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Midig posted:Ok. So I finally decided on having a necromancer plot. My characters are level 4. The initial idea is that a necromancer is trying to become something similar to a lich. He is filling a phylactery with souls and raising the dead. He is doing this because he of course fears death. In my universe, necromancy is broadly feared, therefor churches do not bury bodies alive. The PCs were sent out to fight an Owlbear in the forest due to disappearances. This was to give them loot and give one of the players a connection to his wolf (buffing its stats for combat is probably fitting). its good that they are not being buried alive. that would be bad, if they did that.
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Aug 21, 2020 03:32
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So, I'm falling back on good ol' Fate Condensed for my Escaflowne-inspired mecha game. The challenge I'm running into is separating the feeling of person-on-person battles from the increased scale and weight I want from mecha. I want fights between mecha to be closer to formal duels, decided decisively in a handful of rounds. Here's what I'm thinking so far: Humans:
One of the setting elements is that there's only about 20 mecha world-wide, each some unique bullshit gimmick that nobody else gets to have. If a player's mech can fly short distances, nobody else gets to. Do you have an electrified harpoon that drags fleeing opponents back into your zone? Only you get that. Gimmicks are represented by an Aspect and Stunt, and I want players to be carefully scrutizining their opponents to ascertain their magical bullshit before engaging. How does that sound to folks?
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Aug 21, 2020 17:29
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pog boyfriend posted:its good that they are not being buried alive. that would be bad, if they did that. I meant as in not burying the bodies...
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Aug 21, 2020 20:28
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Squidster posted:So, I'm falling back on good ol' Fate Condensed for my Escaflowne-inspired mecha game. The challenge I'm running into is separating the feeling of person-on-person battles from the increased scale and weight I want from mecha. I want fights between mecha to be closer to formal duels, decided decisively in a handful of rounds. Any reason you didn't just pick up the "scale" system that they already brought up into Fate Condensed for humans affecting mechs/vice versa? (p. 52) Not having stress on the mechs is an interesting approach. Some considerations you might worry about : - if you don't want to heavily weight "first hit wins" in duels, you might want to leave off the free invoke on the mild consequence slot, or drop the mild slot and give the mech a very limited frame stress track. - if the mechs are ever going to see use out of combat, you might want to introduce an engine stress track as a way for people to push their mechs to accomplish important things without necessarily putting them in the shop as a result.
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Aug 22, 2020 23:15
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I am feeling burnt-the-gently caress-out. I'm secretly giddy when plans for gaming fall through and I'm dreading the amount of content between where my players are now and where the story is set to end. I'm running two games for two groups in two different systems. I've bitten off way more than I can chew. I'm not really asking for advice--just wanted to write this somewhere because I've barely even admitted it to myself. A lot of my friends depend on me for their fun. They love my games and the stories I present, but the amount of mental real-estate that my games take up is astounding. It expands to fit every small bit of free time. I've started to wonder what else could I be using this energy for. Feels bad, man.
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Aug 26, 2020 22:24
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Quote posted:I am feeling burnt-the-gently caress-out. I'm secretly giddy when plans for gaming fall through and I'm dreading the amount of content between where my players are now and where the story is set to end. I'm running two games for two groups in two different systems. I've bitten off way more than I can chew. I'm not really asking for advice--just wanted to write this somewhere because I've barely even admitted it to myself. I know you said you aren't looking for advice but no gaming is better than bad gaming and if your players haven't noticed your burnout yet, they will before the campaigns are over. Consider a break: play board games or one-shots for a while.
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Aug 26, 2020 22:33
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Quote posted:I am feeling burnt-the-gently caress-out. I'm secretly giddy when plans for gaming fall through and I'm dreading the amount of content between where my players are now and where the story is set to end. I'm running two games for two groups in two different systems. I've bitten off way more than I can chew. I'm not really asking for advice--just wanted to write this somewhere because I've barely even admitted it to myself. You need to do something about that imo. Can you hand off a game or both games to a player, temporarily? Doing one shots of different systems is a fantastic palate cleanser. Also, it's ok to tell your players you need a break. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Aug 26, 2020 |
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Aug 26, 2020 22:43
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I'm sorry, I'm going to ignore your request to avoid advice and tell you to be honest with your friends about it. If they put their fun ahead of your comfort and happiness, then they're lovely friends and you're better off without them. The more likely options is that they'll understand the situation and accept to take a break or play one shots or do something else. I know it's hard admitting things like these; and I know it because I was in your shoes. I still am, in some other areas. If you feel like you're going to have trouble telling them this, that you don't have the courage for it, try talking with some other friends who are not part of this group. Building up momentum can help.
