Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
habituallyred
Feb 6, 2015
The only question with the theater spirits is whether to go with The Scottish Play or The Play That Goes Wrong.

For The Scottish Play the spirits are initially trapped in the mirror. What the players see is themselves in appropriate costumes, or actors dressed up as the players. Either way the spirits start playing charades to try and get the players to say Macbeth. If all else fails they break out the old First Folio, holding the book in one hand and the play's number in the other. To encourage the players to go on the adventure the spirits could also show off desirable objects, like a kings crown or fancy swords. The principal mirror spirits want to run off and cause havoc in the player's name. You could tie this into the 4 corners, but the play has 5 acts. I suppose the first one is the witches telling the players how to put the spirits back in the mirror? The twig blights stand in for Macduff's army of course.

Okay that might have been a bit too highbrow. The second option is a straightforward farce. The mirror spirits need the players to act out a murder mystery. Things go terribly wrong. The script tells the players to stab each other with "prop" weapons. They knocked out the inspector during the first round, so now they have to prop them up weekend at bernies style to satisfy the spirits. The script calls for someone to say a line and take a drink, as a prompt for someone to come in from offstage. The drink has been poisoned and the offstage actor misses at least their first cue. The play isn't over until the banshee sings.

I don't know why, but the Ballista and Catapult cry out for an old west style showdown. Taking 10 paces, turning, and firing with clunky siege engines.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

fallingdownjoe
Mar 16, 2007

Please love me
Could the coach transport them into some kind of madcap underground cart race, riding tiny contraptions against the ghosts of former pets? The well won’t empty/fill unless they manage to defeat Hans, the former guarddog, and force him to reveal the location of his buried collar which has a missing piece of a key they need on it?

In terms of the rules for the race itself, anything goes. In my game where I had a similar thing I just kept on throwing new obstacles at my players and challenged them to come up with solutions. It worked super well - they keep on referring to it as the ‘Wacky Races episode’.

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


Brilliant, thanks folks. I think Macbeth is a bit too highbrow, but theatre ghosts making them put on a play is brilliant. I'll scatter bits of text around that describe something horrible happening to someone (on stage) and make them find props/costumes to ensure they're someone different in the script, with a penalty of some kind if they're too far off-script in any way. They'll like that.

Armoury, obviously a duel. I'll have someone hit them with a glove and insist they choose a weapon, then immediately start wheeling a ballista into the hallway. They'll get the message.

Outside leading to a cart race is brilliant, I've done a race in my other game and it went very well so it'll be good to drag it in here. Maybe I'll make each of the four corners of the garden have something they need (wheels?) to make the cart go. Love the ghost dog too, they have a robot dog companion already so that'll go down well.

Thanks all, still happy to hear any more ideas (and don't forget I've got three more floors of this....)

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

I'm working on a story arc for my Shadowrun game, and I feel like it's going to go bad.

After a few more straight-forward missions to start things off and get them situated, the group stole some biological research from [company A] for an unknown [party B]. One of the players also stole a vial from the lab to see if they could resell it on their own. I'd planned on that research somehow becoming a larger story, and the stolen vial seems like a lucky way to bring the group back in to the picture. I'm thinking both company A and party B will try to get them, possibly try to ambush the group at the same time leading to a huge messy crossfire for the group to run from, and that could kick off an effort to figure out what was going on. I figure a group like the Draco Foundation or Atlanteans (sorta do-gooders in Shadowrun) could approach the group if they get stuck on what to do next, and help uncover what it was they stole, and clean things up before that research causes real problems.

I don't know if I have a problem with the story- but I just feel like this thing will go to poo poo. I don't have great experiences executing on larger stories like this, and something tells me this will become a big mess too. I think part of it is when I'm thinking of stories like this, I start assuming how players will react or what plans they'll come up with. No matter how straight-forward I think the situation and options are, I just have no faith this will go even remotely to what I'm envisioning- and I'm too lovely a GM to just improvise it to something else satisfactory.

How do people handle this? How do you steer a larger story well?

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Don't try to plan branching paths or anything like that. Maybe a few tentative contingencies but mapping it all out is pointless.

