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I've only played one game with six people but it quickly descended into a show of just me and one other player doing RP while the others joined in only if specifically addressed. Combat was awful and descended into "I swing my axe" very quickly. Someone will suggest a better system soon but I think my advice is "don't play D&D with more than 4 in the party". What system are you using? My question is, why are +[x] weapons considered so unbalancing in D&D 5e? So I give a guy a +3 weapon, he hit this monster on a 14 instead of a 16 and did 19 damage instead of 17. It doesn't seem that much of a difference but when I asked in a different group I got piled on (and left - I don't want to talk to people who care that much what other people are doing for fun). Am I missing something or is it "D&D is very finely balanced, don't mess with it" stuff? As I've started a new page, have a picture of my shelf that finally gave up this morning:  I keep all my bad ideas in the starter set box so it's very heavy. Sanford fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Nov 27, 2020 10:20
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Just 5E. And yes, we’ve only had 2 sessions with 6 so far but I was immediately running into slow combat problems and can already see problems with trying to keep the focus evenly distributed with that many players for story reasons.
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Nov 27, 2020 10:42
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Sanford posted:I've only played one game with six people but it quickly descended into the "Steve & Paul Show" of just me and one other player doing any RP while the others joined in only if specifically addressed. I've run two D&D4e games with parties of 6 and they've both been fine. I think this is down to my players primarily: both groups tended to have their characters roleplay with one another while I was addressing whichever player was talking to an NPC. This is a lot harder over voicechat, sadly, and I'm not sure there's a way around that other than running a completely different model of RPG. One thing I've found helps is having multiple things go on at the same time -- so I can be "OK, while that conversation I just had between Paul and the king is going on, the court wizard sidles up and asks if she can have a quiet word". It still means that talking is mostly one-on-one but it means that it's at least between different groups of people. Sanford posted:Combat was awful and descended into "I swing my axe" very quickly. This can be helped a lot by designing combat encounters where lots of stuff is going on other than the players hitting enemies with axes. Complicated terrain, environmental hazards, secondary objectives, and so on all help draw players away from the routine of "pick my best attack and use it".
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Nov 27, 2020 11:11
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Whybird posted:I've run two D&D4e games with parties of 6 and they've both been fine. I think this is down to my players primarily: both groups tended to have their characters roleplay with one another while I was addressing whichever player was talking to an NPC. This is a lot harder over voicechat, sadly, and I'm not sure there's a way around that other than running a completely different model of RPG. Yeah it was first time D&D for me and all the players. I first found this thread because I'd foolishly assumed everything would be in the book. I'd do better now (but mainly by saying "no, too many, I'll do two separate games.")
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Nov 27, 2020 11:54
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The Shame Boy posted:What is the secret to running higher player count games? I have recently gone up for 4 to 6 it's a bit of a pain to run the game now. Anybody with more experience on the matter give any advice? different player count games run completely differently i have found over the years. you cant run a 6 player game like a 4 player game. ive never ran over 7 players concurrently and had it be good(i have done so, but its always bad) but i think 6 players is one of my favourite configurations to run, once you get used to it. there are a few things you want to keep in mind. first: try to find naturally developing groups in the party. it will happen. i do not know what your groups are, or what size they end up, but typically with 6 people you have splinter groups of two that naturally form. try to create content that appeals to groups instead of individuals. for example, if you have a group where one person is a pirate who left their crew, and another person is a bounty hunter... in a largely good party, these neutral characters stand out. make a plot thread where the bounty hunter is given a bounty of a former member of that pirates crew. note that the 4 other players do not have an explicit hook into this - trying to get things to interest all 6 players narratives at all times is almost never going to happen. second: accept that your combats are going to need to be exponentially harder than you think. action economy is king, and the difference between 4 players to 6 players is far more profound than "2 extra players". player characters have more options available to them than NPCs do, so by adding 2 extra characters to initiatives, each potentially with an "end encounter" option somewhere on their character sheet, you can expect encounters are going to be significantly easier than they first appear. third: you need to spin more plates. see the first thing - i created a plot which involves 2 players. there are 4 other players who are seemingly left out... this means you need to create content for them, as well. you can not meaningfully resolve all this stuff at the same time, so you have to start putting stuff on the backburner, weaving things in and out. it makes the game more dynamic to run which can be more difficult but i actually find it easier because you dont have to tell the players "i have to put this on the shelf cause i ran out of stuff to do with this part" so you always have backup content available at a moments notice. fourth: get really good at combat flow. its hard stuff. find some meaningful reward for quick turns, find a way to make sure players arent confused as to when it is their turn. it is easier said than done and most of this comes down to your party, but combat drags sessions like you wouldnt believe. you want to make combat as dynamic as possible here, as posting phenom whybird alludes to. fifth: party composition changes entirely. for one, splitting the party... not bad? normally players never do this, but splitting into two groups of three is actually completely reasonable. three people is a great deal of campaigns. the other thing is you can not expect everyone to have their own perfect niche. there is going to be some overlap. this is actually good, just be aware that this will happen.
