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ItohRespectArmy posted:I'm currently running 3 asoiaf intrigue games which are different but I've learned a few things running them. Running individual scenes in a group setting can be daunting but you can do it in a satisfying way. If all your players are on board with scheming and backstabbing then simply setting up scenes for everyone and cutting between them can be a very satisfying way of conveying what everyone is up to. Just to add to this, one payoff is that once you've done this, if you can find a way to get all the PCs into the same place they will usually keep each other entertained filling each other in on details and trying to ensnare one another in their own schemes, so you can just sit back and relax for a bit GMs don't usually get a chance to watch the show, they're too busy being the show, so it's a nice change of pace
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Feb 2, 2023 19:57
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My players are going into a deep island rainforest and I've been thinking about how I can make the travel and exploration interesting and variable for them. After chewing on it for a bit, I think I'm just going to design the forest as if it were a dungeon. Game trails are hallways that can have traps/obstacles sometimes, clearings can have different types of encounters, landscape variation can act like dead ends/cave-ins etc. Since they're after a magical goal deep in the forest, the closer they get the more nonsensical directional effects can take place to act as a final puzzle to reach their goal. I can map all these interactive parts out as lines and circles on paper to keep me on track. If it plays well, I think I might start using it as a template for more travel of significant distances instead of mostly skipping over it narratively. I can have a map where each "room" of overland travel is equivalent not to a a fixed amount of space or time inside the game world, but instead tied roughly to an amount of time I want to spend in session. That way one "room" could be many days and miles of driving rain that would cause the party not to sleep well and to get stuck in muddy ruts as a single event spanning days of travel, and then a second "room" could be a quick combat encounter or social meeting with another traveler. Sometimes it might not make sense to use the dungeon model of travel for getting for A to B, but if I want the party to feel the time and distance in a way that isn't boring or a waste of session time, I think it could work.
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Feb 3, 2023 22:32
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Oldsrocket_27 posted:My players are going into a deep island rainforest and I've been thinking about how I can make the travel and exploration interesting and variable for them. After chewing on it for a bit, I think I'm just going to design the forest as if it were a dungeon. Game trails are hallways that can have traps/obstacles sometimes, clearings can have different types of encounters, landscape variation can act like dead ends/cave-ins etc. Since they're after a magical goal deep in the forest, the closer they get the more nonsensical directional effects can take place to act as a final puzzle to reach their goal. I can map all these interactive parts out as lines and circles on paper to keep me on track. I think you've just described a pointcrawl, which should be a useful term to find resources and advice for what you're doing.
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Feb 4, 2023 02:05
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The Alexandrian has a lot of data on point crawls.
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Feb 4, 2023 03:33
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Thanks for the tips! That term does bring up lots of good information, including that good Alexandrian article.
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Feb 4, 2023 15:47
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Pointcrawl. What an amazing concept! One of the end bosses in my current campaign will be to fight not-Miska the Wolf Spider to recover a McGuffin and I was feeling intimidated about mapping out a fortress carved out of pure chaos. But instead creating a smash of “interesting places” and connecting them via interesting routes is so much easier and much more liberating in terms of gameplay.
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Feb 4, 2023 18:47
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Agrikk posted:Pointcrawl. Fortress crawls suck so bad. Pathfinder is egregious for making castles that are just a hundred rooms, mostly empty, connected by hallways, also mostly empty. I remember the pacing of Kingmaker being dragged to a crawl every time we had to enter a caatle. A point crawl dungeon is far more interesting.
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Feb 4, 2023 19:28
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Also have a big list of interesting/weird/scary things that happen that you can drop in when you feel like it, environmental effects, sounds, encounters
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Feb 4, 2023 20:37
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I did this for a recent encounter and it was great: Characters were stalking a creature deeper into a dark forest and they realized they were being stalked as well. A cat and mouse game ensued and when they finally sprung the ambush I played the fast zombie scream from Half Life 2 at full volume. It scared the piss out of my players and got a good jump-scare laugh out of them. Priceless.
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Feb 5, 2023 07:46
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How do you guys feel about employing phases of "time skips" when you get far enough into a campaign? In the first game I played after a while of playing the dm employed a five year time skip and had us tell them what our characters wanted to do in that time and had us roll for our success rate. I think it's a cool idea because it lets the world progress around the players and also lets the character age a bit which would take forever if they were just going day by day during the weekly sessions.
