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sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









The Slack Lagoon posted:

I don't understand adversarial DMing. D&D is a collaborative storytelling game

it's fun to overcome challenges together, and it's fun to make stories together. both things are true.

it's definitely worth trying out 1e tournament modules like tomb of horrors, they are a genuine lot of fun, just hand out the premades and go for it. 1e is an incredibly light system to run once you realise 95% of the DMG (apart from the magic item list) is worthless cruft

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ninjoatse.cx
Apr 9, 2005

Fun Shoe
As mentioned before, sometimes putting the characters into a death trap gets you some really creative responses. I don't like doing it since some of my players are new to TTRPG, and they are the first to pretty much throw their hands up and admit they don't know what to do.

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

The key to setting up a good death trap puzzle is don't actually have an answer, go with the best solution from the players

Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

sebmojo posted:

it's fun to overcome challenges together, and it's fun to make stories together. both things are true.

it's definitely worth trying out 1e tournament modules like tomb of horrors, they are a genuine lot of fun, just hand out the premades and go for it. 1e is an incredibly light system to run once you realise 95% of the DMG (apart from the magic item list) is worthless cruft

Yeah, I cut my teeth on 0E, and we transitioned to 1e before I graduated from college. Character death was just part of the game - there were a lot of "save or die" situations, particularly poison, and you just made a new one and moved on. (I've recently been playing 5e with my kids and grandkids and I'm a bit put off by the cartoon superhero characters, and how characters seem to matter more than story now, but I won't diverge into that.)

I didn't find GMs of that era to be particularly adversarial, they were just indifferent. They set up a scenario with no guarantee of or even attempt at level appropriateness, and the characters had to figure out how to deal with it. Sometimes it was slaughtering a pack of goblins, and sometimes it meant recognizing quickly that you were in over your head and running away, while leaving a couple dead bodies behind. There was an edginess to it, that you had to be on your toes constantly and evaluate quickly make decisions on the fly.

The "creative storytelling" aspect isn't just playing out the scenario and the inner story of the game, It's also the meta-stories you tell each other afterwards - "man, I had three characters die before we finally beat that dragon! It was awesome" is also a collaborative storytelling and IMO the more important social aspect of it.

Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Nov 15, 2021

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011
I think my most fun campaign ever had the party get wiped out (along with a city) in a way we didn't really agree to or discuss in advance but also definitely felt appropriate to the individual characters as well as the campaign arc. It was also cool to do another campaign in a totally different area of the setting and have the repercussions of that ripple down.

That said, a different campaign style where you go through adventurers like some kind of tabletop Dungeon of Dredmor sounds cool too.

pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

ninjoatse.cx posted:

As mentioned before, sometimes putting the characters into a death trap gets you some really creative responses. I don't like doing it since some of my players are new to TTRPG, and they are the first to pretty much throw their hands up and admit they don't know what to do.

my dm style is to make encounters i think are cool and then think to myself "well... i hope they survive"

Amp
Sep 10, 2010

:11tea::bubblewoop::agesilaus::megaman::yoshi::squawk::supaburn::iit::spooky::axe::honked::shroom::smugdog::sg::pkmnwhy::parrot::screamy::tubular::corsair::sanix::yeeclaw::hayter::flip::redflag:

change my name posted:

The key to setting up a good death trap puzzle is don't actually have an answer, go with the best solution from the players

It's really fun to do this with a murder mystery.

Arrrthritis
May 31, 2007

I don't care if you're a star, the moon, or the whole damn sky, you need to come back down to earth and remember where you came from

The Slack Lagoon posted:

I don't understand adversarial DMing. D&D is a collaborative storytelling game

I had a DM that loved to target party weaknesses and design every encounter based off of that. You don't have an answer for ethereal targets? Well guess what, everything you're fighting is ethereal until you do. I'm sure they thought they were teaching us to shore up our weaknesses but really it just ended up being a lesson in frustration until everybody quit.