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Nov 27, 2020 14:22
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Sanford posted:My question is, why are +[x] weapons considered so unbalancing in D&D 5e? So I give a guy a +3 weapon, he hit this monster on a 14 instead of a 16 and did 19 damage instead of 17. It doesn't seem that much of a difference but when I asked in a different group I got piled on (and left - I don't want to talk to people who care that much what other people are doing for fun). Am I missing something or is it "D&D is very finely balanced, don't mess with it" stuff? Generally speaking, ACs in 5e are pretty low. Giving someone a +1 or something may not affect things terribly, but it may add up over time. I don't think it's a thing about finely balanced things, but it's also kind of boring to find a sword that just does +1, rather than something cool. I've found that 5e seems a lot less concerned with the huge numbers that came before in earlier editions, and more concerned with cool stuff/abilities instead.
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Nov 27, 2020 14:32
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If everyone has +3 swords, the party is gonna hit 15% more often. That's just moving the threshold. If everyone has +2 swords and one guy has +3, that extra 5% is nice for them but no big deal. What can be an issue is if one guy has +3 higher attack than anyone else cause now he suddenly sticks out. If you balance enemies' AC around him, the rest of the party will struggle to hit them. If you balance it around them, he's gonna be the default MVP. (Remember that "higher hit rate" and "higher damage" kind of stack. That guy's average damage doesn't go up from 17 to 19, it goes up from 8 to 12, very broadly speaking.)
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Nov 27, 2020 14:40
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I don't know all the assumptions for 5E on this subject (paging Gradenko to the thread  ) but in 4E the "designed-for" to-hit rate of players facing roughly equal-level monsters was 65%. In reality good optimization would push it a bit higher but that was, as I understand it, the target they were shooting for.If you're +3 ahead of your "expected" curve (as distinct from needing it to stay on curve) that's a 15% increase in accuracy, up to 80%. Hitting 80% of the time vs. 65% of the time is about a 23% increase in damage simply from hitting more often. If the bonus affects damage as well as accuracy than it effectively multiplies itself and gets even bigger.
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Nov 29, 2020 10:03
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Okay thanks for the explanation, I see that it's more of a differential thing if you make a "main player" by mistake. I don't think it's a big deal. My players are about to do the Frost Giant Glacier from Yawning Portal at level 8 and I think it's meant to be for 11-12 so they'll need all the help they can get.
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Nov 29, 2020 20:43
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The Shame Boy posted:What is the secret to running higher player count games? I have recently gone up for 4 to 6 it's a bit of a pain to run the game now. Anybody with more experience on the matter give any advice? Don't. But if you have to: 1) You have to be real good at sharing the spotlight around. In D&D, outside combat, this is going to be entirely on you because there aren't really mechanics to help you. After one player says what they're doing, turn to another player and ask what they're doing. Don't let one player do three or four things on a row while everyone else sits around. Don't let a quieter player fall through the cracks and end up getting to do nothing. 2) Don't let players plan/wargame everything extensively before they do it. Every extra player adds exponentially to this problem because the number of possibilities increases exponentially with each extra character. 3) In combat (or really whenever you're using rounds/turns): When someone's turn comes around, they must be ready to take their turn, not ready to start thinking about what they're going to do on their turn. In a 6 player group you can easily end up looking at 40+ minute rounds if everyone loses focus off turn and just goes "uh um uh..." when their turn starts, and that's a self-reinforcing spiral because the longer the wait between turns, the more people stop paying attention. Part of being ready for your turn is finding all the dice and rules you need. You're gonna do a sword attack? Add up your modifiers and stuff and write that number down. Have your D20s and damage dice ready, and roll them together. Casting Fireball? Scrounge up those 12d6 and bring up the spell rules on your phone (turn to that page, find your spell card, etc) before your turn. You probably don't need it? Yes you do, you need to have it there so you don't spend five minutes fumbling round finding and reading it if there's a question about it. I mean, what else were you doing in the 15 odd minutes' downtime you have every round, anyway? 4) if this is D&D then you need to make every encounter much harder, because of the way every extra total action the party has makes them exponentially better. However, if you do this by adding monsters you're vastly increasing the chances of disaster if (when) a PC goes down and stays there, because this works both ways. Use tougher monsters instead.
