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Lamuella posted:One suit poker with d12s. 1s are aces, 12s are queens, no kings, all the usual hands apply with an added max hand of five of a kind. Another nice thing about this is that it gives a mechanism for role-play attempts to influence the outcome via illusion and sleight of hand.
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Sep 15, 2023 16:21
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1secondpersecond posted:Another nice thing about this is that it gives a mechanism for role-play attempts to influence the outcome via illusion and sleight of hand. You could also use performance / deception to try and bluff the appearance of a good hand
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Sep 15, 2023 18:13
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What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes? What are some good plot twists basically?
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Sep 21, 2023 05:30
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I've always been disappointed by the plot twists I've tried to pull. If you must do it, play absolutely fair with clues and if the players work it out, then let them and change stuff accordingly.
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Sep 21, 2023 05:41
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Yeah, don't directly lie to your players (but NPCs can and should), and don't be afraid of your players guessing the twist early. Let them feel smart for working it out in advance, rather than confused as to why the world seems to have stopped working the way they expected.
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Sep 21, 2023 12:20
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NAME REDACTED posted:Yeah, don't directly lie to your players (but NPCs can and should), and don't be afraid of your players guessing the twist early. Let them feel smart for working it out in advance, rather than confused as to why the world seems to have stopped working the way they expected. Also, if the players can guess a twist it means it was foreshadowed. Many of the best stories with twists are stories where you can go back and go 'ohhhh, THAT'S what that other thing meant and how it was leading to this'. And sometimes figuring out what's going on, especially in an interactive medium, is fun all on its own. That, and plenty of stories with twists still hold up if you know the twist!
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Sep 21, 2023 12:39
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Also, make sure the narrative is centered around the players. I ran into a lot of issues running my first campaign because I was so focused on telling a story I thought was interesting rather than making the game about the players. It caused a lot of frustration and party conflict because the players felt they were being railroaded into certain actions. If you have your character's backstories handy, you could use that for the basis of the plot twist. Maybe their imprisoned brother is freed but is working on the "evil" side of the conflict. Or a deal they made with a crime boss in their youth has come back to haunt them.
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Sep 21, 2023 12:53
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We have a huge combat session coming up. The players escaped from a chaos cruiser last session and then ended up in a time anomaly mini encounter. They foolishly activated a mysterious device and now they'll discover they're stuck in a time loop... after the chaos cruiser appears and party wipes them. The last session ended with all the alarms going off as the cruiser warps in right on top of them. The chaos cruiser boarding their ship and killing them all will be the big setpiece opening next session. When the player who touched the time machine dies they'll abruptly reset to just under 30 minutes before the encounter. So if you had free license to blow up the evil catholic enterprise and wipe out the beloved bridge crew, what encounters would you create? Right now I've got a firefight on the bridge against a chaos space marine boarding team and an undying dragon for one of the expanse big bads with a sorcerous obsidian ball lodged in his chest, a firefight on the gun decks against unending hoards of chaos minions, and the boarders blowing up the navigator's spire to deepen the sense of disaster -- with no way to steer the ship in the warp there's no escape. What other calamities can I visit on my players to give the sense that the ship is falling apart and the pirates are carrying the day as they're rushing from one combat to another?
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Sep 21, 2023 13:41
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trapstar posted:What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes? What are some good plot twists basically? I have been playing Expeditions: Rome and a neat trick they used was letting the player figure out the plot and maneuver the big bad into a situation where he'll be exposed and ruined while the player will be rewarded -- only for him to be murdered and all the evidence exposed by his brother who was ruthless enough to murder his own brother and take credit for exposing his crimes in order to hide his involvement.
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Sep 21, 2023 13:46
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I think one of the best twists I ever did was when the D&D party was exploring an old abandoned wizard's lair. They went through a portal in one area which knocked them all out and I made them roll a saving throw for ~no particular reason~. Over the course of the session I told everyone, except the guy who'd rolled highest, that their spells stopped working, and described in increasingly alarming detail how their bodies were starting to break down with some sort of mysterious wasting illness as they rushed more and more to find some sort of cure for whatever was happening to them. They made it to the end of the dungeon and found a room with giant vats, and naked copies of each of them floating inside. In a panic they opened the vats, at which point I told them all (except the one guy) that the last thing they remembered was going through the portal, and now they're waking up naked, stumbling out of some sort of slime vat, staring down exact copies of themselves wearing their gear. And then we did a fight against a bunch of stat drained no spell copies of themselves using all their gear, each of them dissolving into ooze when they died.