Personally, I like to go just ask players if they think that time would be an appropriate time for their character to die. If they're still very invested in their guy and they want to keep playing we can always retcon something or explain away how they're still alive from being devoured by a roper or something, but if they think it would be a brutal death fitting for their character (or they just wanna play a new one) then they can take they opportunity to do so.

On a slightly different note, I'm playing in a Tales from the Yawning Portal game, and we're going through the second module of it right now. Last session ended pretty brutal - we discovered a hidden passageway into what I think was the orc barracks chambers? Old Yarrick was there as well as four orcs and we learned the hard way how brutal it is to try to tough it out against them. The DM rolled five criticals on our beastmaster ranger & companion and our eldritch knight, which resulted in two deaths after they both got failures on their death saves. All of us (including the DM) are still a little shaken from that, even though we kind of know that we didn't do anything particularly wrong - the dice really just did not favor us that time around, but despite that we all still had a ton of fun because we knew the DM wasn't trying to actively kill our characters (although maybe the module was).

The Slack Lagoon
Jun 17, 2008



Has anyone run a game where the party is a squad in a larger war and they have to accomplish objectives to help the war effort?

pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

The Slack Lagoon posted:

Has anyone run a game where the party is a squad in a larger war and they have to accomplish objectives to help the war effort?

yeah that whips rear end and i love to do that sort of thing.

Arrrthritis posted:

I had a DM that loved to target party weaknesses and design every encounter based off of that. You don't have an answer for ethereal targets? Well guess what, everything you're fighting is ethereal until you do. I'm sure they thought they were teaching us to shore up our weaknesses but really it just ended up being a lesson in frustration until everybody quit.

this sort of design is actually the premium thing to do but requires a level of nuance that most DMs are incapable of - your goal is not to find a blind spot in the party, it is to find something the majority of the party struggles with but one person gets to go sicko mode in. classic examples include huge swarms of weak enemies the wizard can aoe to death instantly, mobile aerial guy the ranger gets to pincushion, huge beefy knight in armour the barbarian alone can tank hits from, etc.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





Just wanted to say thanks to this whole thread for sharing your thoughts on character death / party wipes. It's been an interesting and informative read and you all are the best. :)

Azathoth
Apr 3, 2001

The Slack Lagoon posted:

Has anyone run a game where the party is a squad in a larger war and they have to accomplish objectives to help the war effort?

If anyone has done this, I would love to hear about it as well. I'm currently brainstorming a campaign for after my current one concludes that is inspired by The A-Team and Burn Notice and I bet I could pull a bunch of good ideas out of something like that.

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

The Slack Lagoon posted:

Has anyone run a game where the party is a squad in a larger war and they have to accomplish objectives to help the war effort?

Sort of, though not for too long. I’d run a long-standing high level campaign that had concluded with the PCs doing exploration and running across a beholder-dominated nation invading an elven nation. They arrived as a massive attack was being made on three fronts following the assassination of almost the entire elven nation’s military leadership, and ended up in charge of the defense. Ultimately, they opted to handle one front via remaining elven assets, fighting two battles themselves via teleportation.

So when I moved cross-country, I decided to set my next campaign in that elven nation several years before those events, with the PCs as a military special forces squad which would eventually get stuck having to defend that third front, regardless of how powerful they were by that time.

The high levels from the other campaign didn’t stick around (well, two became deities soon after, so they sorta did), so the PCs were war heroes with the upper command structure dead, and mostly took over the remaining portion of the war, opting to target the super-powerful leadership of the other nation to keep them disrupted and unable to launch another attack. As it turned out the beholder leader actually desperately wanted an end to the war but had been forced by this leadership to continue it, that approach eventually led to a surrender and a conclusive victory. The campaign did continue after that point, but with less focus on war and more on politics after it.

You’re not running any megadungeons, but there’s plenty of opportunities for some conventional adventures along the lines of securing assets or alliances. Counterintelligence is also a good approach. You either need to zoom in or abstract a lot, unless you use a mass combat system.

I also ran two short campaigns in the Black Company setting, though neither of those went long enough to actually get the PC squad to the front. Those strayed farther from the traditional dungeon adventuring and I found design to be tougher. I think there is some real potential in a campaign where the PCs are part of a colonial power’s army invading relatively unknown territory: you can use the exploration mechanics, but the stakes are a lot higher.