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Nov 29, 2020 23:20
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DND 5E Rules question TLDR: My players have spent the last couple sessions making sure they’ll walk into a trap. Please help me make sure it’s done well. My players have spent the last few sessions trying to get an audience with the council of the city they’re in. What they don’t know or even suspect is that the Council is under the yoke of a powerful Lich, who in turn works for the BBEG. In fact, they’ve heard about the Lich, and his connection to the BBEG; they just chose to ignore it. They also SHOULD have ample reason to suspect he’s in the very building they are trying to get an audience in… but apparently, they don’t. So here’s what I’ve got planned. They will finally get their audience with the council. With the invite, they will get a written set of rules, including “bow when you enter” and “no weapons in the council chamber”. The players, acting as ambassadors, will have their chance to talk with the council – but the questions will soon veer towards military strength of their colony and the like. Afterwards, the head councilman will get up, seem to listen to a voice only he can hear, and then utter the typical “seize them!” And here’s where I need your help. My problem is that I have a very magic-intensive group, which I don't have much experience with. A normal group of guards would be mowed down with fireballs and the like. Or the players would just teleport out of the room. I’d like the council room to be secured from magic use, but don’t know how. Antimagic Field is both ridiculously high level and ridiculously small. Silence would defeat the purpose of a meeting room. What else is there that could keep my players from using spells? Preferably while letting the Council members still use theirs? Or should I just handwave it, saying “the room is protected against magic by unwanted casters with powerful wards”? I'd prefer doing it "by the books", but if the books don't present a rules-conform solution, I'd be willing to go that route. Same goes for the cells they’ll be brought to; there they need to have their spells dampened as well. Maybe with some wristcuffs or similar? For reference, my party is very Magic-Heavy, consisting of a 9th-level Cleric, Sorcerer and Fighter and a 2 Bard / 7 Warlock.
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Nov 30, 2020 20:22
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This is definitely not the answer to your question but how much faith do you have that your players aren't going to FTFO and fight to the death (no matter what magic blockers you put in) when you go to imprison them?
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Nov 30, 2020 20:31
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So my players just finished up Death House. I’ve got a mix of veterans and newbies (5 people total), and this is my first real foray into DM’ing. I’ve done a few one-shots, but we’re 5 sessions deep into this campaign (session 0 with some background stuff, and then getting sucked into Barovia and finding their way to the house, then 4 sessions through the house/dungeon). I didn’t alter Death House at all, but I had them start at level 3 since I knew it had a rep as a meat grinder. Doing milestone levels and I thought about giving them a level now that they’ve finished the dungeon, but that feels like a bit much. I was toying with the idea of giving them a free feat. Thought that might feel like a bit of a reward at least, for successful completion of the dungeon. Also gives me some tie-ins to Dark Powers later as the source of these boons. Anyone with more experience know if that would be too much? I don’t really have a sense of how much power an extra feat really gives. And I want the feel of the module to remain intact, don’t want them to just breeze through it.
