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Well, thanks to you jerks, I just bought Fate, Dungeon World, and Microscope.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:21
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Zereth posted:No. Don't do this please. death .cab for qt posted:Ahahaha holy poo poo she actually was forcing a gmpc on me and I was level 8 because I was supposed to die and magically resurrect as the final form of that gmpc's character build with new motivations and completely different class abilities based on celestial stuff and divine magic/aasimar related abilities Pathfinder is as traditional as it gets in terms of PC/DM call and response. You can bolt storygame poo poo on to it as well as you can with any other real stock traditional game like any of the other D&D editions or Shadowrun or whatever. It is probably not what you are looking for in terms of freeform poo poo. Dungeon World is a good pick if you are looking for something with a lot of traditional elements, or if you are looking for a weird rear end combo of grog and storynerd you can get something like Torchbearer.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:58
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Bad Munki posted:Well, thanks to you jerks, I just bought Fate, Dungeon World, and Microscope. I'd apologise, if I thought I'd done anything bad.  e: I'm running Fate, and playing DW atm. I'm really torn between which I prefer - I think DW is better for fantasy, but Fate is just so wide-ranging. It's like GURPS with all the GURPS taken out. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 16:05
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petrol blue posted:It's like GURPS with all the GURPS taken out. You have my attention. I'm going to have to get a hold of a few buddies and see if there's interest in some one-shot longer nights of each system, with any luck I could probably get a Monday/Thursday setup for each. They just sound so much more fun than Pathfinder or D&D4 for thinking up odd scenarios for quick campaigns.
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Jan 14, 2014 00:56
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Fate is a generic system that's also fairly rules light (although Fate Core is unfortunate in that it manages to be annoying fiddly with the skill pyramid/ladder system despite not being rules-heavy enough to be mechanically interesting - Fate Accelerated is altogether a better game, IMO). Dungeon World is a system that only does one style of game (D&D with dungeons and killing stuff to take their stuff), but does it very well, with just the right level of mechanics to be both streamlined and interesting on that level. It won't cope very well with trying to run something else (e.g. fantasy political palace drama). They're completely different games that do completely different things. Personally, I think Fate's incredibly boring to play (even if FAE is a much better system than Core). If you're looking for something to specifically run "traditional D&D"-style campaigns, Dungeon World is the game you want, because that's what it's actually designed to do. Fate is, again, just a generic system that you're going to need to spend some time tweaking before you have something that emulates D&D genre conventions. Also, Pathfinder players will probably find it easier to adapt to DW than to adapt to Fate's very vague mechanics.
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Jan 14, 2014 09:57
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It's my first time GMing and I'm running a Mass Effect campaign using a system my friends and I worked out based on the level system of the first game and the Star Wars SAGA edition. It's all worked pretty well so far (aside from the occasional balance issue that we have to stop and fix) but earlier tonight I hit a bit of a snag. I felt that the players were progressing too fast in moving up the chain for their Cerberus investigation and I was stuck trying to figure out ways to slow them down. I thought about having the guy they captured tonight killed while they were off working on something else (they left him in the warehouse they took over on Omega, to be watched over by an NPC who owed them a huge favor.) I really didn't want to do that, though. In the end I ended up deciding on doing a sort of Deck of 52 most wanted for the organization, so they could slowly work their way to the top. Does anyone else have experience with this? Is this a good idea?
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Jan 15, 2014 09:43
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Cant Ride A Bus posted:Does anyone else have experience with this? Is this a good idea? Sounds like a pretty good idea, but make sure you vary the encounters and ways of finding these 52 most wanted people. I don't know how you'll play it out of course but sounds like having the same rough goal 52 times might be a bit boring. Make sure you shake things up, other than that I think it's a great campaign idea.