Arrrthritis
May 31, 2007

I don't care if you're a star, the moon, or the whole damn sky, you need to come back down to earth and remember where you came from

pog boyfriend posted:

this sort of design is actually the premium thing to do but requires a level of nuance that most DMs are incapable of - your goal is not to find a blind spot in the party, it is to find something the majority of the party struggles with but one person gets to go sicko mode in. classic examples include huge swarms of weak enemies the wizard can aoe to death instantly, mobile aerial guy the ranger gets to pincushion, huge beefy knight in armour the barbarian alone can tank hits from, etc.

Yeah, I do like it when encounters do try to shine a spotlight on a character or two. I also enjoy encounters that encourage players to go outside of their comfort zones to try to do something; in a friday game I play in the DM had some giant frogs devouring people at a hot spring (so any damage we dealt to the frogs would subsequently also be damaged to the people inside), which encouraged us to think of ways to get the people out of said frogs before we laid the smackdown on them. Those are the sorts of encounters that TTRPGs really shine in and make the game more interesting than a video game.

The DM that i'm talking about was specifically going for our party weaknesses, though; nobody in our group had an answer for these problems, and any attempts to try to deal with them creatively would be met with a resounding "No." It sucked and I would constantly look for excuses to not have to play sessions until I realized what I was doing and told the DM why I wouldn't be playing in their game anymore.

pog boyfriend
Jul 2, 2011

Azathoth posted:

If anyone has done this, I would love to hear about it as well. I'm currently brainstorming a campaign for after my current one concludes that is inspired by The A-Team and Burn Notice and I bet I could pull a bunch of good ideas out of something like that.

i had a relatively open world where the party was assisting a deposed and disgraced prince reclaim his land after a powerful wizard manipulated the memories of key court members to create a false event of the king committing atrocities. the party had to work as an elite unit to fight the enemy generals and commanders as the wizard sought to use the ancient relics hidden beneath the country to achieve never before seen levels of power. throughout the campaign their reputation of their fighting force was essential and they were sent on the most dangerous missions to be a symbol of hope for the resistance.

about halfway through, everything went to complete poo poo -- the party started to waver in their absolute good image and start cutting corners as they got more desperate to end the battles, resulting in some dubious acts that the wizard king was able to abuse to start to turn the tides of civil war. as things were starting to turn in his favour, in a mission gone wrong the party got ambushed by the king and their generals.

the rest of the party ran. one of my players chose chaos, turned around, and went for a full attack on the king, landing 3 crits and one rounding him in surprise. in the resulting fallout, one of the kings retainers, an opportunistic and brutal rogue took the wizard kings magic items (including a glamour he used to hide his appearance) and tried to take control of the empire by pretending to be the king. the remaining generals agreed as losing the image of their king would result in disaster. the fake wizard however was not nearly as smart as the real wizard, and the empire was losing...

until the overall "ends justified the means" nature of the party started to sow dissent. a powerful unaffiliated third party, purely out of spite, decided to convince people the princes reclamation army is just trading one tyrant for another and they must rise up to achieve true freedom. the democratic third party then opposed the reclamation force and the empire and a three way war started up. this continued with missions back and forth for 2 months or so real time until the party slew the false king and defeated the despotic current ruler. not wanting to be seen as a tyrant, they organized a ceasefire so a referendum could be held on how the country should be governed. after a long skill challenge and rp segment with arguments back and forth... the end result is the party lost. the democratic rebellion denied the prince and the country chose to move forward on its own terms.

it was a very bittersweet ending to the campaign but after a nearly 1 year long war epic with multiple side changes and betrayals and everything, they just rolled like absolute garbage at the end and failed to persuade the people. the campaign had some rough moments but it is my favourite home game long form campaign i ever did

Rubberduke
Nov 24, 2015
I have dm'ed on and off for the last 4 years and I have never had a PC die on me. Maybe I'm just too nice with my encounter designs but it just does not feel right do make it too lethal. But if you have your players drain all of their spell slots, abilities and hit dice over a few fights and encounters and they beat the boss or whatever of the dungeon, that's the best thing i could hope for. I usually try to avoid too much combat and then have it pretty much back to back for the adventuring day. I introduce the enemy types of the dungeon and then drive up the difficulty.

