * They don't have plans; they're mindless beings acting according to their own instincts. Their instincts are driving them to destroy the world, quite possibly as a side-effect. * There's no official agency to report back to. The world's equivalent of Delta Green serve them willingly and directly, and any authority figures (like the police, the army, etc.) are either unconsciously influenced to them or take their orders from people who are. * There's no unofficial organisation of monster-hunters fighting them. A number of small groups clue themselves in with occult knowledge and fight them, perhaps protecting a little bit of their world for a little bit longer, but they're completely fractitious because it's hard to distinguish a group of vigilantes gathering occult knowledge to fight Great Old Ones with a group of vigilantes gathering occult knowledge for their own agenda. * The investigators are outcasts. They're Kurt Russel in They Live, people who've seen something they shouldn't and had their lives destroyed as a consequence. They're surviving on a mixture of nerves and desperation, and the question isn't whether they succeed or not: it's whether they fail punching and screaming against the darkness, or quietly and submissively as the last of their will to resist is drained out of them.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2020 15:10
|
|
|
Whybird posted:I've been thinking a lot about this and about ways to make the default setting for cosmic horror games more progressive -- if it's about defending your home from a dangerous and invasive Other then no matter how carefully you frame it, there's always going to be this nasty tinge of xenophobia working its way into your work. I am entirely on board with 1, 3, 4 and 5; these do not even seem like a change for what seems like the underlying logic of the ~milieu~. I would question 2, or at least, I would not take 2 as a given: it MIGHT be the case (like that fun little pseudograph in one of the CoC rulebooks which claims that psychic awareness of Cthulhu's dreams have strongly influenced the concept of 'demonic monsters' worldwide) but I think it is tacking close to Unknown Armies, etc. Basically, you're centering the setting on humans, not the stories. However, 6. is actually a lot of what I was looking for when I talked about lenses. To explain what I mean, you could classify the Lovecraft stories in terms of their narrative characters as "New England WASP academics and middle-class dilettantes in the 1920s." And Delta Green of course is Three Letter Agencies Against the Mythos. So your point 6 would tend to be people in a marginal situation, and the antagonistic story elements would be immense structural elements of capitalism/institutional prejudices/etc which blend into cosmic horror; the new Marsh mill pressures you into joining their drat loving church, the cops are the one with the Cthulhu cult, etc. (Obviously you could innovate here, I just use the stock gribbles for illustration.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 28, 2020 08:33
|
|
|
Secret Machine posted:After conferring with my keeper (who is also a goon), we determined you’ve followed the Cthulhu blueprint perfectly. The party should always be in a near state of disaster, committing crimes to cover the previous crimes, then going mad and/or dying. My first DM I was given the Crimson Letters module to run. Anyway, my group was still new to this (it's been quarantainment, none of us have done any tabletop RPGs before this) and just promise anyone anything. I was intending to have the old half-ghoul wizard in town subtly hint at what they should do, and send them to the right place in the right time, but then they snooped around his store and came on the bedroom where his two ghoul kids live. So I figure what the gently caress, have him spill the full beans and tell them their asses belong to him now and they're gonna bring that book. The wrap-up summary was 'You've learned there are two copies of the Book. You've promised the book four times over, however, once to the original questgiver, once to the mob, and twice to Literal Satan.' The next day we picked up the module, a corpse rose, drove one mobster insane before the brawler and other mobster could bring it down, then the brawler reacted to the freaked out remaining mobster pulling a gun and demanding answers by smashing him to death with a nailbat. That scene ended with 'Following the screaming and gunfire, you climb up out of the morgue and leave the hospital into the midday sunlight, your bat caked with brains and rotting flesh. The coroner is following you from a safe distance, screaming about how he 'Knew you three wanted to poke his stiffs!' The cars parked in the streets are all damaged, and there's a fire hydrant blasting into the air and a powerline down over (the insane mobsters) crashed car, with the horn blaring. Sirens sound in the distance. Plus side you probably owe one less book.' (Oh yea and the cops were known to all be on the take with the mob). PipHelix fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Jul 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2020 00:50
|
|
|