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Feb 12, 2023 02:40
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Time skips are cool and good, use them often.
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Feb 12, 2023 02:49
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trapstar posted:How do you guys feel about employing phases of "time skips" when you get far enough into a campaign? In the first game I played after a while of playing the dm employed a five year time skip and had us tell them what our characters wanted to do in that time and had us roll for our success rate. I think it's a cool idea because it lets the world progress around the players and also lets the character age a bit which would take forever if they were just going day by day during the weekly sessions. timeskips are very important and if done correctly can be massively beneficial to pacing and character development.
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Feb 12, 2023 02:51
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Time skips also help avoid the problem Brennan Lee Mulligan described as four guys meeting in a bar last month who are now stronger than all of the evil overlord's generals.
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Feb 12, 2023 05:39
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Lamuella posted:Time skips also help avoid the problem Brennan Lee Mulligan described as four guys meeting in a bar last month who are now stronger than all of the evil overlord's generals. REGULATORS, MOUNT UP! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plPyJdXKIY
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Feb 12, 2023 05:43
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Lamuella posted:Time skips also help avoid the problem Brennan Lee Mulligan described as four guys meeting in a bar last month who are now stronger than all of the evil overlord's generals. Alternately, let this happen on purpose. The pub crawl will destroy all gods.
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Feb 12, 2023 15:17
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Night10194 posted:Alternately, let this happen on purpose. Alternatively, make this the campaign's plot You joined a pub crawl, and now you've gotta defeat Strahd so the taverns of Barovia can serve the good mead again; after that it's off to Olympus to try some ambrosia!
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Feb 12, 2023 19:18
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Alternatively, make this the campaign's plot and you're under a death curse that only takes effect when you sober up
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Feb 12, 2023 19:43
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A pub crawl is great thematically for a 0 funnel.
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Feb 12, 2023 19:57
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Waking up with a hangover, a sack of bloody gold, and a spellbook you can somehow read.
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Feb 12, 2023 22:44
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Dude, Where’s My Carriage?
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Feb 12, 2023 22:57
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The next session is piecing together the night to try and remember the new abilities you've gained so you can use them in future sessions.
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Feb 12, 2023 23:05
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I'm trying to populate a mid to late adventure dungeon end boss. The trouble I'm finding is that everything either seems laughably easy for the party to destroy or they are some kind of lich that is going to absolutely tpk my players. Any suggestions? The crawl is taking place in a dungeon that has been sealed for centuries, so whatever exists there has to be able to do so without food or water. Therefore, I'm leaning heavily towards the undead.
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Feb 13, 2023 00:30
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Indolent Bastard posted:I'm trying to populate a mid to late adventure dungeon end boss. The trouble I'm finding is that everything either seems laughably easy for the party to destroy or they are some kind of lich that is going to absolutely tpk my players. "Generation ship" of xenophobic dwarves who literally locked themselves away the surface world. Clerics with create food & water spells/rituals (can't remember if this is an official 5th Ed spell) provide sustenance for the tribe, supplemented with mushrooms. Gives you more options for resolution that "exterminate all opposition" for solution as a bonus.
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Feb 13, 2023 01:35
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Indolent Bastard posted:I'm trying to populate a mid to late adventure dungeon end boss. The trouble I'm finding is that everything either seems laughably easy for the party to destroy or they are some kind of lich that is going to absolutely tpk my players. Humanoid or quadrupedal ones with ballistae or other devices (Depicted as a large sphere set on their back, for instance) on them that can augment/repair other golems, or launch blasts of magic at people, or even lay down forcefields that you can use to shape the battlefield. The variety will let you make each individual encounter an interesting and unique challenge rather than "Here are twenty skeletons clad in adamantine. Again." An added bonus is that as they are constructs you can rig them up to the rooms themselves for even more fun. The big obviously glowing orb at the back of the room that pulses with light every few rounds, causing all the golems to pulse with that same light and letting them move an extra two tiles in that round is a clear environmental augmentor that you can encourage your players to attack and disable to make the encounter easier. I guess you can technically do the same with undead, but the answer to undead boosting things is always "Holy light" stuff and maybe additionally "fire" on occasion.
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Feb 13, 2023 02:49
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Golems also frequently have resistances and other quirks that add a puzzle element to beating them. Always more satisfying to defeat a creature who isn't fazed by your usual attack than just defeating a bag of hit points.