What you want to do is have at least a rough idea of the major players in the situation and what they want, how they relate to each other, and who knows what. The more you understand their motivations (and their overall level of intel / awareness), the more realistically you can have them react to your players, whatever your players ultimately do -- responding in character instead of worrying about how it all fits into the narrative.

Appropriately, it's more like you're playing several sides in a game than writing a script for a TV show.

(Unless your group is extremely passive / railroady and likes it that way, in which case just pick your favorite work of fiction and steal from it shamelessly.)

admanb
Jun 18, 2014

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

I'm working on a story arc for my Shadowrun game, and I feel like it's going to go bad.

After a few more straight-forward missions to start things off and get them situated, the group stole some biological research from [company A] for an unknown [party B]. One of the players also stole a vial from the lab to see if they could resell it on their own. I'd planned on that research somehow becoming a larger story, and the stolen vial seems like a lucky way to bring the group back in to the picture. I'm thinking both company A and party B will try to get them, possibly try to ambush the group at the same time leading to a huge messy crossfire for the group to run from, and that could kick off an effort to figure out what was going on. I figure a group like the Draco Foundation or Atlanteans (sorta do-gooders in Shadowrun) could approach the group if they get stuck on what to do next, and help uncover what it was they stole, and clean things up before that research causes real problems.

I don't know if I have a problem with the story- but I just feel like this thing will go to poo poo. I don't have great experiences executing on larger stories like this, and something tells me this will become a big mess too. I think part of it is when I'm thinking of stories like this, I start assuming how players will react or what plans they'll come up with. No matter how straight-forward I think the situation and options are, I just have no faith this will go even remotely to what I'm envisioning- and I'm too lovely a GM to just improvise it to something else satisfactory.

How do people handle this? How do you steer a larger story well?

Set down a really vague outline of the motivations of all the parties:the two companies and the potential ally faction. Figure out a few ways that those parties will act on their motivations: threats, offers to individual PCs, cyberwarfare attacks, direct attacks-- this is a good way to give the different companies a different feel. And have some potential capital-e Events that could trigger off of that: The crossfire, an allied faction swooping into the middle of a cyberspace battle, an argument between opposing recruiters from the two companies in front of a PC, and so on.

Next, you throw away the whole idea of being "too lovely a GM to improvise something satisfactory" because that is definitely not true. What you do need to do is be aware of your limitations. If you have trouble coming up with NPCs on the spot, prepare a bunch of names and traits beforehand and drop them in where you need them. If you have trouble coming up with events or locations, prepare some shells of those. Most importantly, if you come to a situation that you really don't want to mess up and you don't have anything prepared for it, take a break or even end the session early.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Don't try to plan branching paths or anything like that. Maybe a few tentative contingencies but mapping it all out is pointless.

What you want to do is have at least a rough idea of the major players in the situation and what they want, how they relate to each other, and who knows what. The more you understand their motivations (and their overall level of intel / awareness), the more realistically you can have them react to your players, whatever your players ultimately do -- responding in character instead of worrying about how it all fits into the narrative.

Appropriately, it's more like you're playing several sides in a game than writing a script for a TV show.

(Unless your group is extremely passive / railroady and likes it that way, in which case just pick your favorite work of fiction and steal from it shamelessly.)

I think this group is pretty railroad-y in the sense that I try to be pretty open with them out-of-character where I'm trying to take things, but also I don't want to like stop them mid-session to say "ok yeah you asked a now obvious question that I didn't think through and now I'm stumped" :)

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

also I don't want to like stop them mid-session to say "ok yeah you asked a now obvious question that I didn't think through and now I'm stumped" :)

I guess my advice to you is get used to doing this, then, because it's a really important thing to do. I do it all the time in my games and my players don't have a problem with it, of anything I think they kinda like the feeling of having thought outside the box.

Reveilled
Apr 19, 2007

Take up your rifles
I do the pause for thought a fair bit and if you handle it right I think it enhances the experience rather than detracting. When you as the GM say you need to think for a minute about what the consequences will be of something the players have just done, it tells the players their actions actually matter in your game world. If you have to think for a moment to answer a question about what someone is doing or where they are, it emphasises that the world goes on and time passes even when the players aren't directly observing events.

pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

I'm working on a story arc for my Shadowrun game, and I feel like it's going to go bad.

