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ShiroTheSniper
Mar 19, 2009

I see dead arrows.
Lipstick Apathy
Let's keep it short.

Me: DM. Kinda new (1-2 years). I'm not following the D&D Lore. I take many liberties. I use the DND4e elements for my own campaign, as I wish.

Players: 2 guys, nice players. We OOC alot. We take D&D as a social game. We talk and we play. We all have fun.

Campaign setting: Tiamat took a human form and seduced a powerfull king. She wanted his seed to breed a new kind of godlike dragonborn to form an army to rule all the planes. She left the boy to the king and went back to her lair. She wanted him to grow like a human (he'll 100% human looking, except for two vertical scar lines on his back (where the wings would grow, later)). 8-10 years later, she sent riders (humans, tiamat cult follower) to kidnap the bastard because she wants him back to <insert magical stuff here> into a godlike human-dragon.

Main quest: The players need to follow/catch/free the kid before Tiamat put her paw on him. But because of many secondary quest / "poo poo happens" with the players, the kidnappers are many days ahead.

What would you do? (or what do you prefer)
Let the world evolve "out-of-sight" => Let Tiamat grab the kid and release on the current world the wrath of dragons leaded by that god-like dragonborn
or
Let the players rubberband "à la Mario Kart" the kidnappers and let them rescue the kid and develop another story after that?

TL;DR: Perpetual main quest with an infinite number of sub-quests or some main quest one after another, linked or not?

False EDIT: Feel free to criticize my campaign!

ShiroTheSniper fucked around with this message at 17:34 on May 29, 2014

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Stallion Cabana
Feb 14, 2012
1; Get into Grad School

2; Become better at playing Tabletop, both as a player and as a GM/ST/W/E

3; Get rid of this goddamn avatar.

deadly_pudding posted:

*rolls dice*: The kraken's massive attack slays 16 people. Here is a list of everybody on the boat. Who lives, and who dies?

I intend to do something exactly like this for one of my games. I'm glad that someone else thinks it's a good idea and not a terrible one

Deltasquid
Apr 10, 2013

awww...
you guys made me ink!


THUNDERDOME

Stallion Cabana posted:

I intend to do something exactly like this for one of my games. I'm glad that someone else thinks it's a good idea and not a terrible one

Letting the players know they're hosed up but letting them choose exactly how is one of my favourite things to do as a GM.

"You enter the room to save the princess and the viceroy. Too late, as it turns out, since you all decided to get sidetracked and find that magical sword. One of them is lying all across the bloody room, the other is barely clinging to life. Which one of them is?"

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off
Let's world building!

So, my group did chargen and world gen for a FATE campaign the other night. Going through the "WANT" and "DO NOT WANT" part of world creation, my one of my players blurted out "Renpunk" and got seconded by the rest of the group. They still want it to be a modern setting that doesn't take too many liberties with things like "renaissance-era wrong ideas are actually true" or "clockwork is basically magic", though, so...

What I have so far:
The city of New Promise was founded in 2000 AD, 20 years ago, by a consortium of entrepreneurs and developers known as FORWARD. A planned city, its purpose is to act as a large-skill think tank and testing ground for innovation. Providing numerous incentives to attract inventors, artists, and scientists to New Promise, the goal is to provide the world with an example of a society built on green energy and avant-garde culture.

The whole city is basically wind and solar powered. Strict zoning requirements and specialized contractors ensure that nearly every building is equipped with wind turbines and/or solar panels, which all feed directly into the main power grid, collected and distributed by a network of high-power capacitors and batteries. Downtown is practically an art installation, its towers stylized in an elaborate Baroque-like manner, and much of its infrastructure styled like clockwork. The centerpiece, Da Vinci Tower, houses a massive wind turbine, and contains primarily office space. Government facilities are housed in a nearby building and campus modeled after the Palazzo Montecitorio.

The city is gradually becoming an international seat of fashion, dominated by trends revisiting old modes of dress, with things like high collars, tunics, tights on men, and poofy sleeves falling back into style, though streamlined into a more modern interpretation.