Holy gently caress, I solicited advice on doing a CoC in 'Nam so I could mash up Predator/Annihilation/Platoon. Someone suggested Delta Green so I checked the sourcebook and holy smokes, the given reason for disbanding DG in Cambodia is basically what I already had planned. However, the two things I was hoping to add weren't covered in the books, so I figured I'd ask. 1. The combat just DRAGS. This might be a function of my group or a function of the game, but we've spent 2 hours on a 3 on 4 fight where two mooks were flattened by a car with one roll. The roll was a failure but I allowed for anything other than a fumble to count because of proximity and surprise and specifically to shorten the fight. I was hoping to do something whereby getting shot (based on setting, I'd think most of the combats will be gun focused, but wish in one hand and poo poo in the other as a GM) will be a seriously damaging thing, with the potential for instakills. I'd keep the odds of being hit minimizeable unless you're doing some Rambo stuff. 2. To counteract this, I was going to have Players run multiple PCs, probably two, with the option to recruit more on the fly (there's a lovecraft monster hunting the jungles and lots of soldiers from all sides, as well as civilians, running away from it). Neither of these seem covered by any CoC rules, so I figured I'd ask right off the top, does running two PCs who may not have aligned motivations and one or both may actively be hiding secrets from the team, or their other PC seem too much? I feel like that's manageable, but it would be a definitely be a role playing ask, and to date our group has mostly been just running our personalities through the characters, filtered by whatever skills they have. Also, towards the end, it's likely the Player might have to have a PC betray the group, including their other PC. I feel like, as an improv nerd and chaos muppet, I might be trying to map my idea of a GREAT time onto (more) normal people, who may not like it. Making the combat be exciting but quick is the main thing however. I'm imagining like, one round of hunkering down, returning fire and trying to spot where the fire is coming from, another round of maneuvering, a couple thrown grenades and machine gun barrages and the opposition withdraws, maybe leaving a wounded character to interrogate or a dead one to investigate for documents. (The setting is a previously trapped shoggoth is loose in the jungle, so anyone left alive is running for their lives, no one is trying to win a war.) But, yea 3-5 rounds tops, but maintaining a frisson of danger. Does anyone have advice on running combats in ways that are quick but seem fair?
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2020 02:02
|
|
|
What's bogging down your combat? It absolutely shouldn't be taking hours IRL to squish two guys with a car. Also please don't have your players run extra characters. It won't be as fun as you imagine, and the cross-motivations aren't really good - especially if they're assigned by the GM.
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2020 03:17
|
|
|
I would definitely not run multiple PCs per player, let them focus on one character. It's OK to keep a backup in the background if their 'main' beefs it in combat. Combat shouldnt bog down but if it's a case of players not used to the system then focus less on the mechanics and more on "ok what do you want to do? What is your goal in this combat round?" then listen, and translate it into the rules, so they learn "Sounds like you want to take a shot but you dont want to get hit back, you could dodge but then you don't get to shoot, or take a free 5' move into cover and hope it's enough to protect you as you fire from it."
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2020 03:55
|
|
|
PipHelix posted:1. The combat just DRAGS. This might be a function of my group or a function of the game, but we've spent 2 hours on a 3 on 4 fight where two mooks were flattened by a car with one roll. The roll was a failure but I allowed for anything other than a fumble to count because of proximity and surprise and specifically to shorten the fight. That said my usual convention thing was either to have people be in Dex order of initative, or just go from right to left. The important thing is mostly to make sure everyone gets to take a turn, although this has some rules about the advantage of how quick you can fire your gun. But you will not go far wrong if you make ref calls fast and quick. ("You get to cover, he can't hit you without an impale, but you can't shoot back with full accuracy without losing cover." etc. -- make Luck rolls in cases of dispute!) e: if you're worried about fairness: hash out a couple of 'statuses' people can claim by doing various things and have them be fixed, like "behind cover - hard to spot if not spotted; gunfire can't hit without a critical hit; can only snap shot to shoot back without losing cover." What I would do is frame the combat so that there is a clear and explicit goal the characters are trying to do ("disable the Marine who's gone insane but is in a fully loaded machine gun dugout," "get past the Shoggoth while it fights the VC platoon," etc.) and try to set it up so that thing is accomplishable. Generally speaking gunfire will quickly kill a human, although I imagine military guys would probably not have very low HP/Constitution and might be able to take two or three shots, assuming lucky dice. You could probably skip rolling for damage on incoming fire and just calculate it in a sartin way that is statistically average, perhaps rounding up to the nearest point; then you can roll for hitting PCs; this gives them a smidge of mitigation, on average. Nessus fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Jul 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2020 08:31
|
|
|
PipHelix posted:1. The combat just DRAGS. This might be a function of my group or a function of the game, but we've spent 2 hours on a 3 on 4 fight where two mooks were flattened by a car with one roll. The roll was a failure but I allowed for anything other than a fumble to count because of proximity and surprise and specifically to shorten the fight. PipHelix posted:Also, towards the end, it's likely the Player might have to have a PC betray the group, including their other PC. I feel like, as an improv nerd and chaos muppet, I might be trying to map my idea of a GREAT time onto (more) normal people, who may not like it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2020 23:20
|
|
|
Yeah new Delta Green just has guns lumped into "small caliber, medium caliber, large caliber" per type of gun with different rules for automatic fire. It also has rules for lethality or "did you just kill this thing instantly or not".