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Jan 15, 2014 10:31
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Lemon Curdistan posted:Dungeon World is a system that only does one style of game (D&D with dungeons and killing stuff to take their stuff), but does it very well, with just the right level of mechanics to be both streamlined and interesting on that level. It won't cope very well with trying to run something else (e.g. fantasy political palace drama). It works much, much, better than other D&D systems when suddenly something non-genre pops up. I've played detectives, political drama, political conspiracy, non-violent exploration, even a bit of army command stuff using Dungeon World. Most of that in the same campaign. The nature of the game (moves follow from fiction) and the versatility of the Defy Danger move and the versatility of the GM moves all make going outside the system's genre very easy. Certainly I probably wouldn't start such a game in Dungeon World, but many campaigns are far-reaching and Dungeon World adapts very well.
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Jan 15, 2014 10:51
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Rather than putting roadblocks between your players and where they want to go, I would recommend putting tempting things in other directions. These can be carrots (an opportunity to steal some cool tech) or sticks (threatening things they care about) but either way, it serves to delay them by having them go off to do other, important, things. That way you're giving them more agency and forcing them to make tough choices about just how badly they want to take down Cerberus.
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Jan 15, 2014 10:56
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Cereberus is canonically (Well, ME1 canonically) a cell-based organization. That means that the head of a group won't necessarily have information that can lead them straight to the top. At In fact it shouldn't be that easy. Once they've taken down the guy at the top of any given cell, that might be the end of the road for that lead. The trail goes dark again. I'd recommend taking a look at Delta Green for an eye about the villain's mindset. Cerberus are xenophobic extremists operating in many cases as agents in important government bureaus, except unlike in Delta Green they're wrong and evil.
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Jan 15, 2014 11:37
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Mimir posted:Cereberus is canonically (Well, ME1 canonically) a cell-based organization. That means that the head of a group won't necessarily have information that can lead them straight to the top. At In fact it shouldn't be that easy. Once they've taken down the guy at the top of any given cell, that might be the end of the road for that lead. The trail goes dark again. That's kind of what I was doing, I'm releasing the first most wanted set slowly as the Alliance gets more information on their big players and right now it's just the first suit. What I'm planning on is once they get the guy at the top then the trail will go completely dark and they'll have no more leads.
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Jan 15, 2014 20:26
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I get what you're saying plot-wise, but that sounds like a recipe for frustrated players - if all the leads go dark, they might well assume that they're just missing something, rather than realising they've won. To my mind, it's far better to have a fun-but-cliched battle with the Big Bad on a spaceship that's slowly falling into an atmosphere, everything's blowing up around them, and so on, rather than 'you think you offed the leader, maybe, or you might just have lost their trail'. Your posted ideas sound interesting, but try and picture the game from a player's point of view.
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Jan 16, 2014 05:26
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So, two of my players are going TDY to play wargames in the skies over Vegas for a few weeks. This means there'll be three weekends or so where my group won't be meeting. I'm looking into some one-shots to run for the remaining two players. Neither of them is really into RPGs, so I think I might be able to spring Paranoia on them to full effect. Which edition is the best to use? I've never played it myself, but I am familiar with the setting. Would it be a good idea to just wing it with something like Savage Worlds, since they're already familiar? Running them as extras with no bennies, of course.
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Jan 16, 2014 06:06
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The edition of Paranoia doesn't make a massive difference rules-wise because you're winging the rules as GM most of the time anyway. The main difference is in the quality of the bits describing the setting and how up-to-date the satire is. The only hard and fast rule, really, is to avoid 5e at all costs: it stops being clever satire and instead goes for 'lol let's make star trek fans a secret society'.
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Jan 16, 2014 10:49
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I can vouch for Paranoia XP, after Mongoose Publishing got the licesne they did good things. I have not had a chance to play 25th Anniversary, but I've heard it's the same stuff spread across 3 books (with a bit more details on how to play at Ultraviolet level.) They defined different styles of play for Paranoia, but you'll probably find your own way to play; one of the principles of GMing paranoia is to fudge the rules. For a one-shot play Zap, where everyone is going to die and expload in a fabulous manner, or Classic. There is no realy reason for anyone to play 'straight' playstyle, if you want a serious Sci-fi game, use a different system.