After a few more straight-forward missions to start things off and get them situated, the group stole some biological research from [company A] for an unknown [party B]. One of the players also stole a vial from the lab to see if they could resell it on their own. I'd planned on that research somehow becoming a larger story, and the stolen vial seems like a lucky way to bring the group back in to the picture. I'm thinking both company A and party B will try to get them, possibly try to ambush the group at the same time leading to a huge messy crossfire for the group to run from, and that could kick off an effort to figure out what was going on. I figure a group like the Draco Foundation or Atlanteans (sorta do-gooders in Shadowrun) could approach the group if they get stuck on what to do next, and help uncover what it was they stole, and clean things up before that research causes real problems.

I don't know if I have a problem with the story- but I just feel like this thing will go to poo poo. I don't have great experiences executing on larger stories like this, and something tells me this will become a big mess too. I think part of it is when I'm thinking of stories like this, I start assuming how players will react or what plans they'll come up with. No matter how straight-forward I think the situation and options are, I just have no faith this will go even remotely to what I'm envisioning- and I'm too lovely a GM to just improvise it to something else satisfactory.

How do people handle this? How do you steer a larger story well?

i just improvise it, but that is probably not helpful for you here. the best way to handle storylines like these is to understand the motivations of the forces, and then go in further detail and understand the motivations of the specific people working for those forces. they may not always be in lockstep. the most intriguing plots come from imperfect information - can these people be trusted? is this member of party b really a double agent? what is this research actually going to be used for?

finally, you do not need to have a plan for what every little thing that happens will do. if the group ultimately decides to go with a third party you create later but do not know what the end result will be, not only is it not bad to take that plot element out of the fire, it is actually good. work on the next thing, but leave this vial on the backburner. keep it in the back of the players mind. let them wonder what is happening with this research. it gives you plenty of time to breathe while being able to build suspense... maybe one of the rejected parties cryptically asks the group why they sold to people like them.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









The big secret with making stuff up is you dont have to make up clever stuff. Just think what a logical consequence would be and have that happen. The more obvious the better.

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters
Just remember that the players will never know what you don't tell them - which means that if you have a plot/trap/encounter that they never saw, it can always be retooled for further down the road.

Conversely, if, like, you have this elaborate system of what's going on elsewhere even when the players aren't interacting with it, like a schedule for NPCs or whatever, if the players don't actually end up interacting with it, then all that work can be wasted.

Declan MacManus
Sep 1, 2011

damn i'm really in this bitch

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

I think this group is pretty railroad-y in the sense that I try to be pretty open with them out-of-character where I'm trying to take things, but also I don't want to like stop them mid-session to say "ok yeah you asked a now obvious question that I didn't think through and now I'm stumped" :)

communication and openness with your players is an important part of successful gming, and that includes telling your players “uh oh oops that’s a fair point i didn’t think about that” and taking a minute to gather your thoughts (or even stopping the session, which sucks, but is way better than ending everyone’s narrative in an unsatisfying way)

you are the human brain of a video game; i think it’s okay to admit when something slips through the cracks. conversely, just give yourself a looooot of prepped material, even if they’re only vague outlines (like talking maybe one or two sentences). “if x happens, y” “if z happens, a” and then take all this prep and start funneling it down to where you want the story to go. as your players make choices, they’ll naturally start cutting down on their remaining options until instead of a big sprawling mess you actually have a pretty straightforward path that feels like it has a lot of options but ultimately gets you where you wanted the players going in the first placr

Fresh Shesh Besh
May 15, 2013

I'm coming up with a session one for Saturday. Obviously it's going to be Halloween themed. It's a few people's first time running SOTDL so I'm going to keep it pretty simple, something along the lines of "stop the spoopy munster before they spoop everyone."

Mostly I'm just looking for really overt Halloweeny ideas to stuff to cram in. I'm thinking of starting with a cliché fall festival. My "seed" idea was that a bunch of revelers wearing pumpkins on their heads would get their heads eaten and that would be the big reveal. That's about as far as I've gotten. I'm not sure if I want to go all pumpkin bois and have the final fight be against Da Big Pumpkin, or have the cause be something slightly disconnected so that there's a reason to continue onto a non-Halloween campaign.