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2020 01:45
|
|
|
How long has Arkham Horror 2e been out of print? It’s amazing to me how expensive the expansions are online. I should have picked up a few of the small-box ones when I had the chance.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 20:00
|
|
|
Is that the 2005 edition? I've got the King in Yellow one.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2020 23:54
|
|
|
Yeah, the small box expansions like King in Yellow are 150-ish dollars secondhand.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 00:41
|
|
|
moths posted:What's bogging down your combat? It absolutely shouldn't be taking hours IRL to squish two guys with a car. Yea, that's what I was thinking. Like I said, multiple characters was an attempt to get around having combat involving guns be, you know, combat involving guns. As in if you occupy the wrong space at the wrong time you don't keep fighting and then have someone roll first aid+medicine then rest up at the hotel for a week. Your rear end is dead. Or at least on the ground yelling for help. So that combat didn't seem massively random and unfair, like, how, say casualties in a gunfight tend to be. We trade off DMing, and part of this is inexperience. On the one hand, DMs not willing to deviated: In our second game ever the GM had us get sprayed with machinegun bullets to prevent us from chasing down a mobster's getaway car (he had nothing prepared for this eventuality so he just had us get shot.). We spent like 30 minutes arguing about healing and I'm like 'We're in loving Harlem. I recognize this map, I used to live two blocks away and Harlem Hospital is two blocks south of that. A 70 year old Lawyer and a 30 year old journalist with clean rap sheets are talking to the NYPD while bleeding from gunshot wounds. We'd absolutely go to the hospital and get patched up. In fact we would probably be brought there, even against our will.' Nope, game says FA/M (none of us had this) so we just spend most of the rest of the module at half HP because we tried something the DM hadn't thought of and he panicked. On the other, I tried allowing too much deviation, player started a random fight with the party split (that should have killed the party). This was extremely annoying because this guy, when DM, allows for NO deviation from what the book's laid down. But when he plays other people's stuff he's an overexcited kid who just shortcuts through all the plot. So when the fight he starts jumps off, I hadn't prepared for this, the party was in no shape to have this fight, and whats worse the party was split. So I'm trying to A) Figure out where and in what relation everyone is to each other B) retcon a way for the other party members to get to this fight and save their friends in time C) Put enough English on the rolls that the group isn't waxed by one guy's ADD. (Thus: telling one player with basically no Drive Auto that since the two goons with her jump out to see why the lead car crashed, and are right in front of her, if she slams the gas, anything but a fumble is a hit, with reduced damage die. She managed to get good enough damage to knock them both out. I also allowed that the combat in the car was being done with penalties to hit and to damage, because the absolute warbeast I'd set up for the final bossfight was in the front seat was trying to swing at them in the rear, like a dad telling kids to knock it off. As it was two PCs were knocked cold.) Another part is we were playing with someone who paid absolutely no attention to the game, and then would agonize for I'm not kidding like up to ten minutes about whether to swing the loving bat already. They are no longer with us, so far there's been no combat yet but I have to imagine this would help. One thing that I've gotten feedback on is, I absolutely hate the maps that come with D20, they're drawn like dogshit, so low res it can be hard to read the text and way too busy for how little there is to do in most of the rooms. I overcorrected I suppose by basically doing away with them in the last module I ran, which it was rightly called out that people didn't know who was left to fight, who was ganged up on, etc. So, necessary for combat, but I still feel like investigating rooms, I'm going to leave that stuff out. I hate as DM and the group is definitely frustrated by wandering around rooms checking cabinets and dressers and what all and there are like, two rooms in this mansion where anything of meaning is available to interact with. But I'm also not about to furnish this goddamn dream-palace the book makers gave me with twelve other rooms of poo poo to keep people interested. I just tell 'em, "there's 3 or 4 rooms that catch your interest" and all the rooms have overlapping clues so they can miss stuff and still complete the module and never feel like they have to just keep punching spot hidden at everything. PipHelix fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Jul 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 00:53
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:Yeah new Delta Green just has guns lumped into "small caliber, medium caliber, large caliber" per type of gun with different rules for automatic fire. It also has rules for lethality or "did you just kill this thing instantly or not". Oh really? I libgenned a scan of the first book (or an early edition) and my eyes crossed at the pages and pages and PAGES of random guns. Lethality rules intrigue me. I might have to be not a cheap bastard and pick up a recent book.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 00:56
|
|
|