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Sep 21, 2023 14:36
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I like that.
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Sep 21, 2023 15:08
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trapstar posted:What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes? What are some good plot twists basically? Part of it is going to depend on whether you want to deceive your players or their characters. A good example of the former was in my last campaign, where we had travelled to a shadow dimension to save a kidnapped princess. While there we were attacked by a shadow dragon who seemed to be captive there. We also encountered a near-catatonic elf woman who couldn't explain how she got there but was terrified and seemed near death. Finally we found a way out and stepped through, bringing the elf woman with us. When we got to the other side, the woman starts laughing with what at first we think is joy... until the shadow dragon cast off its human form and flew off into the mountains, having escaped captivity. Our GM had put holes in the elf woman's story, and was prepared to give us information about her based on insight checks, and had we refused to let her through we'd have had to fight a shadow dragon,, but we were too tired and stressed (as players and characters) to do anything but believe her. A good example of the latter was what just happened to me in a campaign I'm playing in. I'm playing a bard who was part of a travelling troupe doing stage fighting and sword tricks. Shortly after she meets the rest of what will become her party, the caravans her troupe are travelling in burn down. Everyone gets out except for her master, the owner of the company. My character was told he had died in the fire, and is taken to see a charred body in the burnt remains of his clothes. Now, as a player I'm going "aha, is this the body or has he faked his own death?". As a character though, I'm taking this at face value. People I trust are telling me this is him and he's dead. Which means that five ingame weeks later when I have to break the news of his death to an old friend who says "But I just saw him two weeks ago!" I get the payoff of a nice dramatic scene that also gives me the smug satisfaction of feeling like I was right.
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Sep 21, 2023 16:27
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Arglebargle III posted:We have a huge combat session coming up. The players escaped from a chaos cruiser last session and then ended up in a time anomaly mini encounter. They foolishly activated a mysterious device and now they'll discover they're stuck in a time loop... after the chaos cruiser appears and party wipes them. The last session ended with all the alarms going off as the cruiser warps in right on top of them. This is your chance to introduce a BBG that wipes the floor with them without repercussions, so that the next time they see them they're terrified and know not to gently caress around.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:00
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That set up just screams creative, but preventable red shirts everywhere because what is a time loop but a chance to min/max a desired outcome.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:18
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Dameius posted:That set up just screams creative, but preventable red shirts everywhere because what is a time loop but a chance to min/max a desired outcome. This is the same game where they were asking a couple weeks back how to give their players any challenge because they were steamrolling everything, so I look at it as a good way to introduce your threat. But yes also redshirts everywhere. Including your PCs.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:21
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Arglebargle III posted:(time travel shenanigans) Tech priest Spokus has valiantly saved the ship from premature demolition by fighting off a chaos crew in the main engine. He is now sadly trapped behind a plasteel door, succumbing to the dangerous energies of the prometheum core. He tells the party not to grieve and says "The needs of the many..." but is tragically cooked into disgusting goop before finishing his thought, because WH40K technology is a loving nightmare.
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Sep 21, 2023 17:32
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Shanty posted:He tells the party not to grieve, as blood oozes from hundreds of freshly opening wounds across their body and says "more blood for the blood god"
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Sep 21, 2023 18:02
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The needs of the blood god outweigh the needs of your body. Live briefly and suffer.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:06
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Nephzinho posted:This is your chance to introduce a BBG that wipes the floor with them without repercussions, so that the next time they see them they're terrified and know not to gently caress around. This actually gave me the idea that if they kill the undead guy his boss will show up through a portal in his chest - who is one of the big bads of the expanse. It's 40K there are a lot of big bads
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Sep 21, 2023 21:54
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Arglebargle III posted:This actually gave me the idea that if they kill the undead guy his boss will show up through a portal in his chest - who is one of the big bads of the expanse. It's 40K there are a lot of big bads make a bunch of notes that people can pick up and will give them a bonus but their character has to say whatever's written out loud, and make half of them chaos stuff. 'IT'S ALL SO PLAIN TO ME NOW'
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Sep 21, 2023 23:59
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That's a really good idea but probably not for this particular encounter! Great way to give the players hints about undiscovered people, places, and things on the map. And also insanity points. They're a lot more scared of insanity points than Orks.