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Jan 16, 2014 20:15
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My Pathfinder group has decided to take the current framework of our game and add in the idea of rotating DMs. I volunteered to run a few sessions in a few weeks, and started outlining my first session. This will be the first time I've DMed anything that wasn't a module, and even then my experience is pretty limited. I like the idea that I have to contribute, but between performance anxiety and a group that is both very well optimized and intelligent, I feel like I need to develop the adventure quite a bit more. To give some idea of the game, we're doing a "Good for Evil's Sake" campaign where the PCs are from a town that runs on the facade of having produced a number of legendary heroes, but is actually home to a massive and utterly secret criminal empire. The characters are part of the face of the city, supposed heroes who go out and do good deeds in order to cover up for the evil side of the city. My adventure in particular sends the PCs after a pair of smugglers who are late with a shipment of McGuffins. When the PCs set out, they'll come upon the site of an ambush. One of the pair will be dead on the scene along with one of the people who captured the other smuggler - a group of lawmen from another city some distance away. The players will have to track down the group and handle them, as well as figure out a way to handle the smuggler and his goods. Right now I have in mind that the lawmen are a group of inquisitors with some teamwork feats, but outside of the encounter with them, I'm not sure what I can add to the adventure. I was thinking that the party could eventually run into them at an inn along the road to the city, or in a jail in a smaller town... which would significantly complicate things for both them and me, and I'm not sure how I'd develop that part of it yet. Also, the levels for the character aren't known to me yet, mostly I want to nail down the outline before the mechanics. We just hit level 3, and I would like to place this either before or after a level 5 module I want to use... somewhere in a level range where a trio of inquisitors with teamwork feats would be an engaging and challenging fight.
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Jan 16, 2014 21:03
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Teonis posted:There is no realy reason for anyone to play 'straight' playstyle, if you want a serious Sci-fi game, use a different system. Man, if you think Straight means playing a serious sci-fi game then you've totally missed the point of Straight. It's not balls-to-the-wall crazy, but it's certainly still played for laughter. Horrified, uncomfortable laughter. Check out the WMD scenario book. The four Straight scenarios there are great. Hunger, in particular, is a work of genius.
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Jan 16, 2014 22:56
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Kavingi posted:My Pathfinder group has decided to take the current framework of our game and add in the idea of rotating DMs. I volunteered to run a few sessions in a few weeks, and started outlining my first session. This will be the first time I've DMed anything that wasn't a module, and even then my experience is pretty limited. I like the idea that I have to contribute, but between performance anxiety and a group that is both very well optimized and intelligent, I feel like I need to develop the adventure quite a bit more. That's loads, imo. It's a good scenario. Don't try and lock it down too much more, just maybe prepare a couple of fairly generic encounters and have them ready to slot in with the details tweaked as necessary. Another good trick is to have some complications ready to throw in when you see fit, like if they're on another country's turf maybe a patrol comes by? maybe there's someone from the criminal empire who wants to kill the surviving smuggler? But don't explicitly plot it, just have it ready to use. Then listen to your players guesses about what's going on, and if they come up with a really clever one you can steal it on the fly and make them feel smart. And if things are going too well, you can throw in a complication.
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Jan 17, 2014 00:09
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Dammit. I could have sworn I had Paranoia on DriveThru. Alas, it looks like it's no longer available in any form until Mongoose makes a new edition, and I don't see any sign that's going to be soon. Ah well. I can find other one-shots to run, I'm sure.
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Jan 17, 2014 03:20
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Whybird posted:Man, if you think Straight means playing a serious sci-fi game then you've totally missed the point of Straight. It's not balls-to-the-wall crazy, but it's certainly still played for laughter. Horrified, uncomfortable laughter. JackMann posted:Dammit. I could have sworn I had Paranoia on DriveThru. Alas, it looks like it's no longer available in any form until Mongoose makes a new edition, and I don't see any sign that's going to be soon. Ah well. I can find other one-shots to run, I'm sure.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:47
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Whybird posted:Hunger, in particular, is a work of genius. Seconded. If you've got a (very) dark sense of humour, it's amazing.