Located in central Canada, the city has been aggressively acquiring land, and population. Behaving much like a corporation, with the mayor being effectively a CEO beholden to a council of private interests from FORWARD, the incorporation of several surrounding towns has been accomplished through a combination of hostile takeover of local businesses and (allegedly) shady political deals. What this means is that, frankly, not everybody living in New Promise necessarily planned to. Subject to a breakneck pace of cultural and technological change around them, and now living, working, and competing with some of the world's most brilliant minds, average people are left feeling alienated and left behind.


-----------------
Anywho, I'm not really sure where to go with the Renpunk angle besides fancy buildings, goofy clothes, and a background noise of "rapid innovation". They don't want a total clockpunk world, so there's only so far I can really go. Like, I think stuff like goofy wind-up cars would just break immersion. Probably I can throw little ornithopter police drones in there, and I have an idea for like a goofy subway car that runs on basically a stylized jet turbine. I'm just not totally sure what to do with "Modern world, but ren-punked."

I like the basic setup that I have, but it's like, there's only so much you can do with that kinda setting request :ohdear:

Like, should I stay relatively grounded where I am now, or just be like, "Eat it. This fictional Russian engineering firm has revolutionized the way we move air from one side of a thing to another side, and says wind powered cars are the wave of the future, and that's just how it is :colbert:"

Was toying with insane ultrasonic, acoustic, analog cell phones before they dropped the "not actually clockpunk" bomb on me :science:

Rexides
Jul 25, 2011

Bumfluff posted:

We had no say in the matter, it was just a couple of d100 rules and that was it.

The gently caress? Did he just roll on a table and the die landed on the "Your pregnant wife dies" entry?

Azhais
Feb 5, 2007
Switchblade Switcharoo

HatfulOfHollow posted:

I'm trying to salvage a party that has fractured. The players are all great, but the characters motivations are so misaligned that I am finding it hard to get them to actually work together.

"The executions will continue until morale improves"

Bumfluff
Jun 19, 2008

Bumfluff!
It's me, Mabel!
I'm looking at you through the av!
Right here!
This is my voice!
I'm talking to you from inside!

Rexides posted:

The gently caress? Did he just roll on a table and the die landed on the "Your pregnant wife dies" entry?

He rolled a d100 and then we compared our d100 rolls to it to see what happened. In my case, I rolled well enough to not be maimed, but my second roll was not good enough to not lose my relative. BUT, like I said earlier, my story feat with a goal to sell my soul to a devil should be able to get her back easily.

When we saw him before the other game today he decided to let guard make his own rolls instead of going off the clerics terrible rolls (which made him lose a leg and grievously wounded his arm), and, with no prompting from me or the guard basically did one of the suggestions from here and said "Your wife went into labor when the kraken attacked, the cleric and doctor tried their best to deliver but one of them died, which one was it?" So everything seems fine now.

Bad Munki
Nov 4, 2008

We're all mad here.


I think maybe your GM just doesn't want to deal with family members in a game.

Finnankainen
Oct 14, 2012
I have a question about giving incorrect information to PCs.

I’m running a Edge of the Empire Star Wars game where it’s a plot point that the PCs are dealing with several near-human aliens pretending to be human and eventually exposing them. Is it worth it to try to introduce incorrect info based on failed knowledge rolls like mistaking a Miraluka for an ordinary, blind, Hapan? Or should I just go with “You don’t know” as the default for failure? The first seems much more interesting and there are a lot of fun possibilities but since all rolls are made in public players will know if they fail and potentially mistrust anything I tell them.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
Depends how the players, really. If they're willing to act IC on information they know OC is bad, then go for it. If not, or if they feel that takes away from the mystery, it's probably best to make those rolls in secret. Announce the change just before telling them something utterly trivial and correct for extra fun/derail.

e:

ShiroTheSniper posted:

What would you do? (or what do you prefer)
Let the world evolve "out-of-sight" => Let Tiamat grab the kid and release on the current world the wrath of dragons leaded by that god-like dragonborn
or
Let the players rubberband "à la Mario Kart" the kidnappers and let them rescue the kid and develop another story after that?
My money is 100% on 'let them gently caress up, and deal with the gently caress up'. I wouldn't make it malicious (the aim isn't to punish them), or out of sight, though: They chose to spend the time dealing with issue A, give them due rewards for that, but also give them the consequences of taking time away from a time-critical plot, both the good and bad.