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Nov 30, 2020 20:44
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Luebbi posted:My problem is that I have a very magic-intensive group, which I don't have much experience with. A normal group of guards would be mowed down with fireballs and the like. Or the players would just teleport out of the room. I’d like the council room to be secured from magic use, but don’t know how. Antimagic Field is both ridiculously high level and ridiculously small. Silence would defeat the purpose of a meeting room. What else is there that could keep my players from using spells? Preferably while letting the Council members still use theirs? In a world where martial visitors are expected to disarm before entering a high security area, precautions like taking focuses and spell components away seem reasonable. The council is trusted, and keep their own.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:20
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Put them in ceremonial heavy armor, required for all visitors (so they can't cast), or for something more metal, suspend a lobotomized beholder over the council chamber projecting an anti-magic field
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Nov 30, 2020 21:30
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Luebbi posted:DND 5E Rules question TLDR: My players have spent the last couple sessions making sure they’ll walk into a trap. Please help me make sure it’s done well. take away spell component pouches and focuses, let players use sleight of hand to sneak stuff in. have wizards in the room standing still ominously in corners whose entire purpose is to counterspell if anyone feels froggy. maybe the wizards can only cast low level counter spells -- even so, with 4 counterspells going off at once, it is likely they will work
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Nov 30, 2020 21:35
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Maybe the audience occurs in a remote viewing room, as a prudent precaution against concealed weapons of both the magical and mundane reality. Then, once the party files into the conference room, the crack troops pile in and the door slams shut, all without the ruling elites experiencing any immediate, personal risk. A pat-down in a RPG is almost always a sign poo poo is going down, but with a video call room there's no giveaway that things aren't as normal or that the PCs are in danger.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:44
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"Magical bodyguard whose entire purpose is to counterspell stuff" would almost certainly be a thriving job position in a world where wizardry is abound.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:46
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change my name posted:Put them in ceremonial heavy armor, required for all visitors (so they can't cast), or for something more metal, suspend a lobotomized beholder over the council chamber projecting an anti-magic field the latter is amazing, but yeah locked headbands is good. Points if you make it something that's not obviously a threat, like a robe, or an antimagic drink they need to have to toast the duke/baron/whatver. Schismatrix had circlets that projected a target on your forehead that was the impact point for roof mounted weaponry. Basically if you take away their power be fair, and be ready for them to cleverly circumvent it if they can manage it.
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Nov 30, 2020 22:16
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Morpheus posted:"Magical bodyguard whose entire purpose is to counterspell stuff" would almost certainly be a thriving job position in a world where wizardry is abound. yeah exactly, easiest wizard paying job in the world because kings will ask for you and you barely need to level up
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Nov 30, 2020 22:26
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Contingency is also a spell that exists and can't be counterspelled after it's already been set, and is intentionally vague for how general the trigger can be (which you can retcon if need be).
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Nov 30, 2020 23:13
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IMHO, the secret to making something dangerous feel fair is to properly communicate the threat. It doesn't need to be balanced or follow something outlined in the book, it just needs to be a risk that the players accept. Making it something innocuous, like an antimagic potion you trick the party into drinking, feels meanspirited and manipulative. The deck should be obviously stacked against the players, with a very rational and acceptable reason for the circumstance, even before they walk into the room. Having the party hear stories about the lobotomized beholder or running into some designated counter-spellers when they are off duty would help signpost that the room is well defended for clear and logical reasons. To throw my own idea out there, I'd introduce a new NPC who is the king's designated "Magic Thwarter." His job for the past 60 years was just finding ways to stop wizards from interfering or spying on the court. He's had the entire room lined with lead to block divination magic. He's hired clerics to bind celestial chains that will grab anyone in the court who casts any spell. He manages the court minstrel's contract, and ensures that they know the bard feature Countercharm. He is a patron of magically inclined artists, and has commissioned dozens of animate tapestries that are enchanted to intercept magical attacks. There was even one month he had the chamber closed for everyone except for himself and a world renowned expert on Abjuration magic. No one has any idea what they did in there, but the room has smelled slightly of lilacs and ambergris ever since. He is not a wizard, and he is not a genius, but he knows tactics and what spell casters can do, and he's spent the past 60 years planning and organizing ways to defend this one room with overlapping and complementary strategies. Mechanically speaking, this would mean that every spell attack would be done at disadvantage, everyone in the room has advantage on saving throws versus spells, and for every spell cast in a round the lair has one action to try to restrain every single guest in the room. i.e. If the party casts three spells in the first round, the checks will be rolled in a way that disadvantages the players. Additionally, because three spells were cast, the entire party will need to make three separate saving throws to avoid being restrained.