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Jan 18, 2014 16:39
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Has anyone ever played around with HARP (High Action Role Playing)? Watered-down version of Rolemaster? I started GMing a campaign for my 12-y.o. son and a couple of his friends a few months ago and it's gone great. My son's best friend's dad plays as well (he and I are good friends) which can be a huge asset in keeping things on track and acting as the Voice of Reason, or sometimes gently nudging the party towards one direction or away from another. Anyway, I'm a busy dude and in no way an active RPGer, so we initially went with a kinda-lumpy mix of AD&D 1E and 2E, for no other reason than it's easy for kids to understand, I'm mega-familiar with it, and I still have boxes of TSR poo poo from back in the day. However, as play progressed, I got more and more disenchanted with some of the shortcomings of the system and started digging around for more streamlined setups. HARP really fit the bill for me - for those unfamiliar, it's a d00 system where players assign skill points (accrued by gaining levels) to various skills (combat, lockpicking, magic etc). Any attack or action is basically as follows: character's skill ranking + difficulty modifier + d00 roll, >100 success and <100 failure. It's far from perfect, but it's great for my needs: easy for the kids to deal with, keeps things moving, allows for much more flexibility on near-misses and the like, etc. That said, it's still not ideal, so I've been tweaking like mad to get a better magic system in place. I've opted to graft on Ars Magicka's system, just because I love the idea of free-form spellcasting vs lightningboltlightningboltlightningbolt. Anyone not familiar with Ars, think verb-noun (Create Fire, Control Mind) with five techniques (verbs) and nine forms (nouns). Players allocate points during character setup to form-technique combos in an Excel template. Then to cast a spell, they describe what they want to do, we assign a modifier based on difficulty/badassery of spell, and voila: difficulty + skill rank + d00 = success or failure. I have concerns about scalability, but the characters started at mid-level and I don't see it being an issue. It's a much more forgiving system too, which is of course more fun for kids; if your fireball only rolls to a 98 instead of 100, maybe it misses its target or does slightly less damage. Same deal with combat, actually. Missing by a couple of percentage points can be a -2 on damage etc. I also streamlined combat as follows: Five basic categories of weapon (1H Edged, 1H Blunt, 2H, Missile, Thrown), characters must assign skill points to these. Cost of levelling a skill varies according to class, so warriors have an easier time here than wizards etc. Everyone (PCs/NPCs/Monsters) has a defensive bonus. For PCs this is based on armor, six slots (head/torso/etc), so it's still skill rank + modifier (defensive bonus) + a d00. A perfect reflection of reality? poo poo no. Easy for kids, fast-moving, and insanely tweakable based on the situation? poo poo yeah. The transition to this from AD&D was kind of a bitch but this is soooooo much better. Combat cruises along, spellcasting is so much more imaginative (and intuitive; my guy's a loving water mage, of course he can make a tentacle come out of the pool and attack the ogre etc), and I'm not stuck wading through endless charts. I use d10 for all damage rolls, with +-*/ modifiers as appropriate. My campaign is classic fantasy but heavily plot-driven, so nobody's worrying about stacking modifiers on the correct order or any of that poo poo. Super-excited, actually, because the campaign really took a hit during the transition; instead of working on the adventure, I was dicking around with Excel formulas to get all this to work right. We were in the middle of a fairly standard setup: mountain city's main river is poisoned somewhere upstream, PCs trek into mountains to discover source, find an old temple with a bunch of baddies poisoning the river, blah blah. The players were overwhelmed by an ambush in the temple and escaped into a garbage pit (complete with carrion crawlers, of course), and found a collapsed wall leading to an unexplored wing of the temple. After some undead encounters and the like (this section really dragged as we were transitioning to the new system), they found an underground river with a couple of leaky boats tethered to the pier. I didn't think anyone would actually use them, but sure enough, everyone inexplicably piles into the boats and heads down the river. Evidently the thought was that it would take them to the source of the poison, except that would be upstream  and the current's quite strong, so the die is cast, the temple is more or less history and the PCs are now merrily boating down a pitch-black underground river with rapids, boulders, and the unmistakable roar of a waterfall up ahead. They're gonna get unceremoniously dumped into an underground sea, which leaves things wiiiiide open for the next stage, whatever that looks like (in this case, the lower levels of an abandoned dwarven mine that's been infested with spiders.) I guess what I'm saying here is that GMing streamlined classic fantasy with 12-year-olds rules pretty hard.This is my first RPG post in here and I'm