If a 5th lvl party disposes of a group of goblins with 2 fireballs, that is still 2 spell slots gone, mission accomplished. The party will miss them dearly when the harder enemies come around.

We are currently in our fifth week of Out of the Abyss and I had to tone down a lot poo poo at the start of the campaign because it is not really thought out very well. I like the ideas of the campaign, but man is it rough around the edges.

Rubberduke
Nov 24, 2015

pog boyfriend posted:

i had a relatively open world where the party was assisting a deposed and disgraced prince reclaim his land after a powerful wizard manipulated the memories of key court members to create a false event of the king committing atrocities. the party had to work as an elite unit to fight the enemy generals and commanders as the wizard sought to use the ancient relics hidden beneath the country to achieve never before seen levels of power. throughout the campaign their reputation of their fighting force was essential and they were sent on the most dangerous missions to be a symbol of hope for the resistance.

about halfway through, everything went to complete poo poo -- the party started to waver in their absolute good image and start cutting corners as they got more desperate to end the battles, resulting in some dubious acts that the wizard king was able to abuse to start to turn the tides of civil war. as things were starting to turn in his favour, in a mission gone wrong the party got ambushed by the king and their generals.

the rest of the party ran. one of my players chose chaos, turned around, and went for a full attack on the king, landing 3 crits and one rounding him in surprise. in the resulting fallout, one of the kings retainers, an opportunistic and brutal rogue took the wizard kings magic items (including a glamour he used to hide his appearance) and tried to take control of the empire by pretending to be the king. the remaining generals agreed as losing the image of their king would result in disaster. the fake wizard however was not nearly as smart as the real wizard, and the empire was losing...

until the overall "ends justified the means" nature of the party started to sow dissent. a powerful unaffiliated third party, purely out of spite, decided to convince people the princes reclamation army is just trading one tyrant for another and they must rise up to achieve true freedom. the democratic third party then opposed the reclamation force and the empire and a three way war started up. this continued with missions back and forth for 2 months or so real time until the party slew the false king and defeated the despotic current ruler. not wanting to be seen as a tyrant, they organized a ceasefire so a referendum could be held on how the country should be governed. after a long skill challenge and rp segment with arguments back and forth... the end result is the party lost. the democratic rebellion denied the prince and the country chose to move forward on its own terms.

it was a very bittersweet ending to the campaign but after a nearly 1 year long war epic with multiple side changes and betrayals and everything, they just rolled like absolute garbage at the end and failed to persuade the people. the campaign had some rough moments but it is my favourite home game long form campaign i ever did

Holy poo poo, that sounds like a great campaign.

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

Oh god, I'm doing it: Our Sunday Frostmaiden campaign is still on life support, so I'm going to wade through the Roll20 morass to try to find another game for a different night. I feel like I lucked out last time but I had to go through a lot of chaff.

Also I just discovered the board game cafe near me offers professional DM services for $90 a month for long-term campaigns. My players owe me a collective $13,000 under that rate

change my name fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Nov 15, 2021

Major Isoor
Mar 23, 2011

Nice - sounds great! I envy the players who got to be part of that. Very fitting conclusion, really

Speaking of epic campaigns/wars, I've always wanted to do one either set in the Black Company universe, or based around the same kind of war. Not sure how I'd go about it though. What system did you use, out of curiosity? I'd probably try to integrate battles with markers for units/battalions for Total War-esque battles. (Maybe even have a few parts where a platoon or two worth of men go with the players on smaller-scale missions, like in the second and third TBC books)

Thumbtacks
Apr 3, 2013
Friends and I are starting a new campaign soon, fantasy medieval setting (from what I’ve been told). Apparently we’ve all been unceremoniously conscripted into the queen’s army while we were out fir a drink at a tavern. Army nerds kick the door in and just take everyone. I’ve been gunning for playing a warforged for a while so I think I’m going to be like a tavern assistant, perhaps a janitor, and they’ll just go “oh uh I guess take him too”

I just need to figure out some more about warforged. Are there official lore sources accessible online? I know if I google things I get plenty of results but a lot of them seem like they’re just personal preference for whoever was writing things. For example I’ve seen a few places talk about warforged naming conventions and alignment but nothing “official.”