PipHelix posted:Yea, that's what I was thinking. Like I said, multiple characters was an attempt to get around having combat involving guns be, you know, combat involving guns. As in if you occupy the wrong space at the wrong time you don't keep fighting and then have someone roll first aid+medicine then rest up at the hotel for a week. Your rear end is dead. Or at least on the ground yelling for help. So that combat didn't seem massively random and unfair, like, how, say casualties in a gunfight tend to be. On the latter part I think that this is a good plan and with no actual fight going on, you can just have tokens to make it clear where your individual investigators are. There wouldn't be any roll to get from one place to another, but you can even be open: "This will be important in case a fight breaks out, to define who is where." If you want to avoid it being a tension situation, use the map and "token is where you are" for all scenes involving meaningful locations. (So, like, not when you're in a taxi or whatever, or just going to the store.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 01:35
|
|
|
PipHelix posted:Oh really? I libgenned a scan of the first book (or an early edition) and my eyes crossed at the pages and pages and PAGES of random guns. Lethality rules intrigue me. I might have to be not a cheap bastard and pick up a recent book. http://www.delta-green.com/2016/02/download-delta-green-need-to-know/ It's either free or pay-what-you-want and the starter "kit" there gives you everything you need to create agents and run a game. I love the simplicity of the gear section and to be honest the fiddly nature of the weapons in Call of Cthulhu 7th annoys me, I don't care if one rifle has a 1% higher chance to jam than another but can carry 1 extra bullet. The best thing is that your agents can still be super specific about what kind of gun they are fondling but you can just shrug and say "sounds like a heavy/medium/light pistol to me." The lethality rules are also pretty fun and feel good in play, with people all diving for cover when an automatic weapon comes out (cover negates lethality).
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 01:59
|
|
|
Yeah the Player's Guide has absolutely everything you need to just wing it and have quick-functioning combat and mechanics. Handler's Guide is nice but honestly not super mandatory, it's got good neat rules for building mythos enemies and provides stats but it's 90% metaplot and history.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 03:49
|
|
|
Nessus posted:You're going to need to address that one way or another to have a fun game experience. We're doing 'Dance of Vice Horror and Ecstasy'. I dunno if this is in the module or the person decided to stretch their legs but there was a character who gave a lecture on mirror magic in the backroom of the bookshop. We interview him and the DM (good guy, just inexperienced) is evasive, 'uh, no, I don't know anything about that. Uh Mirror magic, it's just like, magic with mirrors.' Our interest is piqued considering we were literally sent through evil mirrors to a dreamworld where we were all murdered. Long story short, that guy was a TOTAL red herring, had nothing to do with anything, the DM just got caught flatfooted. Afterwards, I tell him, 'hey man. These books say to do this but these books can be kinda lovely. Dude was literally the focus of the scene (he was stood on a stage in the center of the room with all PCs and NPCs arrayed around him, he lectured us on a VERY evocative topic, you can either change what he says, or make up a clue for him to give us so we're not spending a half hour pumping this dry well. Annoying DM, guy who allows nothing but then does anything he wants, for example right after this scene asked the DM to get up and leave so he could plan a random assault of two old men who are somehow involved, at this bookshop and inviting us to come to their ceremony, to like, I guess spring this hijacking of the dude's story on him? I don't know RPGs but kicking the DM off his own table is WTF, seems to me as a newbie whos DMed two modules before? Fight kicked off and my brawler got a spell put on him cause no poo poo, these guys are wizards they're inviting us to a magic ceremony? I get fear put on me so I say my character shits his pants and runs, kicking poo poo out one leg of his pants, grinding it into the carpet with the other, out the door and he's gone and just go fix a drink? Then they spend an hour trying to kill two old men cause the next best fighter has 50 in his combat skill? This DM guy, he tells me that he likes the Red Herrings, the investigatory aspect is interesting. Agatha Christie novels have red herrings! I'm like, have a lot of problems with this, but simply say, yea dude, but we're all adults, some of us are east coast some of us are west coast, we all aren't young and all have jobs and a lot of us have early get ups. He wasn't having it. God this is getting annoying. He's impervious to the the most forthright of gentle criticisms, I feel like I'm gonna have to organize some united front of kinda over it, slightly embarrassed mid-30 year olds to tell a guy he's acting like a baby... PipHelix fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Jul 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 06:11
|
|
|
Very few of my opinions are 'musts' because so much roleplaying and running and writing is do what works but for gods sake you DO NOT need red herrings written into a scenario players will run down enough false leads. Also as a handler don't feel like you have to let an interrogation go on too long, it's ok to say "you've gotten everything you can get from this guy, what's next?"