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Nov 30, 2020 23:34
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In terms of communicating the threat, my recommendation would be to define a "point of no return", the point at which the group cannot reasonably leave without fighting their way out, and then gradually escalate the inherent danger of the situation until they actually go into the council chamber. This gives them ample opportunity to decide, "plan's off, we're fighting". Step 1 is getting inside the council building, make sure to narrate the defences that might make it hard to escape. Then the weapon search, the removal of focuses and so on. Then a chance meeting with a member of the council in the hallway as they're being escorted, seems very friendly but then...gets a sending spell or something, makes exuses to leave, looks worried. Then the meeting is in the underground section of the hall; they explain it's to protect against magical scrying, but uh, seems a tad worrisome. etc. In terms of blocking spellcasting once captured, here's how I'd restrain a spellcaster (assuming put them in heavy armor won't work due to proficiency or availability). First up, blindfold them or force them into darkness. Lots of spells rely on seeing a target, no sight rules those spells out even if there's a subtle spell caster to get past literally everything else. A gag will stop verbal components, but since spellcasting requires extremely precise magic words, you don't necessarily need to block speech to block spellcasting; a partial obstruction of the mouth, or a local anasthetic that numbs the tongue, or something which forces the jaw open could all allow communication without allowing verbal spells. For somantic components it's the fingers you really need to worry about, gloves with the fingers stitched together that are cursed to be removable only when a command word is spoken prevent somatic components without preventing players from using their hands relatively freely. That might sound like overkill in terms of specifics, but the advantage of doing this over anti-magical manacles is it lets your PCs once captured actually move their arms and speak to each other, and come up with a plan. They have two problems to solve; get back verbal components, or get back somantic components, the the other, then an ambush of the guards when the magical darkness is briefly smothered to allow a transfer or something. Whereas anti-magic manacles positively scream "Wait around until the DM cutscenes you in an opportunity".
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Dec 2, 2020 02:31
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my old reliable dm trick is to find the highest wisdom player and tell them "you get a bad feeling about this" right before a situation where i take them to the hoops
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Dec 2, 2020 02:56
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Thanks a lot for all the suggestions! Reading these and thinking about it made me realize something: I wasn't feeling uneasy about the whole thing because I wasn't sure about which rules to use against my magic users. I was feeling uneasy because I was hell-bent on the players falling for the trap and getting captured, essentially railroading them to an outcome only I want. Instead, I now thought about 3 possible things that can happen: 1. The players really do fall for everything and leave their weapons, foci and caution at the door. They get captured and have to escape from prison. 2. They wise up, but send one of their group in to negotiate. He gets captured and they have to break him out. 3. They wise up and don't attend the meeting, or they manage to flee even when the trap is sprung. They will then be hunted by the authorities and have to hide out with their underground contact, who will ask them for a favor... break into the palace. All ways can ultimately lead to the encounter with the Lich, but now the players have a fair chance and I don't have to worry about them "breaking" my scripted event, because I've got multiple contingencies.
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Dec 2, 2020 21:21
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Whybird posted:I've run two D&D4e games with parties of 6 and they've both been fine. I think this is down to my players primarily: both groups tended to have their characters roleplay with one another while I was addressing whichever player was talking to an NPC. This is a lot harder over voicechat, sadly, and I'm not sure there's a way around that other than running a completely different model of RPG. For the group that I'm in, we reserve voice for the "primary" thread (in a sense) and any side-RP (inter-party chatter, etc) goes in the Zoom text chat. Granted OOC silly poo poo goes there too but we're pretty good about putting anything that's actual in character in quotes, indicating languages in a parenthetical after, etc., so I'd be like "Yeah, as if they think we're going to trust *them* after all of this nonsense..." (Draconic) if I was snidely snarking about the NPC currently asking us to trust them to our sorcerex and cavalier who speak Draconic.
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Dec 3, 2020 02:49
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Urgh. I have to have a talk with one of my players tomorrow to say “if you can’t play the game without going full murderhobo, don’t play”, and I’m really not looking forward to it. But I also know that if I don’t say it, I won’t want to run a very enjoyable social game which has been really great throughout lockdown. I’m already slightly dreading the next session.
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Dec 9, 2020 23:39
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I'm in a similar boat. I have a player who does not engage with any system or game we play, and always reverts back to talking about his character being infatuated with running a food-related shop. Always sandwiches or similar. Alien? Sandwich delivery person Mutant year zero? Sandwiches made from mutant meat. LANCER? Sandwich Uber Delivery Mech. Its frustrating and getting very old for a few of us in the group. Tried to ask him what would make him interested in the actual game themes but he just shrugs and says he basically just comes down to be social.