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Aug 26, 2020 22:47
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Our group had a thing this week where after the session the GM said "ok, that's it for me until after the move and job change and everything, because it's pretty clear my head has not been in the game when it comes to GMing" and then two of the players independently said they were going to suggest he have a break until then because it's clearly stressing him out worrying if he's going to cancel the game 30 minutes in because he's braindrained. Someone else is going to run stuff instead in the timeslots he'd usually run so he can have a nice relaxing time instead. We've made it clear that if he's ever too stressed or drained to play, that's fine too, he's not ruining anyone's life by cancelling a session! Tell your players it's too much, you bit off more than you can chew and you need to drop some stuff, maybe even all the things!
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Aug 26, 2020 23:54
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When I was feeling like I was putting too much energy into GMing I switched one of the games to a no-prep style. I specifically avoided putting in any work between sessions and just winged everything on the spot. It really worked for me, at least.
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Aug 27, 2020 01:35
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Colonel Cool posted:When I was feeling like I was putting too much energy into GMing I switched one of the games to a no-prep style. I specifically avoided putting in any work between sessions and just winged everything on the spot. It really worked for me, at least. That's what I've been doing lately. Like, I have a general idea of what's going to happen but that's it. Last session I knew that someone was murdered, and it was cause of a crazed man corrupted by bad energies. Literally all the prep I did. Over the course of the session I accidentally stated that there were multiple murders, so now it's a chain killer, and uh there's dirt at the scene and oh yeah I guess yeah it could be like grave dirt, and my players wanted to check out other churches so now in my mind the killer is a priest and he's hiding out in the mausoleum of his church. Worked well. Starting to get really good at coming up with names on the fly, too.
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Aug 27, 2020 01:56
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The one bit of prep that's always worth doing is lists of random names.
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Aug 27, 2020 02:09
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sebmojo posted:The one bit of prep that's always worth doing is lists of random names. this and some character traits
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Aug 27, 2020 02:46
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punishedkissinger posted:this and some character traits
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Aug 27, 2020 10:54
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And two towns down the road there's Old Shaky's Barber Shop & Birthmark Removal.
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Aug 27, 2020 10:59
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Here's a thing my group has been doing for GMing and it's rad and once you get to used it you can do it very quickly so even works for games where a new character can be introduced at any moment.
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Aug 27, 2020 11:53
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sebmojo posted:The one bit of prep that's always worth doing is lists of random names. Name, accent, age, gender, occupation and one stand-out bit of appearance like a bright red scarf is pretty much all an NPC needs to start with
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Aug 27, 2020 14:08
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When dming for an official campaign book for dnd 5e, most of the encounters use 2d6 enemy monsters for the encounter. What is the average assumed player group size so I know to take the bigger number of mooks from that average.
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Aug 27, 2020 18:41
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Spikes32 posted:When dming for an official campaign book for dnd 5e, most of the encounters use 2d6 enemy monsters for the encounter. What is the average assumed player group size so I know to take the bigger number of mooks from that average. average group size is 4, according to CR system
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Aug 27, 2020 18:42
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Thanks! I'm prepping storm kings thunder and trying to inject a little more nuance into the giant lord's / races and their respective encounters , specifically the hill giants and to a lesser extent the frost giants. I saw the dodking suggestion for the earth giants and really liked it.