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 14:45
|
|
|
It sounds like your DM player really likes to be in control of the table, to the point where it's impeding everyone else's enjoyment. If so, that's an interpersonal problem that can't really be addressed in-game. Direct confrontation isn't fun, but maybe start doing after-session "what worked/ what didn't" feedback chats. People are a lot more receptive when they're not defensive, and this framing makes it clear that you're trying to provide a better campaign - not picking on someone. It's also a good time to reinforce good roleplaying!Acknowledge the cool and creative choices your players made and give them some recognition. It's also a good opportunity to get feedback on your DMing, the adventure, your descriptions, pacing, etc. It's also easier to say "I noticed you were acting unilaterally for the group a lot, is eveyone else comfortable with that?" in the context of a session review.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 15:29
|
|
|
Whybird posted:So a set of assumptions for Low Lovecraft: There's some absolutely nasty content in there, but the new edition does at least advocate using stuff like an X-card and pre-game discussions of lines and veils and so on, which makes the more alarming examples of play much more palatable than they would otherwise have been because then, if you assume the examples of play include the safeguarding measures the book advocates, it's not a case of referee inflicting this stuff on their players without ongoing consent so much as a referee who's presenting this content under circumstances where any player can withdraw consent at any time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 19:24
|
|
|
moths posted:If so, that's an interpersonal problem that can't really be addressed in-game. Direct confrontation isn't fun, but maybe start doing after-session "what worked/ what didn't" feedback chats. He insists on "one criticism one compliment" at the end of every game cause it's some military thing. I get the idea but it adds almost an hour to the end of every session. I've done specifically this, directing my most pointed criticisms at the book so that people don't feel they did something wrong, they were just misled into it by the book. I also did an entirely homebrew module (2nd attempt DMing and maybe 6th module ever played) specifically to demonstrate a good time can be had getting off-script. Specifically, since I was putting in the work, I didn't waste time and energy creating useless characters and places, everything had a purpose and multiple locations/people had overlapping information so there were lots of ways to figure out a next move. People seemed to like it, so I don't feel like I totally discredited the idea with a bad execution. But we just can't break out of this and the dude is insisting on it. It's occurred to me after the discussion last night, that the dumbest person in the world can sleepwalk through an Agatha Christie novel and still figure out whodunnit, just by reading page after page. This is like a crappy old Sierra adventure game where you make *zero* progress if you don't guess the moon-logic necessary to progress or call the hintline. We usually end up having the DM give us hints or Deus ex Machinas to get out of it anyway, but somehow this is qualitatively different from how I try to run mine. Also, for how much this DM insists on teasing out the Murder of Rodger Ackroyd, it's been months since he didn't shortcut through plot, usually by starting a murderfight with nonhostile NPCs. Ugh. I like this guy as a friend, but loving, I don't have it in me to spend 4 hours at least once a week playing calvinball with this guy.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 19:27
|
|
|
Huh. Yeah if you've already talked to him about it and there's no improvement, he's either unable or unwilling to get better. I'd try being more direct. Citing the module spares his feelings but lets him feel like he's working perfectly with flawed material. Or consider excusing yourself from the game if you're not enjoying it? It's definitely not worth letting it form a wedge in your friendship, and "not gaming is better than bad gaming," etc.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 20:01
|
|
|