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Dec 10, 2020 03:19
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fallingdownjoe posted:Urgh. I have to have a talk with one of my players tomorrow to say “if you can’t play the game without going full murderhobo, don’t play”, and I’m really not looking forward to it. generally when i have stuff like that, its one of two things. 1) the player is new and/or afraid to engage with roleplaying, or 2) as a dm i am not giving the player reason to care about the stuff i am doing. first thing is instead of saying that is i would say 'hey boss, i see you keep killing stuff and using violence as a first result and just looting everything. can i ask why you are choosing to play that way?' and see what the answer is. often times - especially in dnd - the player sees a combat based game system and assumes the game is about combat and using violence, since well, their character sheet has 60 ways to kill somebody. i had a player once who was very murderhobo-y, but the reason was because they were used to dickhead GMs who would always trap players or npcs would always double cross them, so they learned to not trust things and not get attached. when she played as caring about an area, that area gets attacked by orcs as a cheap gut punch, so she learned not to care about the areas and instead play aloof and distant. of course if you already talked to the player about this then all of this advice is for naught and just go ahead and say you are not running that type of game, and they have three choices: play their character differently, play another character, or stop playing. Spiteski posted:I'm in a similar boat. I have a player who does not engage with any system or game we play, and always reverts back to talking about his character being infatuated with running a food-related shop. Always sandwiches or similar. have you tried running a game about running food related shops. not joking with this post.
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Dec 10, 2020 04:04
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pog boyfriend posted:have you tried running a game about running food related shops. not joking with this post. 
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Dec 10, 2020 04:49
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pog boyfriend posted:have you tried running a game about running food related shops. not joking with this post. Strangely enough this came about from a game where this was the goal. It was a DnD game that we wholly embraced the sandwich gimmick, and there was great campaign we ran where I had the players running a sandwich shop that got super great business - eerily great. Turns out the previous owners had obtained magically enhanced meat that addicted people to it. They had to source more of it and went on semi local adventures discovering a Salt-in-wounds rip off (tarrasque being farmed for it's meat) being the source of said meat. Everyone had a great time, and it ended on a pretty great high. I feel like this player is trying to recapture that same campaign energy despite everyone making it clear this was a cool thing that happened once and isn't something anyone particularly wants to recreate.
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Dec 10, 2020 07:59
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There's a lot of good stuff sandwiched in that book. 4 out of 5 stars. Would eat there again.
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Dec 10, 2020 10:39
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To Go is a pretty cool campaign, too, though there are a couple of bits there that have aged like fine milk. Unknown Armies 2E seems to veer wildly between being eerily prescient and completely off-target with absolutely zero middle ground.
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Dec 10, 2020 11:41
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pog boyfriend posted:generally when i have stuff like that, its one of two things. 1) the player is new and/or afraid to engage with roleplaying, or 2) as a dm i am not giving the player reason to care about the stuff i am doing. first thing is instead of saying that is i would say 'hey boss, i see you keep killing stuff and using violence as a first result and just looting everything. can i ask why you are choosing to play that way?' and see what the answer is. often times - especially in dnd - the player sees a combat based game system and assumes the game is about combat and using violence, since well, their character sheet has 60 ways to kill somebody. Thanks - this was a good suggestion. I've sent them a message asking why they chose to play the situation that way, and I'll guide things from there. If they step back and suggest regret, I'll work something out.
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Dec 10, 2020 12:25
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Hello again friends. I'm back for another round of "figure out how to satisfy my player". I solved the previous round by allowing my Bard friend to take Find Familiar as a 1st level Bard spell that only summons a Raccoon, therefore adding some limitations and making them use their Bard spell economy without ruining their fun. This time, I'm working on Session 1 and the setup. My players are meeting in a port town - or, the plan is for them to meet. I've instructed each of them to have a particular goal in mind for why they're in this port town that has a common thread. The setup is everyone is on a Britain-sized island country that is slowly being colonized by a large empire. The prompt was for each of them to have a goal related to the empire (i.e. charter a boat, request info from the mainland, visit the imperial embassy in the city they're in, etc) so that when each of them go to do it they are delivered the bad news of "regional government has put a block on all things Imperial, you'll need to take it up with xx in city yy". The problem now is my Bard's goal is to go see a massive fantasy concert featuring a D&D persona of a real life artist. The artist is a flamboyant starling bard with a silver tongue and "high energy, illusory-magic fueled shows that lift everyone's spirits". I've never DMed for a bard before and certainly not one with ambitions this lofty about what performances look like in my setting, but that's not the issue. How do I get in his way? I was expecting my players to pick, well, more standard fantasy adventure styled quest tropes. I don't know how to hook off of it and I certainly don't know how to make it a compelling mini quest/introductory RP. How compelling is "they won't let you buy tickets until you update your Imperial passpor- whoops, there's a hold on that currently"? I've considered that there's something threatening the concert or the performer... but this was supposed to be more of a minor diversion and I don't want the players thinking that's the big hook. Of my other two players, one is a vengeance paladin loosely based on Guts and I know he has about as much patience irl for this as Guts would have in-universe for a magic bard concert.