sure this poo poo's been covered ad nausaeum, but at the beginning of the thread I saw someone asking for advice on GMing kids, so I submit the following: Give each kid at least one meaty plot point or detail to define them. One guy's searching for his missing parents, one's the heir to his throne but has been exiled Lion King style, one accidentally killed a noble in a gambling dispute and has assassins after him, poo poo like that. Doesn't need to be complex, just something for them to latch onto and reference. Prep your adventure beforehand with written notes for each player. Example: group encounters strange carvings on wall, surreptitiously slip one player a note that he recognizes the carvings as blahblahblah, he then can share that information with the group. It's a great way to make sure everyone's involved. Mandate that everyone speak in character and use each other's character name, and unfailingly use character names yourself when speaking to the players. This should go without saying but it bears re-emphasis, I've found it really encourages role-playing among kids. Question: anybody ever use something like Fate Points or Hero Points? I'm thinking about adding something where each character has a couple of Hero Points that can be used to add +40 to a roll or something, allowing for a couple of miraculous moves per adventure. There has to be something like this already out there, right? I saw something in an AD&D module once but cannot recall the details. rivetz fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 19:50
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Good post. Rolemaster is a ridiculously tight system at its core, we used it in multiple different games for like 20 years of gaming. Even Eclipse Phase benefits from the joys of the E Shrapnel crit table.
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Jan 20, 2014 10:43
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My friend came up with the weirdest trap when I asked him for ideas and I really want to use it, but it is a bit out of the ordinary so I was wondering if anyone has experience with something similar. The idea is a room with a number of crossbow turrets mounted to the ceiling, that track the characters when they come in, but only fire whenever they say the letter "e". Since we don't roleplay much this also counts when the players say it. Nothing big, just a +5 vs Ac, 1d3+1 damage plinking away, but the sheer confusion at what triggers the trap could be priceless. Multiple e's is multiple shots and since my players love messing with each other I am expecting people to ask if anyone wants another drink, only to have the first person who says beer end up with two pot shots from a crossbow. They will either have to cross the room in silence, think carefully about what to say or just run because they don't understand what is going on.
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Jan 20, 2014 22:15
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E is a weird choice because it isn't audible a lot of the time. That might make it too hard to figure out.
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Jan 20, 2014 22:24
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BioTech posted:My friend came up with the weirdest trap when I asked him for ideas and I really want to use it, but it is a bit out of the ordinary so I was wondering if anyone has experience with something similar. Consider using a more commonly used consonant like T or S, that way they are more likely to figure it out. Also make it difficult to reach the trap so that the entire thing can't be circumvented by a good skill roll from the rogue types. Otherwise, this is hilarious; I applaud your friend for his creativity.
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Jan 20, 2014 23:09
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Babylon Astronaut posted:E is a weird choice because it isn't audible a lot of the time. That might make it too hard to figure out. Isn't E also like the most common letter in the English language? Maybe pick a (very common) secret word, Pee-wee's Playhouse style.
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Jan 21, 2014 03:18
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Be ready for that trap to kill someone. At my tables players will start whipping out the big spells and consumable items if I show them a big hulking bastard with a 3d10+10 attack. But they'll neglect a small damage source like a 5 damage minion, even if I throw 12 of them at the party. Statistically the most deadly foes they've faced have been kobolds with shortbows or rioters with thrown bottles and bricks. They have a perfect record when it comes to demons, giants, dragons and giant demonic dragons. If you're down to kill a player with plink damage it's a fantastic trap.
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Jan 21, 2014 03:24
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Have it be a common word related to the characters like "trap" or "sword" or "light". If you want to be particularly nasty, have it be something like "The" or "I" or when they refer to their character in the third person. "Avon tries to study the-" "A crossbow bolt launches at you, what do you do?" "Avon tries to jump-" "Another crossbow fires at you, what do you do?"