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Feb 13, 2023 08:08
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You also might want to consider demons. The thing I like about demons and why they've become such a go-to mob for me is that they are immortal and yet not indestructable. You can literally create your own demon spawn that fits whatever role you want (bag of HP? glass cannon? tankety-tank? four inch long worm that breathes fire? galactic atom smasher? gotcha covered fam) because the abyss has a zillion layers with a zillion undescovered demon types. I love demons, especially with my current players to know the stats of every monster in every book, because I can make up stats and even fudge them on the fly to make combat easier or harder to make the story flow. Your dungeon might actually be a bridgehead to a lower plane that was sealed off by some adventurers centuries ago. What if the end of thedungeon was actually a gate to the abyss and the dungeon was populated during a demonic invasion? Three hundred years ago the demon invasions began, but a group of adventurers darted in, and slew the demonic mastermind. Demons being demons and now leaderless, the invasion stalled as various demonic factions fell to squabbling among themselves. this stall allowed the dungeon to be sealed off. Now the current adventurers are invading the dungeon (pergaps to close the gate once and for all?) and find that the dungeon resembles a classic EGG dungeon with kobolds in this wing, orcs in that wing and bugbears over there, but instead of classic prime material mobs, you have demons allied with various Obyriths or Tanar'ri with factions belonging to Pazuzu fighting Pale Night fighting Obox-ob.
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Feb 13, 2023 18:41
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Any good tips for implementing a good martial classed badguy in a campaign? I have a brutal barbarian warlord character I want to use as a villain and I'm not sure how to build them up as a villain without them just tracking down the party and just challenging them directly to combat. Kor, Taker of Widows  One of my ideas was displaying the barbarian warlords brutal atrocities to kind of characterize him a bit for the party.
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Feb 13, 2023 23:58
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trapstar posted:
I like introducing a big good guy, who is obviously more capable and virtuous than the current party and helps party out a bunch, and then have them be killed off by the bad guy off stage.
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Feb 14, 2023 00:14
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Defenestrategy posted:I like introducing a big good guy, who is obviously more capable and virtuous than the current party and helps party out a bunch, and then have them be killed off by the bad guy off stage. I really like that idea!
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Feb 14, 2023 00:15
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Also, have him introduced gradually to the party, first by them hearing about deeds he has done, then the deeds start to target the party themselves, then they actually catch a fleeting glimpse of him (perhaps amongst a bunch of his victims or something) before finally they confront him, either on his terms or their's. Having their first actual interaction with him involving the death of another stronger character is also really good.
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Feb 14, 2023 00:27
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https://twitter.com/saraofswords/status/1486008978572300304
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Feb 14, 2023 00:31
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Defenestrategy posted:I like introducing a big good guy, who is obviously more capable and virtuous than the current party and helps party out a bunch, and then have them be killed off by the bad guy off stage. Off-stage is good, because if it happens where the players can react to it they're likely to storm in and you'll have to choose between letting them kill your intended Big Bad (bummer for you) or forcing them to lose so your villain can get away (terrible, don't do this). One thing you could do if you want it to happen on-stage is to have the character who kills their tough pal be a lieutenant of the Big Bad. That way they can get some immediate revenge, discover an even greater threat that they now have to deal with (since they will have pissed your villain off by killing his lieutenant), and you get to establish your villain as powerful because even a mere lieutenant of his was able to kill their strong buddy.
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Feb 14, 2023 01:04
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trapstar posted:Any good tips for implementing a good martial classed badguy in a campaign? I have a brutal barbarian warlord character I want to use as a villain and I'm not sure how to build them up as a villain without them just tracking down the party and just challenging them directly to combat. Three ideas: 1. Don't just make him atrocity city. Maybe make him like Genghis Khan: surrender your city, get to serve the Khan as a satrap, reasonable taxes and military levy, etc. Resist, and it's ravage and plunder time. Just because he's a barbarian doesn't mean he has to be a mindless force of destruction. In fact, he's more interesting if he isn't. 2. What aspect of the predominant PC culture is incompatible with the horde's mores? If you want to turn things around on the PCs a bit, then perhaps the so-called barbarians might be a little more enlightened than the 'civilized' folk: women's equality, full rights for monstrous humanoids (who follow the laws of the horde), equal enforcement of laws for rich and poor alike, enforced redistribution of wealth to support the serf class, whatever. 3. Give the horde an easily-articulated goal. Maybe that's not "conquer the PCs' lands." Maybe it's "find the blade Drakefall," because prophecy says an ancient wyrm is coming to ravage the horde's lands, and Drakefall is the only weapon that can slay the beast. Legends say that Drakefall is located in the treasury of Capital City... Of course, there's nothing wrong with characterizing him as a brutal force of nature -- that's how everyone in his path is likely to perceive him -- but as the PCs gain information they may find their preconceptions challenged. They might even throw in with Kor, if his cause is noble enough and his crimes exaggerated, or at least their consciences will be strained as they stand against him.