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Aug 27, 2020 18:54
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I'll have to try out the 7-3-1 technique some time, it sounds pretty useful! I've run into a conundrum yet again with my FFG Star Wars campaign. To provide some context, my Force user party like to play like it's Peace Walker or MGS V and encourage their enemies to surrender (and subsequently join their growing merry band of rebels) and "requisition" equipment (up to and including entire warships). This is more or less common knowledge for the Imperials dealing with them at this point. For a while now I've toyed with the idea of the Empire exploiting this to insert double agents into their forces to gather intel and do some sabotage. My opportunity has come over the past few sessions, as the party saw an extensively modified Raider class corvette complete with a Force-based mind control superweapon and amphibious capability (if you're familiar with the Alicorn from the Ace Combat 7 DLC it's a bit like that) and immediately decided to capture it for themselves. The party are busy mopping up the last of the resistance onboard (an inquisitor who has close history with one of the PCs) after making the captain and his secret squirrel intel agent handler surrender. Odds are good they'll either capture the inquisitor as well or she'll escape. The PCs have been more suspicious of the crew's surrender than they have been in the past, which is fine. I'd like there to be a decent chance for the corvette to succeed in betraying the party and loving off back home, armed with new intel about the PCs' forces and where they are hiding. What I want to know is: 1) How can I give the party a fair opportunity to discover what's going on without making it blindly obvious that the ship's captain etc. are going to pull a fast one? As I said, the party's already semi-suspicious and have been cooking up some plans to keep an eye on them, but equally the intel agent and ship's crew have been preparing for this contingency for a while. So I'd like it to be more complicated to foil than one or two rolls or reading a neon sign saying "WE ARE GOING TO BETRAY YOU". 2) If the ship does escape, how could I make it not a total loss? It would be pretty painful for it to be a complete loss, in my opinion, so I'd like something to soften the blow. 3) If the ship doesn't escape, what sort of complications could I introduce? I'd rather not have keeping the ship be all upsides, but I'm at a loss as to how the bad guys might respond without it being either a slap on the wrist or excessive given the level of challenge I want. 4) How can I encourage the party not to just space the crew as soon as one of them looks at the party funny? Currently only one of the party has aired the possibility, but it's not something I'd like to encourage. So far I've had the captain and the intel agent point out that the ship is so new and exotic that only they have the knowledge necessary to operate the drat thing (which is the truth - if they did kill or get rid of the crew the ship would be very hard to manage until they slowly get the hang of it). #1 and #4 are probably the most pressing problems, but I'm happy for any feedback.
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Aug 27, 2020 19:09
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This here's a good link I think someone shared from this thread before that gives you a good baseline for encounter difficulty and number and type and what not http://tools.goblinist.com/5enc So I'm about to be DMing 3 campaigns, meeting once a month each. One already meets when we can, the other two are starting next month. Here's hoping I don't burn myself out, but I do agree with the advice - it's perfectly OK for the DM to be like 'nah we not meeting I'm needing some time to recharge.' I tend to build most stuff up front so I have a good cushion so if I need to just flat improv a whole session it works OK. I am beginning to wonder if anyone in my groups of friends is ever gonna DM me though  Seems like a common thing with people who are willing to DM
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Aug 27, 2020 19:22
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Soup Inspector posted:I'll have to try out the 7-3-1 technique some time, it sounds pretty useful! #1: wait a while before doing the imperials’ escape. If the players have time to find out there’s a spy in their midst, through clues and such it’s less likely to be bullshit. Maybe have the captain “catch” and execute a spy. That might prompt the players to trust the captain more, or it might plant the idea of spies in their head. Make sure that when the escape takes place, the PCs are in a position to attempt to stop it. Maybe it’s a running battle through a spaceport as the players face a countdown until their ship launches, so it’s a race against time. #2: if the ship has been feeding the empire info, then it’s escape at least helps the party go to ground and be hidden again. The blueprints of the ship could be very valuable in terms of a monetary reward. A Holocron or something might be loot on the ship. #3: if the ship needs a large crew, that comes with challenges. If they’re working with the rebellion, is there going to be disagreement over who controls the ship? If they’re working alone, how do they pay for its upkeep? #4: the easy but maybe not genre appropriate answer is to have the imperials just act like human beings. Have them cry, have them beg for their lives, show pictures of their children. When they’re in the airlock, have them hug one another.