It’ll be a little tricky not having a motivation so I’ll probably have to think about it for a while, but there’s a lot of opportunity for comedy.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Warforged

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.
Check out the wonderful Terry Pratchett book "Monstrous Regiment" if you'd like a funny and insightful take on the "conscripted platoon" theme.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

The Slack Lagoon posted:

Has anyone run a game where the party is a squad in a larger war and they have to accomplish objectives to help the war effort?

Heroes of Battle from 3e was an entire book dedicated to this kind of game. Most of it should be easily adapted to 5e.

Major Isoor
Mar 23, 2011

Arivia posted:

Heroes of Battle from 3e was an entire book dedicated to this kind of game. Most of it should be easily adapted to 5e.

Hmm, that's interesting - I wasn't aware of that. How easy do you think it would be to adapt some of the content from it plus The Black Company (3.5E) book to 5E? I don't think it should be particularly difficult, but it's been a while since I played 3.5. Hard to say if it's worth going that far, I suppose

Reveilled
Apr 19, 2007

Take up your rifles
I’m trying to think of how the political situation in the Sword Coast North might develop as a result of player actions when the campaign eventually returns there about five-ten years later.

When my players finished Dragon Heist, we concluded with the party defecting to Luskan. The intended resolution of that thread is that Luskan’s access to the money allows them to leverage popular distrust in Waterdeep for Neverwinter into Luskan membership of the Lords Alliance and Neverwinter’s expulsion from the same.

Their original “handler” in the campaign was the Harper spymaster of Waterdeep who was deeply involved in the Sons of Alagondar fiasco and was running her own side-game to appropriate the money to spark a new civil war in Neverwinter to overthrow Neverember. That failed when the party (which included the daughter of the last legitimate female-line descendant of Nasher Alagondar) turned the money over to Luskan instead.

My general thoughts are that Neverember’s ultimate goal is to unify the cities of the Sword Coast into an Empire, but having been booted out of the Lords Alliance now I’m not sure how he achieves that. An additional wrinkle here would be the potential withdrawal of Baldur’s Gate from the alliance in the aftermath of our current Avernus campaign, possibly leading to a Baldur’s Gate/Elturgard/Neverwinter axis facing a Luskan/Waterdeep/Silverymoon alliance. I’m not sure how the smaller towns and villages of the Lords Alliance might side in the event of such a split.

If you were Lord Protector of Neverwinter and wanted to take over the Sword Coast, how would you do it?

Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

Thumbtacks posted:

Friends and I are starting a new campaign soon, fantasy medieval setting (from what I’ve been told). Apparently we’ve all been unceremoniously conscripted into the queen’s army while we were out fir a drink at a tavern. Army nerds kick the door in and just take everyone. I’ve been gunning for playing a warforged for a while so I think I’m going to be like a tavern assistant, perhaps a janitor, and they’ll just go “oh uh I guess take him too”

I just need to figure out some more about warforged. Are there official lore sources accessible online? I know if I google things I get plenty of results but a lot of them seem like they’re just personal preference for whoever was writing things. For example I’ve seen a few places talk about warforged naming conventions and alignment but nothing “official.”

It’ll be a little tricky not having a motivation so I’ll probably have to think about it for a while, but there’s a lot of opportunity for comedy.

My son is playing a warforged at the moment. His name is Brewbot, and his gimmick is that he brews mead out of the various body parts of the monsters we kill. He's got a tap in his belly and dispenses free mead at the various taverns we visit.

Mr. Lobe
Feb 23, 2007

... Dry bones...