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

Fresh Shesh Besh posted:

I'm coming up with a session one for Saturday. Obviously it's going to be Halloween themed. It's a few people's first time running SOTDL so I'm going to keep it pretty simple, something along the lines of "stop the spoopy munster before they spoop everyone."

Mostly I'm just looking for really overt Halloweeny ideas to stuff to cram in. I'm thinking of starting with a cliché fall festival. My "seed" idea was that a bunch of revelers wearing pumpkins on their heads would get their heads eaten and that would be the big reveal. That's about as far as I've gotten. I'm not sure if I want to go all pumpkin bois and have the final fight be against Da Big Pumpkin, or have the cause be something slightly disconnected so that there's a reason to continue onto a non-Halloween campaign.

You could pull an Over the Garden Wall and actually have all of the partiers dressed in pumpkins be undead that the seeds are animating? They subtly try to get the group to stay, then get more and more aggressive when they try to leave

Lucas Archer
Dec 1, 2007
Falling...
I'm going to be running an Eberron campaign for my group after our current campaign wraps up, but I'm running an Eberron one-shot this weekend to introduce them to the world.

My idea thus far: they are Dark Lanterns (running the game at level 5) and are returning home from a successful mission to steal a Dragonshard (one of the ones that can have stuff written inside, like a book) from a noble in Valentar - the information on the Dragonshard includes the identies of the saboteurs that caused that one section of Sharn to be destroyed during the Last War.

So, they have the shard already and have to leave Valentar and take an airship back to Sharn. The general outline I've sketched is this:

1. Airship stuff. The first part will be the PCs on the airship, mingling with other people including some rival spies, a couple of Lords of Dust cultists who want the shard for Draconic Prophecy purposes, and some random rich nobles. The Lords of Dust are going to sabotage the airship so it fails/crashes while they are near the Mournland. Due to Mournland magic, the ship will go down and the PCs will be stranded in the Mournland and have to escape. The LoD cultists will also try to steal the shard at this point. if they succeed, the thrust of the adventure is getting the shard back while escaping. If they fail, the direction is escaping the Mournland while keeping the shard safe.

2. Mournland traveling. They PCs will have to navigate the horrors of the Mournland with some thematic stuff (finding themselves in the middle of a ghost battle between Cyre and Breland forces that keeps repeating as the Mourning occurs for them over and over again), and an encounter at a fallen, haunted Warforged Colossus (I'm thinking the head is above ground, and they can get down into the torso).

3. The final escape - the LoD cultists will try to stop them by summoning a demon/devil/whatever from Khyber, which is twisted into something even worse by Mournland magic and kills the cultists before attacking the PCs. They have to defeat/escape the demon to finally get out of the Mournland.

Generally speaking, if you were the PC in this adventure and that general thread of events happened, would that be interesting/a good way to introduce Eberron themes? The Last War's lingering effects, Warforged, the tensions between nations, warforged, and demons from Khyber as opposed to the Abyss or the Hells or whatever, and the Prophecy.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Lucas Archer posted:

I'm going to be running an Eberron campaign for my group after our current campaign wraps up, but I'm running an Eberron one-shot this weekend to introduce them to the world.

My idea thus far: they are Dark Lanterns (running the game at level 5) and are returning home from a successful mission to steal a Dragonshard (one of the ones that can have stuff written inside, like a book) from a noble in Valentar - the information on the Dragonshard includes the identies of the saboteurs that caused that one section of Sharn to be destroyed during the Last War.

So, they have the shard already and have to leave Valentar and take an airship back to Sharn. The general outline I've sketched is this:

1. Airship stuff. The first part will be the PCs on the airship, mingling with other people including some rival spies, a couple of Lords of Dust cultists who want the shard for Draconic Prophecy purposes, and some random rich nobles. The Lords of Dust are going to sabotage the airship so it fails/crashes while they are near the Mournland. Due to Mournland magic, the ship will go down and the PCs will be stranded in the Mournland and have to escape. The LoD cultists will also try to steal the shard at this point. if they succeed, the thrust of the adventure is getting the shard back while escaping. If they fail, the direction is escaping the Mournland while keeping the shard safe.