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Aug 27, 2020 20:24
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Also even in loving Star Wars executing surrendered POWs should be a big no-no, right? Certainly against the Rebel code of conduct.
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Aug 27, 2020 21:42
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#1: Clues: The Imperial crew might have taken a hostage on their way out. It could be a high-value target they were ordered to capture for interrogation, or an actual Imperial defector they want to make an example of and silence before they can say anything too essential, or an engineer who was in the wrong hangar at the wrong time. Either way, a crew member mysteriously going missing is a hint that something odd is going on. #2: Treasure/consolation prize: Presumably, the ship should have some navigation data on past, present, and future Imperial fleet movements, which the crew might hand over as a token of their cooperation and could be as much of a prize as the ship itself. Since the Imperials planned for this double-cross, then they've presumably also scrubbed the most sensitive data from the ship's nav computer in advance, but the data still has to be valid enough if your party tries to cross-check it, so for this deception to work, the data has to be at least moderately valuable to both sides. So even if the ship and crew gets away scot-free, the party at least got some moderately valuable intel on Imperial Fleet movements. #3: Complications: The Imperial crew has said hostage onboard their ship. Even if the ship and crew are grounded inside a hangar, a hostage inside the Imperial ship would be a significant complication to just storming the ship. #4: Humanizing the Imperials: You could show them getting along nicely with your merry band of rebels. If this crew was hand-picked for the double-cross, then they're probably skilled at espionage, which includes the art of making friends and influencing people. If your party sees them mingling with your crew in the mess hall, and one of them is sloshed and singing a drinking song from their home planet alongside one of the rebels, then that might help sell the deception. If your party is still suspicious of them, one of them can open up about how the Clone Wars left their home planet in poverty, and how joining the Imperial Navy was the only way for any of them to escape the poverty of their homeworlds - remember that Luke himself dreamed of joining the Imperial Navy in ANH to get away from the crippling poverty of Tatooine, so it should be a pretty common and believable story. Lastly, the best lies are based on truth, so if they do get captured by the players in the end, they can still admit that some or all of those personal stories are, in fact, true, which might make them a bit more sympathetic even after the players discover their deception. To drive home the fact that they're human beings with their own stories and lives and motives, one of them might dive in front of a blaster bolt to save their comrade, or otherwise attempt to sacrifice themselves for a friend, to show that they're a group of comrades that really do care about each other.
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Aug 27, 2020 21:43
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admanb posted:Also even in loving Star Wars executing surrendered POWs should be a big no-no, right? Certainly against the Rebel code of conduct. we see no prisoners at the end of RTJ but we do see ewoks playing marimba on imperial skulls.
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Aug 27, 2020 23:57
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Is there any good voice changing software for discord or is compatible with discord? I think it would be really neat to have unique voices for the villain in my campaign. I know like giving myself a woman's voice or whatever is impossible, but something that can make my already easy baritone into something rumbly.
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Aug 28, 2020 00:13
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punishedkissinger posted:we see no prisoners at the end of RTJ but we do see ewoks playing marimba on imperial skulls. ewoks are inherently amoral creatures and unfortunately can only be treated as an ally of convenience
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Aug 28, 2020 00:15
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Panderfringe posted:Is there any good voice changing software for discord or is compatible with discord? I think it would be really neat to have unique voices for the villain in my campaign. I know like giving myself a woman's voice or whatever is impossible, but something that can make my already easy baritone into something rumbly. https://www.voicemod.net/discord-voice-changer/
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Aug 28, 2020 01:41
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I'll second voicemod. It's a one time purchase and has a lot of customizable stuff as well as soundboard capability wrapped in a neat package.