I can't imagine the tavern keepers like that

Major Isoor
Mar 23, 2011

Deteriorata posted:

My son is playing a warforged at the moment. His name is Brewbot, and his gimmick is that he brews mead out of the various body parts of the monsters we kill. He's got a tap in his belly and dispenses free mead at the various taverns we visit.

oh, so that's how the race of bee-people mysteriously disappeared! :D

EDIT:

Mr. Lobe posted:

I can't imagine the tavern keepers like that

Yeah, even if it's corpsewater, it's still one less drink they're buying from the tavern. They'll probably start charging him a fee, once they catch on! haha

Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

Mr. Lobe posted:

I can't imagine the tavern keepers like that

He's something of a celebrity, so he brings in a good crowd when he shows up. They may not sell as much beer and ale, but they make up for it on other stuff. Tavern owners love him.

Also, the quality of the mead is a random die roll, so often it's pretty terrible. Everyone wants to try the latest Yeti or Giant Slug brew, but one is often all they want. Then they buy the good stuff from the bar.

Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Nov 16, 2021

lightrook
Nov 7, 2016

Pin 188

Deteriorata posted:

My son is playing a warforged at the moment. His name is Brewbot, and his gimmick is that he brews mead out of the various body parts of the monsters we kill. He's got a tap in his belly and dispenses free mead at the various taverns we visit.

You wouldn't happen to be familiar with that one Star Wars short story about how the bartender overcomes his droid-racism because he finds an abandoned cocktail-bot in a back alley that serves him the perfect drink where the secret ingredient is grinding up the dead guy on the barroom floor, would you?

Also, I feel ashamed that I have not and likely will never come up with something half as good as this.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

Major Isoor posted:

Hmm, that's interesting - I wasn't aware of that. How easy do you think it would be to adapt some of the content from it plus The Black Company (3.5E) book to 5E? I don't think it should be particularly difficult, but it's been a while since I played 3.5. Hard to say if it's worth going that far, I suppose

I don't know about the Black Company book at all, so I can't say for that one. For Heroes of Battle, you've got about 95 pages of sample missions/encounters/hazards/supplementary rules. So you'd have to adapt the numbers and swap out some monsters, but overall it gives you a ton of existing ideas for inspiration.

Bruceski
Aug 21, 2007

The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Arrrthritis posted:

On a slightly different note, I'm playing in a Tales from the Yawning Portal game, and we're going through the second module of it right now. Last session ended pretty brutal - we discovered a hidden passageway into what I think was the orc barracks chambers? Old Yarrick was there as well as four orcs and we learned the hard way how brutal it is to try to tough it out against them. The DM rolled five criticals on our beastmaster ranger & companion and our eldritch knight, which resulted in two deaths after they both got failures on their death saves. All of us (including the DM) are still a little shaken from that, even though we kind of know that we didn't do anything particularly wrong - the dice really just did not favor us that time around, but despite that we all still had a ton of fun because we knew the DM wasn't trying to actively kill our characters (although maybe the module was).

My group just finished the aftermath of that same spot tonight, I'm calling it Bad Decisions Dungeon. We made a bunch of noise at the front, ducked down the side for cover, discovered the secret passage and "scouted" straight into everybody as they came back from reinforcing the front. It was a big ol' mess that was something like 4 or 5 encounters rolling into each other. 3/4 of us made it out alive barely (seriously it down to single points one way or the other on both to-hit and damage rolls), the fourth was dragged off as a prisoner, I think based on "anyone stupid enough to think they can take us head on might be worth something as ransom" as the DM's excuse for at least giving him a chance, and then shenanigans happened resulting in the surviving orcs abandoning the place and the prisoners left behind; we ran into them after they'd managed to break out and escape some stirges who had either taken advantage of the trapped food or been released on purpose. Tonight's session was hunting down the rest of the orcs before they could cause more damage to the area, then getting the prisoners home, and now we go back to the actual quest because stopping orc raids wasn't technically our mission.