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Sep 22, 2023 00:54
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Lamuella posted:Part of it is going to depend on whether you want to deceive your players or their characters. Wow, props to the DM
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Sep 22, 2023 09:36
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Deceiving players is tough and a lot depends on how attentive they are. Some groups fumble through the story forgetting important details between sessions - they're easy to fool but it could be unsatisfying. Some approach the game like a detective on the case and will take notes to later cross-reference, in which case they will probably figure out your twists and that's fine, that's their fun! Resist the temptation to play unfair and then if you do manage to lead them to wrong-yet-avoidable conclusions, it is all the sweeter. A big part of it is social engineering. One neat psychological trick is that, counterintuitively, humans actually tend to trust/like people more after doing a favor for them, rather than the other way around, because our minds work on reducing cognitive dissonance. If you want an NPC to betray the party and introduce them as a helpful friend who assists them and gives them stuff, most players will naturally be suspicious. If you introduce them as a sympathetic and reasonable figure who's having a problem the PCs need to solve, they will mostly be inclined to fall for it. loving with players is an art but you have to play fair and be okay with failing. I still think my greatest GM moment was the time my players had the BBEG tied to a chair and interrogating him with Zone of Truth, and I managed to manipulate them so that they ended up letting him go, handing over the MacGuffin, and accepting a quest from him. The "wait a minute... oh gently caress" moment several sessions later was beautiful... but it was touch and go and if they had been more paranoid they could absolutely have figured it out and laughed in his face. Several similar gambits at other times failed completely because someone Ctrf-F'd their notes at the right time. Imo plot twists are one of those aspects of RPGs where you really really have to kill your darlings and be ready for either outcome; if you force it it's going to suck.
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Sep 22, 2023 10:46
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How do y'all plot your campaign storylines? I used to be real meticulous about plot points but I've switched over to a bullet point outline and don't really plan head further than 2 or 3 sessions. I have a general ending I'm aiming for, but the last time I really tried to plan a story out, the party killed a big bad way too early and threw that in shambles! Can't believe they rolled so drat high on their grapple checks...
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Sep 22, 2023 12:56
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Read apocalypse world and do that: have fronts, like the evil empire, the dark cult, the druids of derp and have them make logical plans and act on them. Have those plans interfere with things the players care about.
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Sep 22, 2023 13:31
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How would you approach a player creating a character in D&D5e, but their stats are kinda all over the place and they don't do any one thing particularly well because of it? One of the players in my next campaign made a warlock whose highest stat is 15 (point buy, not rolling stats) and that includes all stat bonuses. Outside of their stats, they've also chosen to use a spear, which being a strength weapon and her character having +0 strength, means she's hitting things at just her proficiency bonus. This isn't their first 5e character and they know the mechanics of the game fairly well (they're deep into BG3 like I'm sure many of you are).
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Sep 22, 2023 13:37
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Vargatron posted:How do y'all plot your campaign storylines? I used to be real meticulous about plot points but I've switched over to a bullet point outline and don't really plan head further than 2 or 3 sessions. I have a general ending I'm aiming for, but the last time I really tried to plan a story out, the party killed a big bad way too early and threw that in shambles! Can't believe they rolled so drat high on their grapple checks... I spent a couple weeks building a map with ideas from adventure books, my own ideas, and stuff from random generators. Now I make my players tell me where they're going at the end of each session, so I can flesh out the location they're going to and make sure I have tactical maps and NPC stat lines ready. At the start of a session I have about a two page bullet outline and the materials ready but I don't plan more than a week ahead generally.
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Sep 22, 2023 13:56
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Verisimilidude posted:How would you approach a player creating a character in D&D5e, but their stats are kinda all over the place and they don't do any one thing particularly well because of it? I would tell that player "Hey, the way you've statted the character means you're not going to be as effective as you might be, you can go ahead with that if you like but you might not have a very fun time. If you find that's the case, bear in mind you can restat your character at any time if it stops being fun." The weapon a warlock uses isn't terribly important anyway to my memory, they have Eldritch Blast as a cantrip which is gonna be better for the most part so the spear is probably just gonna be for show.
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Sep 22, 2023 14:03
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If you're fighting enemies on equal CR as the character level, playing a non optimized character should be fine. Hopefully a warlock won't be within melee range too much to the point to where they would need to rely on their melee weapon.