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Aug 28, 2020 06:06
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"Troll like a PRO" sure is a marketing campaign
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Aug 28, 2020 09:01
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Thanks once again for helping save my bacon, guys. I really appreciate it!Reveilled posted:Solid advice It was 100% my intention to have any escape/betrayal attempt occur after some time had passed; I like your "spy" idea! I'll probably combine it with Lightrook's suggestion (see below). Your suggestions for upsides and complications are solid too. admanb posted:Also even in loving Star Wars executing surrendered POWs should be a big no-no, right? Certainly against the Rebel code of conduct. A good point I hadn't considered - although this is set before the Original Trilogy so the capital R Rebels don't exist yet, the guy who's handling the day-to-day running of their rebel fleet would probably object to spacing them for both moral and practical reasons. lightrook posted:Yet more good stuff Some excellent suggestions here! I'm thinking of combining the hostage with Reveilled's suggestion of a "spy" by having a prisoner be killed for "espionage" by the captain/crew - perhaps sprinkling in a contradiction or two (think "If this guy's a spy why would he get his uniform wrong?" or something similar). Though I also like the original hostage idea and might use it too. Do you think it'd be too harsh (or make it too obvious that the crew aren't on the up-and-up) to have some of the navigation data lead to a trap? My party are quite aggressive so the odds that they won't follow up on at least one of the leads immediately is approximately zero. However, I'd probably make the trap data either the second or third place they visit so that the party understand that not all of it is tainted and that most of it is safe. I really like your ideas for admanb posted:ewoks are inherently amoral creatures and unfortunately can only be treated as an ally of convenience Now I'm tempted to find an excuse to crowbar in an encounter with ewoks at some point and watch how my players react. Soup Inspector fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Aug 28, 2020 |
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Aug 28, 2020 21:46
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admanb posted:ewoks are inherently amoral creatures and unfortunately can only be treated as an ally of convenience No, no, I think the Ewoks have the right idea, or at the very least they don't deserve to be dismissed as unthinking creatures who haven't considered their position. The Empire doesn't fall with the second Death Star, as the later movies illustrate, and even if they did the Rebellion is a distinctly bourgeois revolution, led by the same small-r republican aristocracy whose hubris and complacency allowed the Empire to rise in the first place. The Ewoks exist completely outside that system -- they're natives on a previously uncontacted moon speaking a dialect that even C-3PO struggles to understand -- and anything they can do to weaken the imperial army is a good idea regardless of who wins this particular war. “And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization is simply a question of relative strength.” Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Aug 29, 2020 |
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Aug 29, 2020 03:05
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Let them murder POWs and calmly state they’re dark side now.
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Aug 29, 2020 04:52
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TacoNight posted:Let them murder POWs and calmly state they’re dark side now. i dunno if i’d go that far but certainly having some of their other NPC buddies freak out on them for callously spacing a bunch of prisoners seems fair i think it’s okay as a dm to have some lose-lose scenarios in your campaign to reinforce the stakes of your party’s decision making
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Aug 29, 2020 18:54
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Made this guy on heroforge, 3d printer him, and painted him today for one of my first sessions as a player tomorrow in a spin off session we're doing as a side plot to our main campaign. He's Zok, also the Tinker, an alchemist artificer Vedalken from Mirrodin. He plane jumped to dodge the Phyrexians and ended up trapped in Faerun in a reality bubble created by his pursuers who just look like necromancers to the elves that have also been ensnared. One of the first things he made to help him meditate was a Rubik's cube out of wood. His skin is metallic, so he gets to be swathed in forest hobo robes, maybe gifted from the elves. I'll borrowing the warforged racial armor thing for him. Wanted him to have four arms but oh welllll ILL Machina fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Aug 30, 2020 |
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Aug 30, 2020 08:25
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Glory to Italia!
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My players are having a fancy lunch with 3 women they suspect (rightly) of being hags/witches. Some kids just went missing in town and they have been very suspicious of the first two dishes they've been served but not found any obvious evidence of childmeat so far. What are some things I can do to ratchet the tension up to 11? My first instinct was to play everything as normal-all the food is perfectly normal, maybe they aren't witches after all. But then they find ?????? When we left off last week, a big huge dish with a silver cover had just been rolled in.....
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Aug 30, 2020 14:41
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Serve them pig tongue and barbacoa.
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Aug 30, 2020 15:09
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i mean it has to be veal, right?
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Aug 30, 2020 15:56
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:But then they find ?????? Out how foie gras is made.
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Aug 30, 2020 17:15
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