My DM said he looked it up online, and that whole bit we (and you) just did gets a lot of chatter about going very bad very quickly. Orcs with greataxes can do a massive amount of damage for that level if the rolls go bad. It was a hoot, but definitely in a "make sure everyone's playing the same game" way. Our group tends to get just invested enough that you have an idea of the character for play decisions, but is fine trying out new things so as long as a death feels earned (either through luck of the dice, poor decisions on our part, or thematically suitable) it's fine. Murder-grudges less so, but that hasn't happened in a while and is mostly just us sharing stories of bad experiences with other folks.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Reveilled posted:

I’m trying to think of how the political situation in the Sword Coast North might develop as a result of player actions when the campaign eventually returns there about five-ten years later.

When my players finished Dragon Heist, we concluded with the party defecting to Luskan. The intended resolution of that thread is that Luskan’s access to the money allows them to leverage popular distrust in Waterdeep for Neverwinter into Luskan membership of the Lords Alliance and Neverwinter’s expulsion from the same.

Their original “handler” in the campaign was the Harper spymaster of Waterdeep who was deeply involved in the Sons of Alagondar fiasco and was running her own side-game to appropriate the money to spark a new civil war in Neverwinter to overthrow Neverember. That failed when the party (which included the daughter of the last legitimate female-line descendant of Nasher Alagondar) turned the money over to Luskan instead.

My general thoughts are that Neverember’s ultimate goal is to unify the cities of the Sword Coast into an Empire, but having been booted out of the Lords Alliance now I’m not sure how he achieves that. An additional wrinkle here would be the potential withdrawal of Baldur’s Gate from the alliance in the aftermath of our current Avernus campaign, possibly leading to a Baldur’s Gate/Elturgard/Neverwinter axis facing a Luskan/Waterdeep/Silverymoon alliance. I’m not sure how the smaller towns and villages of the Lords Alliance might side in the event of such a split.

If you were Lord Protector of Neverwinter and wanted to take over the Sword Coast, how would you do it?

If you go with canonical strength at this point in time it's almost impossible to oppose Waterdeep. The city's population has swelled to 1-2 million, possibly due to refugees during the spellplague, whereas you're looking at a few hundred thousand at most between Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter. Elturgard is more of a kingdom than a city and has some advantages that way but still doesn't come close to Waterdeep in sheer population size. It also doesn't help that so many canonical heroes of the realm call Waterdeep home and would throw hands to protect it.

With this as the setup, they key would be to pry away their allies and put massive pressure on Waterdeep's clearly unsustainable population, while avoiding open conflict. In order to set this up, manipulate the dwarven holds of the Silver Marches to cause trouble for Silverymoon, I believe in the 5e timeline they had a bone to pick for not helping enough against some orc invasion. Consider what resources Waterdeep would need to feed, clothe, and keep occupied a refugee population as large as some real world camps and have Neverember deniably deprive the city of those things. Pit the interests of the original population and the refugees against each other. Orchestrate incidents that turn discontent or distrust into civic violence. If the rule of the masked lords is upended by civic unrest, Neverember's alliance can move in with solutions in the aftermath. This also prevents canonical heroes from doing anything about it, as long as the plot goes undiscovered.

Of course use your authority as DM to ignore the nonsensical population numbers and it's a bit easier. I would keep a city-defining refugee crisis at Waterdeep as leverage but reduce the population to sensible levels.

Thumbtacks
Apr 3, 2013
in my head i was thinking my warforged would automatically just be pathetic and depressed and be like the tavern janitor instead of the entertainer so i'll see how that goes. we may end up making some adjustments to staves and let me play a monk with a mop as my staff

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Reveilled posted:

I’m trying to think of how the political situation in the Sword Coast North might develop as a result of player actions when the campaign eventually returns there about five-ten years later.

When my players finished Dragon Heist, we concluded with the party defecting to Luskan. The intended resolution of that thread is that Luskan’s access to the money allows them to leverage popular distrust in Waterdeep for Neverwinter into Luskan membership of the Lords Alliance and Neverwinter’s expulsion from the same.

Their original “handler” in the campaign was the Harper spymaster of Waterdeep who was deeply involved in the Sons of Alagondar fiasco and was running her own side-game to appropriate the money to spark a new civil war in Neverwinter to overthrow Neverember. That failed when the party (which included the daughter of the last legitimate female-line descendant of Nasher Alagondar) turned the money over to Luskan instead.