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Sep 22, 2023 14:13
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trapstar posted:What is the best way to go about intentionally deceiving your players for story/narrative purposes? What are some good plot twists basically? Deceptions involving magical items carried by the party are usually the most reliable, I've found, because like Guildencrantz mentions it feeds off the player tendency to excitedly accept something cool and powerful and then forget about it. So you end up with a nice 'oh, god, I can't believe we were carrying that all along and never realised what it was really for!' moment, instead of bickering about whether they should have trusted NPC X or NPC Y (because the problem with too many deceitful NPCs is that it can lead them towards anti-social habits in how they interact with the world.) Using an item for the twist also means that if the players figure out there's something suspicious about the amulet or greatsword ahead of you springing the twist, that's still a rewarding story beat for them which won't wreck your planning, and which is straightforward and quick to resolve (whereas when players get suspicious of an NPC the ensuing Insight checks, Detect Magic, Detect Thoughts, Zone of Truthing, etc, can turn into a stagnant muddle, or you can end up having to initiate combat at an inopportune moment). I had a really fun moment where a wealthy villain-in-hiding had given my players an adorable elemental pet as a quest reward, then proceeded to use it to spy on them all across the campaign. They actually figured out that she was out to get them, and knew she was tracking them somehow, but completely failed to consider that she'd given them the elemental - which made for a great moment when they finally cornered her, she snapped her fingers, and brought it back under her control for the ensuing fight.
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Sep 22, 2023 14:19
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Whybird posted:I would tell that player "Hey, the way you've statted the character means you're not going to be as effective as you might be, you can go ahead with that if you like but you might not have a very fun time. If you find that's the case, bear in mind you can restat your character at any time if it stops being fun." Vargatron posted:If you're fighting enemies on equal CR as the character level, playing a non optimized character should be fine. Hopefully a warlock won't be within melee range too much to the point to where they would need to rely on their melee weapon. They didn't take Eldritch Blast as one of their starting cantrips, and the only other damaging cantrip they've taken is green-flame blade.
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Sep 22, 2023 15:18
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Vargatron posted:How do y'all plot your campaign storylines? I used to be real meticulous about plot points but I've switched over to a bullet point outline and don't really plan head further than 2 or 3 sessions. I have a general ending I'm aiming for, but the last time I really tried to plan a story out, the party killed a big bad way too early and threw that in shambles! Can't believe they rolled so drat high on their grapple checks... In my current campaign that I'm running I built my storylines based on the characters the players created. Previously I've tended to be rules-first strict order above all type of gm, with planned plots and narrative structures, This time I dropped all of that: No restrictions, no limits, my only request was: "Do whatever. Free reigns with everything ...but I must like the idea". Then I explained the setting I had in mind and let them brainstorm. It was a back and forth in practice. A player would come to me and ask if they was allowed to do this or that and I'd sometimes say yes, sometimes no; but also give them suggestions or provide further details. My job was to fit all the ideas together into something coherent. I didn't so much write a story, but edited one based on what the players had in mind. By the end I had a party of four, a true neutral gang of downtrodden sods with hearts full of neutrality. All of them trying to get by, by any means necessary, in a city of dreams and riches and wonders. Party of redeemed thugs haunted by past mistakes. With this background info I started writing quests and fitting it into a bigger narrative. So far no deaths or early retirement. Too early to say how I'm going to resolve one when one eventually happens, we'll see.
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Sep 22, 2023 15:33
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Vargatron posted:How do y'all plot your campaign storylines? I used to be real meticulous about plot points but I've switched over to a bullet point outline and don't really plan head further than 2 or 3 sessions. I have a general ending I'm aiming for, but the last time I really tried to plan a story out, the party killed a big bad way too early and threw that in shambles! Can't believe they rolled so drat high on their grapple checks... 50% outline with an idea of who the big baddies are and what they want, 50% bullshitting that spins out from what goes on in-game
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Sep 22, 2023 15:36
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I think I'm a bit more of a planner these days than most folks here, but it always depends on the campaign structure. One with a lot of exploration and crawls benefits from meticulous content creation ahead of time, but a purely event-driven story campaign tends to thrive when you plot no further than the current arc. One method I want to employ going forward is basically a layer cake structure where you have tiers of content, corresponding to level and plot progression. Three pieces of content per tier, each adventure-sized and each of a different type (so a dungeon, a murder investigation, a heist, an intrigue to unravel, a big action showdown, whatever). One of these, whichever is most static, you prep in detail ahead of time. One you outline, but leave the details for later. One you leave blank, to be filled with whatever inspires you in the players' characters or how the world ought to respond to their actions. Also leave strategic blanks in ahead-of-time prep ("there's a heavily guarded chest on a side path in the dungeon holding a powerful magic item - TBD what the item is"). Rinse, repeat, staying one layer ahead of where the PCs are. Probably replace some of the full layers with a "funnel point" like a big set piece or some story event you want to hit the players with at an appropriate time (the villain strikes at the village!). The benefit here is, I think, balancing openness and room for ongoing creativity with having a secure fallback point of stuff you know you have prepped. So whenever the PCs hit that part, you know you have to do very little before the session and thus have bought time to prep the bits that are more narrative and fluid. I hope this makes sense, it feels harder to explain than it was in my head! Edit: This is riffing off the "node-based design" articles at The Alexandrian, which BTW are highly recommended.