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Jan 21, 2014 05:22
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Got a weird dilemma that I could really use some other perspectives on. Running D&D 4th, campaign has been going for a few months now, players are level 3. One of the players is I think my oldest friend, and we kinda discovered gaming and D&D together. When the game started, I was really happy with him, because I had as part of the character creation that all the characters had to have a reason or at least the temperament to be interested in the campaign pitch (the battle against the Far Realm). He promptly conceived of a really, really cool concept for a knightly order whose secret purpose was to oppose the campaign's big bads, and made a half paladin half ardent (battle empath), since the campaign has a heavy psionics theme. So I was glad to have someone so invested by definition in the campaign's pitch, and I added his order to the game world. The problem is that he's boring as hell to DM for. In combat every turn consists of "I smack him with X ability" (pretty much verbatim that phasing, too). He never embellishes his actions in combat or describes them in any amount of detail at all. His character almost never speaks unless spoken to. I drop RP hook after RP hook about emotional traces and tells and he essentially never picks them up, nor does he ever really RP any of the implied consequences or side effects of being a person who can passively feel the emotions of others. He'll RP in downtime, but only when the RP is initiated by another party member (and the recent departure of their rogue, who was the primary instigator of such things, hasn't helped matters). He never talks about the game outside of game time or seeks me out at all to talk about it (something all the other players do). He just feels like he is contributing very little to the campaign, and I'm constantly investing energy and story hooks into his character that I get no return on. But he's a completely model player. He's never late for a session, never minmaxes or tries to sidestep the part of the story I'm trying to tell, never argues or disrupts the game (unless he's actually correct about a rule, which happens often enough). I'm just not having fun with his participation in the game. And I've known this guy for probably 10-12 years, and I don't think the has the ability to do things particularly different if I raise this with him. I have no idea what I should do. Any thoughts? 
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Jan 21, 2014 05:47
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Make those crossbows shoot anyone who asks a question, and every ruthless mercenary captain and fervent inquisitor will be lining up to buy them.
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Jan 21, 2014 05:54
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Well, is he having fun? It doesn't sound like he's disruptive. It's a shame he's not picking up on the hooks, but so long as the other players are, I don't know that there's anything truly wrong. I'd still recommend talking with him, just to make sure. It's possible there is something else he's looking for in the game that hasn't shown up yet. Tell him your concerns, ask if there's anything that might help him get more engaged.
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Jan 21, 2014 07:10
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Yeah, sometimes you just have perfectly fine players that don't feel comfortable with the degree of idiocy involved roleplaying requires. It's totally cool unless he's sulking during RP scenes or getting pissy when someone does something in character that's not the best DPR option. He could just be figuring out who his character is. If the campaign up to this point has been combat heavy he hasn't found that thing that makes his character cool, funny, or larger-than-life. You could ask him in a little side bar to think about that. But don't force it on him. If you push too hard with it he'll probably come up with something that grates along the course of a campaign like "Constantly asks 'where the bitches at?'" Edit: When you ask him try to keep it simple. Don't ask him for a big infodump about his backstory. "Is a naive boyscout" or "Is nervous around women" is enough. My current Illusionist's schtick is literally "rolls a d20 whenever we run into something people are grossed out by. If I roll under 10 it goes on a list of phobias and aversions". It's a simple thing that I can do at the table and it involves dice which gets me to do it all the time. Referring to all the other PCs as their military rank is something I've seen. Asking everyone if they've heard of the benevolence of Pelor is what our Cleric does which results in some fun. Just find something that's simple, easy to remember, and that can lead to funny social situations and eventually awesome moments when he gets to yell his stupid catchphrase as he punches out a giant dragon. And remember, don't force RP if everyone at the table is having fun. You're not guaranteed more fun and in fact you might make the table less fun. Razorwired fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Jan 21, 2014 |
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Jan 21, 2014 07:55
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TehWarsmith posted:In combat every turn consists of "I smack him with X ability" (pretty much verbatim that phasing, too). Are you creating opportunities for him to do other things in combat? Run fights with multiple secondary objectives, freaky terrain effects (that the monsters can use too, in order to teach the players that this is an option), and generally have a goal for the players beyond 'kill all these bad guys'. As for the RP, I find the quickest way to get players roleplaying is to give them a hard choice. They get to show what their character believes, rather than talking about them. And finally, it is actually ok for players to just wallflower, call out their combat moves, and stay at the back the rest of the time. If he's having a good time and not being actively disruptive, what's the worry?