My general thoughts are that Neverember’s ultimate goal is to unify the cities of the Sword Coast into an Empire, but having been booted out of the Lords Alliance now I’m not sure how he achieves that. An additional wrinkle here would be the potential withdrawal of Baldur’s Gate from the alliance in the aftermath of our current Avernus campaign, possibly leading to a Baldur’s Gate/Elturgard/Neverwinter axis facing a Luskan/Waterdeep/Silverymoon alliance. I’m not sure how the smaller towns and villages of the Lords Alliance might side in the event of such a split.

If you were Lord Protector of Neverwinter and wanted to take over the Sword Coast, how would you do it?

As TheDemon notes, the dwarf holds like Citadels Adbar and Felbarr, Mithril Hall, and Gauntlgrym are going to be important wildcards in this brewing conflict. They're broadly friendly with each other, but not so much that they won't split with some joining one side and some joining the other (and some deciding to stay neutral in their deep holes until this latest conflict blows over).

Even without the inflated population numbers that TheDemon noted, Neverwinter is in a tough spot. They're surrounded on three sides by their enemies, and their allies are hundreds of miles away. To give their alliance any chance of success, Neverember is going to want to reach out and get some seafaring allies as well. Cue some sort of conflict for the Moonshaes. The side that has the Moonshaes is the side that can disrupt and interdict the other's ocean trade.

There are four other wildcards in the mix as well. The Uthgardt have tense relations with the settled folks of the north, so they might be enticed into joining a side. There is always a chance that some orc tries to reform the Kingdom of Many Arrows. The Harpells of Longsaddle aren't the most stable of wizarding families and might be crazy enough to involve themselves given the correct reason. And, of course, the drow of Menzo, in particular Jarlaxle's crew, are always interested in fomenting and supporting conflict in the North.

And if you really want to throw a wrench in things, you can always have some remnants of one ancient empire or another decide this whole thing is the best way to restore their glory.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011
How did 5e wrap up the elves of Iliyanbruen coming back through Neverwinter Woods? They could be another player.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Arivia posted:

How did 5e wrap up the elves of Iliyanbruen coming back through Neverwinter Woods? They could be another player.

I really have no idea. 5E's lore is so scattered and often so compromised that I've just kinda ignored it and set all of our 5E FR games so far in the 1360s, for which I have tons upon tons of 2E material. Our next campaign will be set in the 1490s, but its recent history will come more from the two 4E campaigns I ran than published material.

Bottom Liner
Feb 15, 2006


a specific vein of lasagna
I made this! Spent a lot of time last year playing one shots over discord and originally made this as a tool for the players that had not DM'd before, and the idea took off from there.





https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rollthedicegames/the-dungeon-master-deck

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

PeterWeller posted:

I really have no idea. 5E's lore is so scattered and often so compromised that I've just kinda ignored it and set all of our 5E FR games so far in the 1360s, for which I have tons upon tons of 2E material. Our next campaign will be set in the 1490s, but its recent history will come more from the two 4E campaigns I ran than published material.
Yeah I held off on interacting with the original question because it’s so hard to get a feel of what’s real or what matters in 5e. Sucks.

My own game is S&W/2e in the 3e time period right now.

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Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

Major Isoor posted:

Hmm, that's interesting - I wasn't aware of that. How easy do you think it would be to adapt some of the content from it plus The Black Company (3.5E) book to 5E? I don't think it should be particularly difficult, but it's been a while since I played 3.5. Hard to say if it's worth going that far, I suppose

Well, I can share my conversion/modification of the characters and magic based on the 3.5 book. I had an idea about how to handle mass combat, but never ended up implementing it, so this is both a bit terse and missing that important set of rules. I am, however, pretty happy with the magic system, though there are a few problems (not that the 3.5 book didn't have problems with its magic system).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zn6rov51sfk3gcd/5EBlackCompany.docx?dl=0

For the record, I had cross-class archetypes before Strixhaven made them uncool.

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