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Feb 14, 2023 02:13
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You could have him hire the party to do a basic milk run. Deliver a box of gems to a noble in a distant villa, buy a rare tapestry from him, it's all arranged. Kor is just too busy to do it himself, the tapestry is valuable, and he wants the party to guard its delivery. Of course, the noble had actually fled Kor's oppression, abandoning his ancestral wealth and a few well-hidden members of his family. The gems? Heirlooms the noble left in his family's safe keeping. The PCs are delivering a message that nowhere is safe from Kor. The noble and his guards attack the players the moment the gems are revealed, and those that aren't killed immediately flee hysterically, abandoning even their cloaks.
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Feb 14, 2023 03:20
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Admiralty Flag posted:Three ideas: To build on that, you can have one of the towns the party has frequented choose to immediately open their gates and under the meritocracy of the system, some NPC or two that the party has interacted a lot with rose up in ranks and sees the bigbad as a positive force.
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Feb 14, 2023 03:25
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my wife is in an online game with some of her friends built around this exact premise, as a response to this exact tweet
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Feb 14, 2023 04:16
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Thank you so much for all your ideas!  I'll be sure to implement them when I'm building up my BBEG.
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Feb 14, 2023 20:42
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Dwarfs, and Golems, and Demons oh my! Thank you all. I will re-work my "Oops! All undead" skeleton festival dungeon.
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Feb 15, 2023 13:07
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Do you guys like to differentiate the severity of different bandit gangs in your setting? Here are two stories of two different bandits, one a bandit chief, the other a run of the mill grunt who are members of vastly different organizations. "Gorgeous George" Allison  George Allison was born to humble origins as the only son of peasant farmers in the village of Rinte in the County of Cavelle. George was doted on from a young age by his parents who loved him greatly. He developed a charming and likable personality from very early on. He made friends incredibly easily and was friends with most of the young boys his age in the village. These friends were very loyal and fond of him. Even many of the older boys enjoyed his company due to his charismatic nature. George, however, had a dark side. He would often get into trouble, drawing in his friends as accomplices to his misdoings. George was very clever, masterminding many dubious activities with his circle of followers. His parents never berated him no matter how severe his actions. George was used to doing and getting whatever he wanted. Even his friends encouraged his nefarious escapades, happy to be in George’s inner circle. As a young man, George would often have dalliances with many of the local girls in the village. A young girl, Caitlin Fayers, had recently caught his eye. Caitlin had grown into quite the beauty. George made his move with his friends funneling him encouragement. Caitlin had been close friends with Wyatt Shepley since the two were old enough to talk. When George made his advances, Wyatt got defensive and told George and his friends to “back off”. George did not take this “belligerence” well and was not used to being told no. He proceeded to confront the younger Wyatt many times about how he should “watch who he’s talking to”. Wyatt did not back down and continued to push back against George. This infuriated George, who after a night of drinking with his buddies, decided it was time for Wyatt to go. He conceived a plan. He and his friends would brandish kitchen knives and fall upon Wyatt. In the middle of the night, George and his friends came upon Wyatt. Each of them stabbed Wyatt many times. The younger boy fell to the ground in a puddle of his own blood. George and his accomplices then proceeded to drag Wyatt’s body to the edge of the village and bury him. The day after George awoke in a barn, with a hangover from the night before. There was something going on in the village. The body of Wyatt had been found and one of the village women had witnessed George and his friends dragging the body of Wyatt to the edge of town. One of the group had already been taken by authorities and the rest, including George, were at large. Luckily one of his friends, a young man named Pierce, came and found George in the barn and took him to a little ways outside the village where the rest of his group of friends were hiding out. There was a general panic amongst the young men and George had to calm them. He decided that the village was no longer safe and that the law would soon be after them. He made the executive decision that the group would flee into Bramwood Forest. He led them into