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Jan 21, 2014 09:11
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TehWarsmith posted:stuff What kinds of RP 'hooks' are you giving him? Are they things clearly directed at his character and requiring immediate response, or are they passive lures that you are hoping he will bite on? I don't think you have to immediately hit the hard choices as Whybird suggests. For a player who is disinvested from their character and not really engaging the fiction, even a "hard choice" can be arbitrary and weightless. Before you go there I think you need to get him to buy into the game world a bit more. I would do this, not by laying down 'hooks' along the lines of "here is a rumor of a thing that I think your character would care about", but by establishing more direct relationships to NPCs. Throw a bunch of recurring NPCs at him - the knightly order contact who keeps showing up to give him a hard time about not enough progress, the bungling fan who somehow found out his purpose and asks a bit too loudly about things that are supposed to be secret, the paladin-hating towny who spits at his pompous tin hide every time he walks past. These kinds of present-interactions will draw him into character and make him think about immediate relationships to authority, ethics, his organization, etc. Once you have him thinking about immediate relationships, I think you will get more buy-in regarding the higher level goals.
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Jan 21, 2014 13:43
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TehWarsmith posted:The problem is that he's boring as hell to DM for. First, some people are social gamers and are ultimately there to drink and joke with friends. There's nothing at all wrong with this - just make sure they are enjoying themselves and pitch to everyone else. Second, as a brief change of pace, I'd suggest running two sessions of Wushu Open. Very simple, very light, very fast, very oriented to encouraging description. And above all free.
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Jan 21, 2014 13:51
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How do I spice up my marker-and-playmat battle maps? I can't think of ways that don't involve either drawing for 15 minutes between encounters while the group gets more and more bored, or having to remember which scribbled-on tile is difficult terrain, which one is impassable and which one is something else in the environment. We don't game at my apartment and the dry-erase mat isn't mine, either, so pre-drawing encounters isn't an option.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:09
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tzirean posted:How do I spice up my marker-and-playmat battle maps? I can't think of ways that don't involve either drawing for 15 minutes between encounters while the group gets more and more bored, or having to remember which scribbled-on tile is difficult terrain, which one is impassable and which one is something else in the environment. It's pretty much pre-draw, as far as I know  I just started keeping track of what I was doing as I quickly scribbled encounter maps, instead.As long as your map is consistent, your players can figure it out with a couple of questions. After a while, they knew that single hatching meant partial concealment, cross-hatching meant total concealment, and either of those may or may not be difficult terrain (ask a DM!  ). I write numbers next to any inclines, cliffs, or other probable climb/leap targets to indicate height difference with adjacent ground, and I reserve the color blue exclusively bodies of water. Honestly, I think the encounters my last group enjoyed the most were the kind of random ones out in the middle of nowhere where I just took 10 minutes to plop down haphazard geographical features, because it let them engage in fuckery involving cover and concealment, and have weird tree-top sniper duels.
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Jan 22, 2014 21:59
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tzirean posted:How do I spice up my marker-and-playmat battle maps? I can't think of ways that don't involve either drawing for 15 minutes between encounters while the group gets more and more bored, or having to remember which scribbled-on tile is difficult terrain, which one is impassable and which one is something else in the environment. You can print some things on transparencies for cover/difficult terrain, and have it look nice, and you can just have some various sizes that you can just plop on the map. You can papercraft impassable obstacles and plop those on the map as well.
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Jan 22, 2014 22:12
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 22:02 |
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tzirean posted:How do I spice up my marker-and-playmat battle maps? I can't think of ways that don't involve either drawing for 15 minutes between encounters while the group gets more and more bored, or having to remember which scribbled-on tile is difficult terrain, which one is impassable and which one is something else in the environment. http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php I picked up a few of their Dungeon Rise/Terraclips sets last year, and the players loved it.  Sadly, I don't see it being offered as a product on their site anymore, but there are more options in the first link.
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Jan 22, 2014 22:39
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