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Sep 22, 2023 15:47
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I have a detailed end result that I want to hit. I have lots of mechanical things that I've prepped out, like encounters, traps, rewards, punishments, etc... I have the direction that I want the players to go in to reach the end result in my head before the session starts and the story beats and bread crumbs I want to use. I let the players build the road to the result for me, with an eye kept out for where along it I'm sprinkling my encounters, traps, rewards, etc... Every time I DM I feel like I do less work as it relates to prepping for the player experience, but I still go all in on world and vibe building. I'll have comparatively large databases of NPC names, motivations, locale place names, politics, item blocks, lore, and all that. So instead of thinking about a session as, "the players are going to kingdom.A to village.1 to do action.A1", I'll think of it as, "the players are going to end up in a half deserted small town filled with desperation, corruption, and religious revival and zealotry, beset by a plague caused by plot mcguffin.1 that will point them in the direction plot mcguffin.2" Based on what the players end up doing and going, that town will end up wherever they go, populated by thematically appropriate locals. After they retrieve mcguffin.1, in between sessions I'll look at the world map with these new details locked in and figure out how that changes the world dynamic, so if I thought they would see this in kingdom.A but it actually happened in republic.D, what would that mean for all the lore and stuff I'd committed to and revise. I try to keep things as uncommitted as possible because of this. Though players being players, once they hook onto the plot and want to see it through things naturally start locking in and becoming a lot predictable. This way just lets me always be able to handle wild card ideas and the early middle game when players first start getting some real mobility but aren't zeroed in on the plot yet.
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Sep 22, 2023 16:14
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Verisimilidude posted:How would you approach a player creating a character in D&D5e, but their stats are kinda all over the place and they don't do any one thing particularly well because of it? Dream player IMO. Give the players varied challenges and let them pick and choose according to their appetite for danger. Let them set their own goals, accept creative solutions, let them barter with enemies instead of fighting. I'm describing OSR principles here, but there's no reason you couldn't adopt that in a 5e game if you have players like this.
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Sep 22, 2023 17:27
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Shanty posted:Dream player IMO. Give the players varied challenges and let them pick and choose according to their appetite for danger. Let them set their own goals, accept creative solutions, let them barter with enemies instead of fighting. The problem is if everyone else in the group is not doing the same thing, which seems unlikely. I've run into this same kind of thing before, where one player was playing a type of mage focused on buffing and literally only used a buff spell once all game, and eventually explained it as 'Well my character would just panic in a fight and use his poor attack magic or weaponry to try to make it go away faster'. In a game focused on tactical combat missions. It can be a real problem when there's a mismatch between group and player like that, and with 5e I suspect that's about what's going to go down, leaving the Warlock PC with being kinda bad at what's going down much of the time. Unless everyone is doing this and you're mostly planning to avoid the combat system. Otherwise it's important to explain a bit about 'I know this is your concept, but also the game we're playing mostly relies on the verb of 'do battle', is there a way we can get at the fluff you're interested in without mechanically making you not very good? Can we say your Eldritch Blast is your spear empowered by something or something?'
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Sep 22, 2023 17:37
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I'd point out, too, that having a 15 as a stat instead of, say, a 17, is a mere 5% difference of success on d20-based checks. 🤷♂️
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Sep 22, 2023 17:38
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It's going to make less difference as they level up and gain more warlock powers. They might even multiclass to gain some more melee abilities. Unless you're designing around deadly combat encounters, they should be fine. Plus, they're going to get stat bonuses every few levels so they can gain strength points that way.
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Sep 22, 2023 17:45
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Bad Munki posted:I'd point out, too, that having a 15 as a stat instead of, say, a 17, is a mere 5% difference of success on d20-based checks. 🤷♂️ i'm not necessarily saying you're wrong, but on the other hand this is like walking into an Edgar Allan Poe society meeting and asking whether the orangutan is racist
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Sep 22, 2023 17:45
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