2. Mournland traveling. They PCs will have to navigate the horrors of the Mournland with some thematic stuff (finding themselves in the middle of a ghost battle between Cyre and Breland forces that keeps repeating as the Mourning occurs for them over and over again), and an encounter at a fallen, haunted Warforged Colossus (I'm thinking the head is above ground, and they can get down into the torso).

3. The final escape - the LoD cultists will try to stop them by summoning a demon/devil/whatever from Khyber, which is twisted into something even worse by Mournland magic and kills the cultists before attacking the PCs. They have to defeat/escape the demon to finally get out of the Mournland.

Generally speaking, if you were the PC in this adventure and that general thread of events happened, would that be interesting/a good way to introduce Eberron themes? The Last War's lingering effects, Warforged, the tensions between nations, warforged, and demons from Khyber as opposed to the Abyss or the Hells or whatever, and the Prophecy.

solid outline, jut make sure you keep things moving along - could easily spiral out past a one-shot.

Glans Dillzig
Nov 23, 2011

:justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost:

knickerbocker expert
Instead of doing the work myself, I’ll farm it out to you gentlegoons. i’m running a Death House oneshot this Friday for Halloween, and I need a few random spooky but harmless effects to throw at my players whenever they get too complacent. Things like gusts of wind to blow out their torches, ghostly sounds from an apparently empty room, mirrors that show one PC something horrific, etc. anyone have a good list or can point me to one?

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









A single, perfectly ripe and red apple is sitting on a table.

Azhais
Feb 5, 2007
Switchblade Switcharoo
Clearly a mimic, fetch the 11' pole

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


sebmojo posted:

A single, perfectly ripe and red apple is sitting on a table.

Don’t do it, it’s been months and my players are still mad about it.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Sanford posted:

Don’t do it, it’s been months and my players are still mad about it.

lmao it's so good

it's literally just an apple

it's perfectly red, and ripe.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









btw i just looked back through your posts in this thread and you're a hella good dm :shobon:

Morpheus
Apr 18, 2008

My favourite little monsters
A shadowy figure appears in front of them but turns out to just be a mass of spiders + insects that dissolves and scatters as soon as they shine a light on it.

The eyes on the paintings on the wall seem to follow their movements.

A tree branch shatters (or just clatters against) a nearby window.

A spiderweb gets in someone's face, or was it a ghost?

An open, person-sized box is against the wall, the lid on the floor nearby. It looks like something has been resting on the piles of cloth within.

After leaving a room, a shattering sound comes from within, and one curio inside has just been thrown to the floor and broken.

I don't know what death house is so I have no idea if these are appropriate.

Glagha
Oct 13, 2008

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAaaAAAaaAAaAA
AAAAAAAaAAAAAaaAAA
AAAA
AaAAaaA
AAaaAAAAaaaAAAAAAA
AaaAaaAAAaaaaaAA

Having been playing Phasmophobia recently you can always go with the classics: knock stuff off tables, sudden chill in the room, open and shut doors without anyone touching them, have their lights cast shadows of figures on the wall.

Dienes
Nov 4, 2009

dee
doot doot dee
doot doot doot
doot doot dee
dee doot doot
doot doot dee
dee doot doot


College Slice

Glans Dillzig posted:

Instead of doing the work myself, I’ll farm it out to you gentlegoons. i’m running a Death House oneshot this Friday for Halloween, and I need a few random spooky but harmless effects to throw at my players whenever they get too complacent. Things like gusts of wind to blow out their torches, ghostly sounds from an apparently empty room, mirrors that show one PC something horrific, etc. anyone have a good list or can point me to one?

If you can get them all together in the floor above the piano, have them hear the piano being played below.
In the kitchen, they find names scratched into the bricks of the walls.
In the kitchen, all the cutlery and utensils are rusted and tarnished, with the exception of the cleaver.
If they go through a room with stuffed animals, have one be missing the next time they go through.
The view from one window looks hundreds of feet higher than it should be, as if the house is dozens of stories tall
Investigating windows on higher stories reveals fingerprints on the sill, as if someone crawled in through t the window
The first time the PCs say/do something disrespectful in the house, the temperature of the room drops 20 or 30 degrees.
On a writing desk, they find a piece of parchment that just says "Dear <player names>," and nothing else, as if writing the letter were interrupted.
A place with a bit of wallpaper is peeling. If inspected, the peel is bleeding like the house has a hangnail. Don't pull it.