the woods avoiding all the roads for fear of law enforcement. George’s group was set to start new lives in the forest. Supplies soon became low. The group resorted to robbing travelers on the road to support themselves. The main road through the forest was a major trade route and their marks soon became more and more extravagant as they gained confidence and skill in what they were doing. Soon word got out about a gang of thieves living in Bramwood Forest led by a “Gorgeous George” Allison. Amongst more nefarious circles, “Gorgeous George '' gained a reputation as a fair and competent leader of thieves. Soon other hardened cutthroats, brigands and desperate men were looking to join the group. Gorgeous George accepted them with open arms swelling the group's ranks and forming what would become known as the “Bramwood Brigands”. Gorgeous George treated the men in his growing organization fairly and was a respected and charismatic bandit chief. George found a cave in the cliffside and outfitted it to become the headquarters of his gang. It was located in an ideal spot, where they could monitor law enforcement raids in the area very easily. With the influx of new members, Gorgeous George set up some ground rules for his group, one of which being that women and children should be spared from harm and held up for ransom to avoid unnecessary slaughter. The Bramwood Brigands have plagued Bramwood Forest so much that the sheriff of the County of Cavelle, Winston Hayes, has made it his life purpose to put an end to them. George, with his superior wit and cunning, has outmaneuvered the incompetent sheriff for years. Gorgeous George continues to this day to operate out of Bramwood Forest as the county’s resident bandit chieftain. He has amassed riches beyond what he could ever have dreamed of growing up in his small farming village. He is the ultimate bane of Sheriff Hayes and the terror of Bramwood Forest. Simon Seven-Coppers  Simon Fetting was born the son of an unknown mercenary father and Elia Fetting, a local prostitute. As a child, Simon was mainly neglected by his mother, spending his time in the streets. He was the ringleader of a gang of local streethoods. Simon took his first life when he was 11, a young boy he and his posse beat to death in the streets of the town. As he grew into adolescence he garnered a notorious reputation with the local authorities as violent and troublesome youth. During his teenage years, Simon had many run-ins with the law, being accused of many different crimes and misdeeds. As a teen, one of his more egregious crimes was the vicious rape of a townswoman, not to mention the many robberies, burglaries, thefts and brutal, violent assaults. Known from even a young age for his appetite for cruelty, as an adult he grew into a menacing individual, using his base cunning to engage in crime with deft aptitude, always with penchant for violence. Known for having absolutely no limit to the depravity of his criminal acts, his willingness to do anything to make a few coins along the way eventually earned him the moniker, “Simon Seven-Coppers”. A well-known villain and criminal, Simon eventually copped himself a 3-year prison sentence for assaulting a sheriff. Shortly after he was released from prison, Simon Seven-Coppers joined up with the notorious Mathers Gang. He now lives a life of robbing, killing and looting with the Mathers Gang as an incredibly brutal and thuggish bandit gang member. As you can see the “Bramwood Brigands” make an effort not to overtly harm women and children, instead ransoming them. While the “Mathers Gang” would basically rape, loot and murder whoever they see fit, including women and children. In real life certain gangs are more vicious and brutal than others (While all generally still being pieces of poo poo on some level), so how do you guys feel about differentiating the severity of gangs in your setting? In this instance, the “Bramwood Brigands” occupy the part of the world seen as the “Starter Region” and the “Mathers Gang” a more advanced-level part of the world.
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Feb 16, 2023 00:19
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I don't think there's necessarily a direct correlation between severity and cruelty of crimes and the power of the people committing them. Sometimes low level criminals are the ones who commit the most depraved acts. Sometimes powerful criminals get their way with minimal display of violence. Imagine for example a third gang who are made up of former army riflemen and sappers. They time their operations with precision, they can get into any bank vault in the West, and if it came to a firefight they have superior weapons and tactics to any posse a sheriff could round up. A formidable foe, most likely. But one that is aiming for as little bloodshed as possible. With them you'd sell their cred on how effective and skilled they were. Tales of their sniper shooting a gun out of the hand of a US Marshall, or stealing all the money in a Western Union coach without the driver noticing, that kind of thing. You can do both if you're trying to give variety.
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Feb 16, 2023 00:44
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