moths posted:Huh. Yeah if you've already talked to him about it and there's no improvement, he's either unable or unwilling to get better. I have twice got up and left with over an hour left to play. Both times he was DM and was pulling some 'nyah, you gotta do what *I* say' nonsense. The first time was when I tried to hold two night-watchmen guard mooks at gunpoint. I couldn't take both of them in a straight fight but I could absolutely drop one and role-playing wise, nobody charges a man with a gun for a minimum wage job. He first said I didn't have my gun with me, which I was able to prevail upon because I literally announced the fact cause he kept trying to find story reasons to disarm me (in fairness I min/maxed that character because CoC revolves around like, 3 skill checks unless the DM really wants to swim upstream to provide opportunities for, like, climb or repair mech. I was inexperieinced with tabletop and too experienced with video game RPGs. Anyway he was so boring to play I retired him). So I'm like, 'ok fine, bring em on, I'll kill one of them and with a lucky roll I'll be alive in the next round to get the other'. So he tells me he's gonna bring more mooks in on the next round followed by armed police. He also tells me that if I surrender we will be booked but sprung by the questgiver and provided with more plot threads to chase and no long term consequences and I'm like, sounds like the next thirty minutes to an hour of this game are locked in and don't need my input. The second time was the next time we played, I told him that my glass cannon character, whose backstory is that he is a sniper, and was already wounded in a fight earlier that session, wouldn't accompany the group to the final showdown in an apartment building but would instead post up on the roof next door to provide cover. During the interminable combat, he keeps telling me that all the rolls involve a super high chance of shooting a team member, so I refuse to take a shot. The dude was packing a Martini rifle, 1D8+1D6+3 (Yes that's an 11HP centered distribution, did I mention I min/maxed him beyond the point he was even fun to play?) So a flubbed shot meant basically instakilling a teammate. He kept coming up for reasons that no one could either get clear of the monster or push the thing up against or through a window on the wall we all coordinated I'd be covering. I think he literally wanted to just kill a PC. Anyway, I told the group to text me if I ever got a free shot but otherwise assume I pass on all future combat rolls. Oh yea, the rolls got away from him and PCs were getting knocked out and the rules said you need a continuous chant to seal the evil, but combat prevented the combatant from chanting. So it looked like the monster was gonna win and kill everyone so he told me my character can go to the apartment and help. I asked him how long a wounded 70 year old man would take to run down 6 flights of stairs, and up another six as compared to the number of combat rounds left until everyone alive was dead. And assuming my presence was needed, and the chant hadn't been broken by that time, how long a wounded 70 year old long range specialist would last in a small room with a monster that's conked half the party already. So my shooter can't shoot cause he doesn't like that I'm trying to play independent of what the sourcebook says I should be doing, but I can teleport when he chooses to cut the teams number one damage dealer out of combat out of pique and then accidentally almost kills everyone. No idea how they survived but everyone was alive for the next module so I guess it worked out. I've tried gently explaining it I've tried directly explaining it, I've tried withholding participation I've tried modeling alternative behavior. I'm texting around to see if I can't get other people to back me on this, cause we each have staked out hard positions and the only other person to DM (the one DMimg this current module) feels trapped between us, and isn't really trying to pick a side and hurt a friends feelings, which I get. The other big issue is he's super psyched for this, like, campaign where it sounds like it's going to take us a full real-human-time year to play through. Way we've been playing it's been one-off modules and him me and this other guy trade off. I don't know if that's going to work when the whole thing is one overarching story and I'm completely uninterested in using sourcebook material as anything other than a jumping off point to improv around. I absolutely can't do 50 weeks of this kind of play, but given that it's become this friend group's main mode of quarantine keeping in touch I'm hesitant to just chuck it entirely. PipHelix fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jul 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 20:41
|
|
|
Dude is a frustrated novelist and you should bail.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 22:31
|
|
|
Yeah you're not even playing at this point, you're just his audience for spooky storytime.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 22:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 16:49 |
|
|
Yeah, you can still keep in touch without gaming, this tale keeps getting worse and worse.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2020 22:51
|
|