Never underestimate doing a couple perception checks in a completely safe situation.

Glans Dillzig
Nov 23, 2011

:justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost::justpost:

knickerbocker expert

Sanford posted:

Don’t do it, it’s been months and my players are still mad about it.

it's such a familiar sounding story but I can't actually find it in this or the 5e thread :saddowns:

Lucas Archer
Dec 1, 2007
Falling...

sebmojo posted:

solid outline, jut make sure you keep things moving along - could easily spiral out past a one-shot.

I’m not the biggest fan of railroads but with a one shot, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. They all know this is a one shot designed to introduce Eberron to them.

I have my airship set up planned now - a Tarkanan assassin and two cultists will kill the captains of the airship and crash it when the Tarkanan guy tries to control the elemental.

After the crash, the dead bodies of the nobles and crew members will rise as zombies. Living spells will be visible in the distance. And a massive psychic storm will occur with the nearby shelter being a collapsed warforged colossus inhabited by some warped hobgoblins.

And the final battle will be with a Rakshasa (Cr 5 one from the Eberron guide) and a couple of minions at the edge of the Mournland - waiting there for years to confirm this one small part of the prophecy has come true.

I’m on mobile so sorry if it doesn’t make much sense.

Edit : Oh yeah, the PCs are all level 5 - Ranger, Bard, and Monk. Shifter, Firbolg, and Warforged respectively.

Lucas Archer fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Oct 27, 2020

echopapa
Jun 2, 2005

El Presidente smiles upon this thread.

Glans Dillzig posted:

Instead of doing the work myself, I’ll farm it out to you gentlegoons. i’m running a Death House oneshot this Friday for Halloween, and I need a few random spooky but harmless effects to throw at my players whenever they get too complacent. Things like gusts of wind to blow out their torches, ghostly sounds from an apparently empty room, mirrors that show one PC something horrific, etc. anyone have a good list or can point me to one?

Music from a Darkened Room is full of this sort of stuff.

Trojan Kaiju
Feb 13, 2012


There's a haunted hotel in the early game of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines that is a good template. There's only like 2 actually dangerous things in the whole place but it's still very effective.

I also like to just change the geometry around of them, especially while utilizing rooms that are clearly meant to have scares in them (a ballroom full of mannequins, a restaurant kitchen that is slowly getting hotter), but don't do anything the first or second time they go through it.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Lucas Archer posted:

I’m not the biggest fan of railroads but with a one shot, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. They all know this is a one shot designed to introduce Eberron to them.

I have my airship set up planned now - a Tarkanan assassin and two cultists will kill the captains of the airship and crash it when the Tarkanan guy tries to control the elemental.

After the crash, the dead bodies of the nobles and crew members will rise as zombies. Living spells will be visible in the distance. And a massive psychic storm will occur with the nearby shelter being a collapsed warforged colossus inhabited by some warped hobgoblins.

And the final battle will be with a Rakshasa (Cr 5 one from the Eberron guide) and a couple of minions at the edge of the Mournland - waiting there for years to confirm this one small part of the prophecy has come true.

I’m on mobile so sorry if it doesn’t make much sense.

Edit : Oh yeah, the PCs are all level 5 - Ranger, Bard, and Monk. Shifter, Firbolg, and Warforged respectively.

I just meant timing, it's a fair bit of action for a one shot so keep things moving

Lucas Archer
Dec 1, 2007
Falling...

sebmojo posted:

I just meant timing, it's a fair bit of action for a one shot so keep things moving

I’ll be honest, I’ve never really run a one shot before except a Halloween Curse of Strahd that was easy because it was understood Strahd would arrive at the end and kill them unless they escaped his castle.

For this one, I have 3 encounters - the Airship battle, the Colossus encounter (optional if they decide to just push past it), and the final encounter with the rakshasa. With only 3 PCs and not that many enemies, I can’t imagine battles taking too long.

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

My advice for running one-shots is "allocate more sessions than you think," because they always go 1-2 longer. Players aren't perfectly efficient and you'll need to cut corners if you have a specific time budget.