If you rubberband, you're basically saying to them that their choices have only token relevance to the story you are going to tell them. Make it clear to them why the kidnappers are so far ahead, and then give them agonising choices about their priorities.

petrol blue fucked around with this message at 01:14 on May 30, 2014

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora
Giving them wrong info on a roll they know they failed is usually more fun if you have players that will go along with it. It's more interesting if your players make a big social faux pas because they thought a dude was from the wrong planet. If you have players that are going to try to sidestep things with their OOC knowledge, well, all they've really narrowed down is "it's not the specific thing the GM told us."

Mr. Prokosch
Feb 14, 2012

Behold My Magnificence!
A failure that does something is always more interesting than just a null result. On a metagame level, they know the info is bad so just straight lying to them won't work too well and it can lead to some mistrust around the table. It's usually best to just trust their ability to separate character and player knowledge. Tell them straight up, "bad roll, you believe ______" or even engage their creativity with "your character misunderstood something fundamental, what was it?"

Bad Munki
Nov 4, 2008

We're all mad here.


Man, knowingly acting on incorrect information is one of the most amusing RP things to do in some of these games. I have merrily risked the life of some treasured characters on information I the player knew to be wrong but the character didn't on MANY occasions. It's a hoot.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost

Mr. Prokosch posted:

Tell them straight up, "bad roll, you believe ______" or even engage their creativity with "your character misunderstood something fundamental, what was it?"

This. Some of the best moments in my current game have been when the table brainstorms what they mistakenly believe to be true after a failed knowledge roll. On one occasion, when the party were rolling to see what they knew about the place they needed to go, we ended up with "Okay, so we know that the land is so fertile that we won't need to bring any supplies at all. Plus, the village down the road is full of friendly hobbits, and the nearby pyramid is a scenic tourist destination."

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
^^ "scenic tourist ziggurat" is the phrase we used. :downs: (Guess where our holiday destination was, as out characters needed to 'get away from it all'.)

e: Related, discussion in the Notable Experiences thread on IC/OOC information.

petrol blue fucked around with this message at 01:12 on May 30, 2014

FiddlersThree
Mar 13, 2010

Elliot, you IDIOT!
Hello all.

I've been having an itch to revisit oWoD Vampire: The Masquerade, but with a different type of game. I had a lot of fun with a Fantasy Politics game that CaptainIndigo ran on the forums awhile back, so I took that as my inspiration and designed a strategy game where the players are Primogen wielding influence to rebuild, fend off threats, and accomplish their clan's goals in the wake of the events of the Bloodlines computer game. I was debating just going ahead and opening up a game thread, but if possible, I'd like to get at least a little feedback before I go blundering in.

I've shared a rules PDF on Drive. If anyone is willing to take a look, I'd greatly appreciate any feedback on rules, balance, complexity, etc.

For the record, I know there's a lot of number-crunching in the rules, but I'm going to keep as much of that under the hood as I can. Hopefully, all that the players will need to do is choose how to allocate their resources, and I (or, at least, my spreadsheet) will do the rest.

Also, this will be my first time GMing a forums game, let alone one of this type. Any general tips on making political strategy games work, or particular pitfalls to avoid?

Thanks in advance!

Spaceking
Aug 27, 2012

One for the road...
Been thinking about trying out XCOM as a setting for tabletop gaming, but I'm not entirely sure what's the best system to use. Dark Heresy seems like a pretty good comparison given the high tech, mind powers and alien-killing focus, but I've heard good things about Shadowrun for use as well. Any thoughts on what'd be the best fit for the XCOM feeling and setting?

PublicOpinion
Oct 21, 2010

Her style is new but the face is the same as it was so long ago...
There's been a few Savage Worlds XCOM games run here, it worked pretty well. For those they did a few houserules to make starting characters more fragile.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
I'm not sure about system, but for the XCOM feel I'd work on giving players multiple characters, or making sure they know they might lose their character - if each mission doesn't feel like 'ohshit I'm gonna lose my character', it's not XCOM.

FiddlersThree
Mar 13, 2010

Elliot, you IDIOT!

PublicOpinion posted:

There's been a few Savage Worlds XCOM games run here, it worked pretty well. For those they did a few houserules to make starting characters more fragile.

Here's a link to the X-COM pages on the TradGames wiki (which also contains links to ManMythLegend's original game threads). Check out the discussion pages as well, as they provided a lot more of the rules/mechanics information.