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Dec 16, 2020 07:13
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Sounds like the performer needs a stadium, enough people in the audience, wizards who can cast the illusions, alchemists to make the pyrotechnics, etc. All of those would require a lot of development on the island and complicated (potentially shady) business contracts. Those could be good ways to spin off into a mini adventure. There could also be others on the island that share the player's dream of seeing the performer, who might go to extreme lengths to get what they want. My first thought for a story hook: the performer's #1 fan is a necromancer, and is a massive creep that wants to cause situations that increases their idol's fame. They want to destroy the local environment to harvest combustible magical reagents to make masterwork pyrotechnics. They want to wipe out and zombify the local inhabitants to create a construction crew to make the stadium. They want to inflict the colonizers with a special curse that can only be cured by a passionate bard's song. The players can either knowingly work with the creepy NPC as they do increasingly questionable things, or stumble on the NPC's handiwork. Tenik fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Dec 16, 2020 |
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Dec 16, 2020 07:41
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I would suggest having the bard attend the concert early, and have it be every bit as mindblowingly good as the marketing says. Then when they get to their fantasy AirBnb, they find their room is double-booked with Guts! And oh no, there's just one bed. The PCs can do a small clash of personalities, get some roleplaying opportunities as they bounce off each other, etc. Then introduce the next PC, also booked for that room, then the rest, then like five NPCs until everyone realizes they've been scammed by a shifty landlord. When the angry party goes to confront the shady landlord, they find the empire has just declared an emergency curfew and is recruiting bold adventurers. And wouldn't you know it, room and board is free if you sign up now.
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Dec 16, 2020 07:48
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Did you have a session 0 where you established this wouldn't be a bard-wish-fulfillment campaign?
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Dec 16, 2020 08:04
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Just as a very general remark I'm getting the vibe that your bard player isn't on the same page as everyone else regarding the tone of this game, and even if you're all okay with every individual situation this brings up so far, it's probably best to have a chat and work it out before it brings up a situation where you're not. (For completeness' sake, this would go for the paladin as well if he was the one who was too Guts-y for a more whimsical game.) On specific ideas: the fantasy superstar could either be propaganda for the new empire, or the new empire could have them in their sights for stirring up the populace.
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Dec 16, 2020 08:07
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| # ? May 12, 2024 20:55 |
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If attending the concert is a goal, then it would probably work better as a mid/long term objective to put on the backburner, than something to dive into right away. After all, if a character has some kind of Big Dream, then they need to spend some time dreaming about it before it becomes reality. To work it into the story, it could be something that will happen at a destination city where everyone is already heading anyways. It could very reasonably be scheduled to happen in a few weeks/months, which still leaves plenty of narrative time to explore other characters' storylines. If anything, a storyline with a happy ending of attending a sick concert works better if it's some kind of relief after finishing some other hard-fought adventures. For the actual plot hook, tracking down a cryptic villain planning to kidnap/kill the star is a pretty reasonable and straightforward hook for the players; the organizers find an enigmatic threatening note, and the star performer refuses to delay the performance for anything, out of dedication to the fans, so it's up to the players to decipher the clues, track down the villain, and save the concert before it's too late. Incidentally, that's also more or less the opera sequence from Final Fantasy 6. For their reward, they can get some autographed merch with extraordinary properties, i.e. magical gear. To me at least, it sounds like a fun and refreshing character goal. Even a serious and gritty storyline needs some goodness and hope, and the heroes need to get some worthwhile, feel-good wins now and then, to show that there's a point to struggling against a cruel and uncaring world. It's a logistical impossibility for everyone to advance their personal character storyline right away, all at the same time, so it's okay if players take turns being the center of focus, as long as everyone always has a part to play and eventually gets their turn.
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Dec 16, 2020 08:51
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