Kyrosiris
May 24, 2006

You try to be happy when everyone is summoning you everywhere to "be their friend".



Declan MacManus posted:

communication and openness with your players is an important part of successful gming, and that includes telling your players “uh oh oops that’s a fair point i didn’t think about that” and taking a minute to gather your thoughts (or even stopping the session, which sucks, but is way better than ending everyone’s narrative in an unsatisfying way)

Yeah, my GM is very good about this and they'll be quite open about when we kinda went outside of their prepared web of ideas. It doesn't help that one of our players' character backstory is that they're a retired investigator who found that adventuring paid the bills better and will absolutely comb over anything and everything. Plus we have a sticky-fingered thief. :v:

They have a habit of turning "oooh, I didn't think about that" into making us regret asking them to think about it though, it's almost up there with "well, you can try" in spook factor.

Afriscipio
Jun 3, 2013

Spooky suggestions:

  • A suit of armor collapses at a touch. If you return to the room, the armor is reassembled.
  • You hear a person crying in the next room.
  • A small doll lies on the floor of an empty room. The next room also has a small doll on the bed. Is it the same doll?
  • A religious symbol fixed to the wall drips blood.
  • A room is upside down, all the furniture and fittings are attached to the roof. Looking out the windows gives you the sense the world is upside down and this room is the only place that's the right side up.
  • There is a smell of roses. The smell becomes more intense and overpowering the longer you stay in a particular spot.
  • Mirrors show you looking older, or younger.
  • In a picture gallery, approaching certain pictures will induce small hallucinations of smells and sounds from the scenes in the paintings. That's fine if it's a pastural scene, more harrowing if it's a battle or something worse.

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


I did a spooky mansion a while ago and my players still talk about it as a high point of the game. I listed some spooky things below but one major, major point - when they go in a room, describe something weird/spooky/unpleasant as part of the initital description. When they question it, explain it in completely mundane fashion with no reference to the spooky thing. If they press the point say "what? no, it's just [a mirror]. What did you think was in there?" and get them to repeat it back, then you act as if they are the ones being weird.

1) As they approached the house a room with tall, frosted windows had a drinks reception going on inside. Warm and welcoming light, soft laughter, tall & elegant figures gliding about. When they went in the room it was dark and empty - chairs stacked up, tables pushed to one side, etc. As soon as they left there was an almighty crash and when they went back in a tray of champagne glasses had shattered as if dropped in the middle of the floor. There was no-one there.

2) Main hall had a big chandelier, swinging ominously. As they pass underneath it creaks, then falls. Broken glass flies everywhere and pops under their feet as they leave. The next time they enter this room the large chandelier swings ominously overhead....

3) Living room, big stain on the mantlepiece & rug that looks like blood. First person to look in the mirror sees [story-appropriate scary thing]. In ours it was a skeletal woman with lank, black hair - her husband had seen her in there and thrown his wine at the mirror before fleeing the house. On the couch is a half-finished embroidery that shows vines and thorns piercing the bodies of men and women who writhe in agony. No, on second glance it's just plants. What did you say it looked like?

4) In an enclosed garden is a series of small gravestones for pets. An elderly man in rough clothes digs a small grave. Next to him is a massive pile of smashed up cats and dogs. If questioned he just says the masters do love their pets, but they never last long. Any further questions results in insistence that he just needs to get this done, gesticulating at the hole. If they attack him he just folds up and dies without a sound. This one was my absolute favourite, as they spoke I was just making a digging motion and going "kch... kch...kch" and one of the players said she was genuinely creeped out.

5) The Long Gallery was a hallway full of paintings. The paintings all looked normal but sometimes out of the corner of your eye you could see weird poo poo:
- a landscape where figures hang from the trees. Naked humanoids caper around them with torches.
- A still life of flowers where the centre of every bloom is a human face screaming in torment.
- A hunting party. The crowd laughs as hounds tear apart a naked man who writhes on the ground, his blood staining the snow.

6) Ghosts that appear (from suits of armour in my game), swing at them and do no damage (good descriptions of the ghostly blade biting into flesh, you feel your limbs grow cold etc, you take.... no damage). As soon as they get blasé about this say a skeleton leans out and reaches his spectral fingers into your chest, and you feel your heart stop (Harm spell).