Spaceking
Aug 27, 2012

One for the road...
I'd really prefer to avoid Savage Worlds. It's not a favored system of mine.

Deltasquid
Apr 10, 2013

awww...
you guys made me ink!


THUNDERDOME

Bad Munki posted:

Man, knowingly acting on incorrect information is one of the most amusing RP things to do in some of these games. I have merrily risked the life of some treasured characters on information I the player knew to be wrong but the character didn't on MANY occasions. It's a hoot.

It's also a lot of fun to see my somewhat inexperienced players sweating bullets because they know OOC something is a bad idea but IC try to roleplay.

"I open the door from a safe distance, then."
"What is a safe distance?"
"Just... You know... This seems fishy. I take a step backwards and open the door."
"What if the, uh, potential, fatal trap springs BEHIND us?"
"I... I look all around the room in paranoid fear as I shuffle at the door with my foot..."

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

ShiroTheSniper posted:

Campaign setting: Tiamat took a human form and seduced a powerfull king. She wanted his seed to breed a new kind of godlike dragonborn to form an army to rule all the planes. She left the boy to the king and went back to her lair.
Hmmmm...

My Lovely Horse posted:

)
- Witch who's in hot water with a dragon, because she promised to sell him the crown prince
Yep, think I just figured out why the dragon wants him in the first place. Thanks!

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









I'm about to start up a game of Night's Black Agents, where you play cinematic badass super-spies fighting a global vampire conspiracy. On a whim I've decided not to mention the vampire bit, so the characters can find out about it. This is my regular crew, so we've been playing together for literal decades.

Good/bad idea? I know bait and switch is a bad idea in general, but I feel like the reveal (which will come in the first or second session) is something I'll only get one chance at and it could be fun.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

If they're players you know and trust, it can work really well. One of the most memorable games I was ever in was a Spycraft game where the first couple months we dealt with weird high tech companies and plasma weapons being smuggled by terrorists before our mission base was invaded by Sectoids and Mutons and we turned out to be the precursor to X-COM. It especially works in a spy game, especially one where the spies are badasses and their skills will work well against the weird threat you're planning to surprise them with, too. It's really down to if you think your players will be down with it and if you know if they like vampire stories; if so, I'd say go for it as an experiment.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Lynx Winters posted:

Giving them wrong info on a roll they know they failed is usually more fun if you have players that will go along with it. It's more interesting if your players make a big social faux pas because they thought a dude was from the wrong planet. If you have players that are going to try to sidestep things with their OOC knowledge, well, all they've really narrowed down is "it's not the specific thing the GM told us."

I just sidestep this altogether by doing Knowledge rolls (as well as some other kinds) myself as the GM and keeping the results and the target number secret. All they get to know is what I tell them; depending on the roll, it's either correct or not. This results in the players having no choice but to go with it, since they know that if they try to metagame and act like I was lying they might actually be ignoring me when I told them the truth and have an even stupider fuckup.

God Of Paradise
Jan 23, 2012
You know, I'd be less worried about my 16 year old daughter dating a successful 40 year old cartoonist than dating a 16 year old loser.

I mean, Jesus, kid, at least date a motherfucker with abortion money and house to have sex at where your mother and I don't have to hear it. Also, if he treats her poorly, boom, that asshole's gonna catch a statch charge.

Please, John K. Date my daughter... Save her from dating smelly dropouts who wanna-be Soundcloud rappers.
This is player advice.

How easy is it to transplant characters from one campaign to the other? Our characters are two survivors of an otherwise TPK from a long-running epic campaign that ended. One is the surviving PC, and the character I'm wanting to play was the main benefactor NPC who gave the party their missions. Problem is, our game was Pathfinder rules using D&D campaign settings, with conversions here and there. The game we are joining is ran by strangers, and they use the Golarion Pathfinder setting. So we've came up with the premise our characters were stripped of everything but our life and memories and banished to an uncharted plane by the Lady of Pain for our failure. I think playing as 1st level characters that are fallen demigods from a distant world would be mighty interesting, and it would explain our lack of knowledge of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting.

Do you think this is doable? Or would we just gently caress up and annoy everyone in the game we are joining?

deadly_pudding
May 13, 2009

who the fuck is scraeming
"LOG OFF" at my house.
show yourself, coward.
i will never log off

God Of Paradise posted:

This is player advice.

How easy is it to transplant characters from one campaign to the other? Our characters are two survivors of an otherwise TPK from a long-running epic campaign that ended. One is the surviving PC, and the character I'm wanting to play was the main benefactor NPC who gave the party their missions. Problem is, our game was Pathfinder rules using D&D campaign settings, with conversions here and there. The game we are joining is ran by strangers, and they use the Golarion Pathfinder setting. So we've came up with the premise our characters were stripped of everything but our life and memories and banished to an uncharted plane by the Lady of Pain for our failure. I think playing as 1st level characters that are fallen demigods from a distant world would be mighty interesting, and it would explain our lack of knowledge of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting.

Do you think this is doable? Or would we just gently caress up and annoy everyone in the game we are joining?

If everybody is onboard with the idea, it sounds like a good way to deconstruct themes in D&D-style roleplaying games. As they journey with their new friends, your transplanted characters realize that the whole party is gradually becoming a group of adventuring demigods just like in their old universe, and that maybe something like this happens in every parallel reality ...something something the power is in all of us.

Deltasquid
Apr 10, 2013

awww...
you guys made me ink!


THUNDERDOME

God Of Paradise posted:

This is player advice.

How easy is it to transplant characters from one campaign to the other? Our characters are two survivors of an otherwise TPK from a long-running epic campaign that ended. One is the surviving PC, and the character I'm wanting to play was the main benefactor NPC who gave the party their missions. Problem is, our game was Pathfinder rules using D&D campaign settings, with conversions here and there. The game we are joining is ran by strangers, and they use the Golarion Pathfinder setting. So we've came up with the premise our characters were stripped of everything but our life and memories and banished to an uncharted plane by the Lady of Pain for our failure. I think playing as 1st level characters that are fallen demigods from a distant world would be mighty interesting, and it would explain our lack of knowledge of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting.

Do you think this is doable? Or would we just gently caress up and annoy everyone in the game we are joining?

If everyone is on board with it and you guys don't hog the spotlight, why not.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
If everyone's up for it, sure it could work, though unless you exposition-dump at them all they're going to notice is 'blah, blah, snowflake, blah'.

I don't really get why you'd want to, though? Why not get some info on the new campaign setting and make characters that are designed for it, rather than grafting something on and hoping it takes.

Rexides
Jul 25, 2011

Depending on how invested the GM and other players are on the setting, their reaction should range from "sure, why not?" to "gently caress you and your previous campaign". Of course, "I don't have time/am not autistic enough to read through all that setting lore to make my character, just point me to a mine my dwarf hails from" is a perfectly acceptable thing to say, but if you are doing this thing just to circumvent this process but still have a fully fleshed-out character, it's going to be a big gently caress-you to people who put the effort to tie their characters to the setting, and the GM who might want to work with elements from the setting he picked, not a different one.

In the end, whatever we say here won't matter at all in your table because we are not these people who are going to play with and you should be more worried what they think about your characters than what the goon hivemind deems acceptable elfgame cross-planery.

petrol blue is right, just ask for help with making your backgrounds to tie in with the rest of the group. Inter-campaign shenanigans aside, it's lovely when half the party has it's own thing going on.

Xalidur
Jun 4, 2012

I am looking for "what system do I use?" advice.

Backstory: I am in the Navy. Before heading out to sea for the last few months, I completed a D&D 4E campaign. We played twice a week for two-and-a-half years and my PCs went from level 4 to level 22, saved the world (homebrew), and all of that good stuff. The players are clamoring for a sequel and there are more than enough hooks left for me to run one. However, toward the end of my previous campaign's lifetime, high-end 4E development and game balance work (my players are optimizers and very fussy about intra-party balance) consumed a ridiculous amount of my free time. Due to my current job position, I basically don't have time to do that amount of work outside of the game anymore. I actually considered retiring from DMing altogether - I am getting kind of old - but it's hard to resist when your pals ask for an encore.

I am looking for a system that has "a certain amount of tactical depth," but is more lightweight on the DMing side and perhaps a bit better balanced than 4E. As a reference point, I discovered and suggested 13th Age, but my players felt like their tactical options were too vastly reduced from 4E to give the system more than a playtest. I am very fond of 4E, but it has gotten somewhat too complex for my tastes in the Epic tier.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm willing to give almost anything at least a test run. "My version" of 4E is pretty heavily houseruled, so I don't mind if it requires some assembly after opening as long as designing a badass boss fight doesn't take 5-8 hours (and it'd be nice if running them didn't take that long, either).

Bad Munki
Nov 4, 2008

We're all mad here.


Xalidur posted:

I actually considered retiring from DMing altogether - I am getting kind of old

I just want to say that old-timer DMs are often the BEST DMs. I played in several games run by a dude who was like 50 and it was loving amazing every single time.

Iunnrais
Jul 25, 2007

It's gaelic.

Xalidur posted:

I am looking for "what system do I use?" advice.

I've only ever played D&D (2e, 3.0, 3.5, and 4e), a smattering of White Wolf (as a player, "ghost stories"), and some paranoia, so I don't really have suggestions. But I do want to ask what was taking up so much of your time? I ask because I usually recommend 4e expressly because as a DM, it takes up so little of my time-- the only planning I really do is managing villainous plots, fluff, and background events, which you have to do regardless.

After a couple sessions of 4e, I stopped using monster manuals at all, and started just using MM3 on a Business Card, facilitated by Asmor's Math Cruncher website (note: he didn't update damage dice per level for whatever reason, so his dice are all underestimates, but I found that just grabbing the "limited" row for at-wills worked fine)

Whatever my players face, I just select a range from their level to their level +3 or so (my players optimize too, so sometimes I bump defenses up higher), use those numbers, and make up abilities on the fly that make sense for what feeling I want to give the monsters. Then I gage how the players handled that fight, and adjust things for the next fight accordingly, based off the seat of my pants.

To make fights go faster, I have a policy of using Asmor's "bloodied" value as the true max hp. I also use "super minions", which are like minions but take more than one hit to kill-- not that they have higher hp, but they take "2 hits" or "3 hits" from any attack to bring down (I sometimes handwave higher damage numbers as counting as multiple hits-- like a 3W daily might count as three hits). It speeds things up a lot.

It just seems odd to me to see what I consider 4e's greatest strength-- easy of DMing-- to be considered a weakness.

Xalidur
Jun 4, 2012

Iunnrais posted:

It just seems odd to me to see what I consider 4e's greatest strength-- easy of DMing-- to be considered a weakness.

There are a few inter-related issues:

1) We use MapTools, therefore it takes time to design everything from a coding perspective - monsters need macros, maps need their moving parts built, etc. This also requires all maps and monsters to be fully designed in advance; if there's a six-floor dungeon and it's not clear how far the PCs will get, well, the entire thing has to be programmed just in case.

2) We play with 100% transparency (all statistics are known to all players, all rolls are performed openly, all DCs are stated prior to rolling, etc), therefore there is an onus to get the balance "just right" - fudging is not possible. This extends the length of encounter design somewhat to ensure things are well-tailored. I am a bit of a perfectionist and bring this one on myself, but it's also a standard my players have come to expect and that I feel they deserve.

3) I'm not sure how much Epic Tier you've played, but at this point my players have accumulated a vast amount of Minor and Free action abilities, so their combat turns tend to last awhile; they also have numerous off-turn powers to adjudicate. Combat rounds have often exceeded an hour in length, so even building encounters to be relatively short doesn't help - a five round fight might well take 5-7 hours to complete.

4) Encounter design has gotten fairly vast and complex to challenge the extreme power level of the PCs (I am known as running pretty difficult campaigns and there is a lot of disappointment when a fight ends up being too easy).

5) I mentioned that my PCs are grouches about intra-party balance, so every now and then there is an issue ("the Ranger is scaling better than my Slayer, nerf him now!") which requires a significant amount of work to come up with a solution acceptable to both parties. I feel that 4E just has too much stuff in it by this point and at this level. At Heroic Tier, the balance was better.

Obviously, I've tried to troubleshoot individual issues - and I do love 4E in general and consider it a large upgrade from 3.5/Pathfinder. Unfortunately, it's reached a point of complexity where I feel the best option is to nuke and pave.

petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
For "wargame plus roleplay", I think you'll be hard-pressed to beat 4e - it's far more crunchy than most things out there, to the point where it's fairly unique. Having said that, it's non-combat rules are flimsy enough that you might be able to get a similar effect by adding house rules to a skirmish wargame. But I can't see how that'd reduce your workload.

I'd try a few one-shots with different systems, see if you can't sell them on something lighter like dungeon world. Remember that you're a player too, and your fun is as important as theirs - you're allowed to say "sorry, but 4e is too much effort, let's find something else".

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Xalidur posted:

I am looking for "what system do I use?" advice.

Backstory: I am in the Navy. Before heading out to sea for the last few months, I completed a D&D 4E campaign. We played twice a week for two-and-a-half years and my PCs went from level 4 to level 22, saved the world (homebrew), and all of that good stuff. The players are clamoring for a sequel and there are more than enough hooks left for me to run one. However, toward the end of my previous campaign's lifetime, high-end 4E development and game balance work (my players are optimizers and very fussy about intra-party balance) consumed a ridiculous amount of my free time. Due to my current job position, I basically don't have time to do that amount of work outside of the game anymore. I actually considered retiring from DMing altogether - I am getting kind of old - but it's hard to resist when your pals ask for an encore.

I am looking for a system that has "a certain amount of tactical depth," but is more lightweight on the DMing side and perhaps a bit better balanced than 4E. As a reference point, I discovered and suggested 13th Age, but my players felt like their tactical options were too vastly reduced from 4E to give the system more than a playtest. I am very fond of 4E, but it has gotten somewhat too complex for my tastes in the Epic tier.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm willing to give almost anything at least a test run. "My version" of 4E is pretty heavily houseruled, so I don't mind if it requires some assembly after opening as long as designing a badass boss fight doesn't take 5-8 hours (and it'd be nice if running them didn't take that long, either).

Nothing out there beats 4e at what it does. So you need to go in a different direction entirely.

I'd recommend as a complete change that can have a lot of tactics (and the optimisers will have a lot to sink their teeth into) Apocalypse World. Give them the information and ask them what they do - with things like hiding behind cover and providing covering fire. Very easy to prep, very diverse characters, PVP overtones but not normally full PVP. And not at all complex to run (the players roll all the dice).

Nostalgia4ColdWar
May 7, 2007

Good people deserve good things.

Till someone lets the winter in and the dying begins, because Old Dark Places attract Old Dark Things.
...

Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Mar 31, 2017

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Nobody should ever try to get that level of control over a game unless they're the GM. Whether or not your style is flawed (frankly, I lack the experience with DMing Pathfinder to be able to tell, and our campaigns never got high level anyway), he's overstepping his bounds by criticizing so much and trying to control how other players build their classes. While I do prefer to GM, I do my share of playing. If I have any criticisms of the guy's style or methods, I save it for private talk afterward. I don't make it a group discussion, and I especially don't try to hold up the game about it, unless they pull major bullshit.

It's not a reflection of being a GM as much as it is him being an rear end in a top hat.

quote:

"While I value your input as a player, I'm only going to take it as a PLAYER, because that is what you are. You don't get to tell other people what their characters are going to be, you just get to mind your own character."

I think this is the exact speech you need to give him. The guy is controlling and doesn't think that he has boundaries. Personally, I don't mind kicking out problem players if they can't control themselves. Give him the talk, and see if he improves. If not, keep him out. He's toxic.

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God Of Paradise
Jan 23, 2012
You know, I'd be less worried about my 16 year old daughter dating a successful 40 year old cartoonist than dating a 16 year old loser.

I mean, Jesus, kid, at least date a motherfucker with abortion money and house to have sex at where your mother and I don't have to hear it. Also, if he treats her poorly, boom, that asshole's gonna catch a statch charge.

Please, John K. Date my daughter... Save her from dating smelly dropouts who wanna-be Soundcloud rappers.

petrol blue posted:

If everyone's up for it, sure it could work, though unless you exposition-dump at them all they're going to notice is 'blah, blah, snowflake, blah'.

I don't really get why you'd want to, though? Why not get some info on the new campaign setting and make characters that are designed for it, rather than grafting something on and hoping it takes.

Apparently what I joined and played tonight was a Pathfinder Society game... So I scrapped backstory, as it wasn't the time or place for it.

Not my cup of tea. Really by the numbers and for beginners. No real role-playing, character interaction, or planning. Just kinda, railroad narration from fight to fight.

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