7) Nursery with an open music box playing a lullaby, there's a rocking horse, building blocks, etc and a crib rocks back and forth, back and forth on the floor. It was going to have some undead thing in it but my players closed the music box so I just said the shadows withdraw, the room seems lighter and less menacing, and the crib stop moving. It is empty. They were relieved to end the spooky but also cross to miss what was in there. Spooky music box music is easy to find on Youtube!

8) Various other things sprinkled through the house - a delicious meal laid out that is actually all rotten and spoiled (great if someone takes a bite before the reveal), brandy or wine glasses on the side that look to have eyeballs in, a washstand/mirror or even whole room covered in blood that has vanished when you look again, stuffed animal heads that fly off the wall as if charging, spare room with someone sleeping in bed and when they touch them it's hundreds of rats that scatter, cauldron bubbling away in the kitchen that if they watch things like fingers and faces will bubble to the top and down again. If they try and investigate any of this stuff just go "no, it is now totally normal" as soon as they pick it up.

Finally, I can't remember exactly why this happened but they had been peeking into the ballroom by going into a secret room and sliding a little panel to look through the eyes of a painting. They went back for another look before going in there and when they slid back the panel I said there was a pair of eyes right on the other side staring back at them. They all jumped and one of them actually went "Aah!"

I would offer to send you my notes & map but they are very story-specific in parts. Hope this helps though!

Sanford fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Oct 29, 2020

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


Glans Dillzig posted:

it's such a familiar sounding story but I can't actually find it in this or the 5e thread :saddowns:

Following up on this, it was just an apple! It was sitting on a plinth in a dungeon. Looked lovely. Lots of really good perception tests let them discern it smelled like a fresh apple, and looked like a really nice apple, and if they ate it they would probably be a bit more full than they are now but not too full. Fifteen minutes before they even lifted it off the plinth and that was with them all hiding round a corner, making an npc do it (he shouted “It’s an apple. Can I eat it?” and all three players went “NO!”). Then they did every type of check you can think of, with every one revealing yep, it’s an apple. Best bit of dialogue was when one of them dropped it to see if it fell or landed oddly:

Me: As it falls, it makes you think...
Player: Yes?
Me: The sound as it hits the ground stirs a memory, something you saw long ago...
Player: Yes, yes, go on!
Me: You were in an orchard...
Player: Oh gently caress off!

Eventually they stood at the entrance and threw it is far as they could back into the dungeon, then all bolted back up the tunnel to the surface. Towards the end of the session, hours later, one of the players angrily declared “I can’t stop thinking about that loving apple!”

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









:D

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


I'll just take over this thread, it's mine now. Another idea for halloween that people would be welcome to use, in my kids game last week they went into the kitchen and a group of ghosts went "aha at last!" and treated them like waiters. They got the puzzle below with the only rules being "everyone must have at least one dish, and everyone is thirsty." Note that the very bottom ghost used a box of Orc Flakes breakfast cereal one of the players had - you can't actually solve that one just with what's on the screen. One of the clues is in big writing simply because it is an easy place to get started - there's only one thing that constitutes a meal and a drink in one.



I set it up on Roll20 so they could move the different foods around, and the only feedback I provided was dropping green, amber or red lights onto the ghost faces and muttering appropriate bits of dialogue ("mmm this looks delicious" or "no no no I'm not eating this"). It was really great fun and if not necessarily spooky is at least in the "there is weird poo poo going on here" bracket.

Edit: And then the ghosts asked for the bill and they discussed what to charge for almost as long as it took them to solve the puzzle. I was almost crying with laughter as they discussed did soup cost more as a main course than as a starter and were there any free refills on drinks. They were so earnest, and so determined to be fair!

Sanford fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Oct 29, 2020

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OTbGsbgMzaM4yFq8weLrUn3kAbaAoqHMS98jEbZ9KD8/edit?usp=sharing

gently caress it, full notes and map for my Haunted House. Apologies for all the posts, I got offered a job after bbeing made redundant a few weeks ago so I'm hyper as gently caress, but I'm also old so being hyper manifests as "posts too much in the D&D thread."

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply