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Spaceship: Someone barricaded themselves in the galley, fixed the best meal possible given the supplies, drank a bottle of wine from the captain's private reserve with it, and then shot themselves in the head. Or it was a group of people and there are X plates and X-1 corpses. A corpse is propped up training a gun on the doorway the players enter through. His body is booby-trapped with an explosive. If you have some kind of automated production system like a nanofabricator, have them find one that has printed out several hundred supplies of some sort. Crappy guns, boxes of ammo, space spears, first aid kits, whatever. The fabber is now asking for more materials. A defense point manned by both guards and inmates as they realized the alien was the bigger threat. I'm not entirely sure how to frame this, but picture this: An inmate took advantage of the jailbreak to go shiv someone he'd been wanting to shiv for ages. His target, unfortunately, was an alien. Maybe a dude clutching a shiv facing into the open doorway of a cell, with his throat ripped out and signs that something big went over him in a hurry. Forest: Trees don't need to block the path entirely, just raise a root a few inches and watch someone trip over it. Likewise, roots could make a hillside crumble, sending PCs tumbling down a small cliff. Bees.
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Aug 11, 2018 06:12
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Is there a Genesys/Terrinoth thread somewhere? Otherwise, what're folks experiences with the system? I've run a handful of Star Wars games and just finished my second Terrinoth session, so I'd appreciate thoughts from folks about the system. In particular I'm wondering how you figure out what loot is balanced/worth giving to people, and how you make the different types of magic feel different. I've got a regular mage and a divine mage in the party and they both can do mostly the same stuff, just the mage dispelled once and the priest tries and fails to sanctuary all the time.
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Aug 12, 2018 03:10
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Phrosphor posted:I am sitting down tonight for my first ever game of DnD since 3.5 as a college student. I have three keen but totally inexperienced players and the 5ed starter box. Any tips anyone can give me to help people who are excited to play but never actually have before get over that initial awkwardness? (I am GMing) I'm late on this but I find that you may need to prompt new players at times. If someone has been pretty quiet, have the NPC turn to ask them a question or directly confront them with the environment "You see the horse start to rear back, what does (character name) do?" It's a good way to encourage the players to constantly be interacting, or at least realizing they can make decisions about where the story goes. You can also decide that different characters notice different flavor based on their abilities which can encourage group talk. Also, have something run off from a combat or surrender. A goblin who sees they're on the losing side, or a wolf that's just too hurt. It will set up the idea that combat isn't just about killing everything on the board but about coming up with a way to end a fight. Basically just get into character and force their asses to play along. Imagine you're a local guard captain hiring three mercenaries to hunt down wolves that are killing the town's sheep. Then they just stand in the middle of your office looking at each other when you ask a question. Get annoyed and mock them or demand an answer. If someone plays along well you reward them in character by suddenly becoming the one the NPC likes the best or laughs at and slaps heartily on the back. Early on you need to reward players for "playing the game" even when they haven't won a battle. If they search a room and you know there's nothing there, give them a description of some mundane stuff they find that colors in the world. You want them to keep exploring so early on you have to make it seem worthwhile even if it wasn't. I had a new player break into someone's house on the first game to see if they could find proof they were lying to the players. They weren't, so I quickly came up with some stuff that he got to rifle through in the character's desk. Early drafts of the letter for help they had sent to the party and financial documents for the village that indicated how much of the village's money they were pulling together to pay the party. He had never played before and I didn't want him to think "oh well nothing there when I tried to do my thief stuff, that was boring." Nephzinho posted:So my party just did a Very Bad Thing and need to escape from a forest that is now trying to kill them. I've drawn up a fairly massive map and given it as many bottlenecks and winding paths are possible for the running through forest vibe. Right now I'm planning on having various vines trying to grapple players to keep them from escaping, squirrel swarms attack them to slow them down, and "unseen enemies from deeper in the woods" lobbing Magic Missiles at them. Overall the vibe is weak monsters trying to slow you down dealing negligible damage while you get whittled away by missiles. There is a cluster or two of NPCs who they saw on the way in doing their thing now trying to also fight their way out. Anyone have good forest traps beyond "branches close to block the path forward" or "tree falls blocking the way" style things? Might mark some trees as dryads that will take opportunity attacks at anything passing through their range. The party is also at the end of a long dungeon and has pretty much no spells or other rest-based resources left in the tank and I want to challenge them to escape but if I make it too challenging it could easily turn into a TPK. What about quicksand or a watery muck the party sees in the path and has to jump over/swing over with acrobatics and athletics checks? Even on fail they make the jump but the landing is rough and they take some damage or open themselves up for an attack? Fungal Spores that poof out of nearby trees that momentarily blind the party if they fail a save and can make them fall, slow down or open up for an attack. Or even just a coughing fit and burning eyes that knock off a few hp.
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Aug 14, 2018 21:13
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If I wanted to start using music in a Star Wars game, would people recommend having a few generic playlists of Star Warsy music (for action scenes, tense scenes, and then just general background music), or is it usually best to just play specific tracks at certain points in the session? Or I guess both? I've never used audio when GMing before, but I think it would add a lot to the Star Warsy mood.
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Aug 15, 2018 03:53
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cptn_dr posted:If I wanted to start using music in a Star Wars game, would people recommend having a few generic playlists of Star Warsy music (for action scenes, tense scenes, and then just general background music), or is it usually best to just play specific tracks at certain points in the session? Or I guess both? Make sure you look for long tracks. Everything in a tabletop RPG (but action especially) runs much longer than it would in a movie, so you'll quickly run out of music unless you've got a long track. Depending on your skill you may want to throw some stuff in an audio editor to create your own long, looping tracks to cover 30 to 45 minutes.
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Aug 15, 2018 04:19
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cptn_dr posted:If I wanted to start using music in a Star Wars game, would people recommend having a few generic playlists of Star Warsy music (for action scenes, tense scenes, and then just general background music), or is it usually best to just play specific tracks at certain points in the session? Or I guess both? Hand create a bunch of playlists: this is super time consuming, but you can at least filter all your content. You'll be there for years though making playlists for different scenarios that are long enough. Maybe throw together a generic one or combat one, otherwise I wouldn't actually recommend doing this for your sanity YouTube: I'll often throw up a YouTube 10 hour video or play list for something close enough to what I want. There are videos for just about everything. I try to avoid soundtracks because there's always some idiot at the table who stops you mid sentence to say 'I KNEW IT WAS THE WITCHER SOUNDTRACK' yes, well done, now shut up. If something awful comes up it's easy to skip it and YouTube will move onto soemthing good pretty relevant Procedural audio: I use this for my special encounters, or spooky settings. MyNoise is what I use. You can throw together a bunch of sounds into a mixer, adjust the volume, turn on the dynamic slider setting and boom, infinite background noise. And it's often incredible atmospheric with enough choices to fill any situation. The trouble with this is it's a but of labour to get the mix right, you can do it on the fly but it's a little bit of an art than a science. Regardless, do audio, just make sure its audable, but quiet, so people aren't screaming over it Regarding soundtracks, thinking about it now, you probably do want to throw in some token star wars tracks for the more notable scenes, but I'd avoid them for general play, people will pick up on it, they will ask each other where the track is from. Just go sci-fi/star wars-y, there's plenty of material out there which gives the same vibe
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Aug 15, 2018 08:09
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Also Star Wars is pretty easy because the soundtrack is simply orchestral rather than having any specific style to its instrumentation, so you should easily be able to find orchestral tracks that simply sound like John Williams and use them.
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Aug 15, 2018 13:37
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cptn_dr posted:If I wanted to start using music in a Star Wars game, would people recommend having a few generic playlists of Star Warsy music (for action scenes, tense scenes, and then just general background music), or is it usually best to just play specific tracks at certain points in the session? Or I guess both? I've never done a game set in the future but Tabletop Audio rules and has a few future soundboards. https://tabletopaudio.com/future_city_sp.html https://tabletopaudio.com/combat_future_sp.html I used this all of the time during our last campaign, usually to add either nature ambience (wind, birds) or town ambience (crowds, noise).
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Aug 15, 2018 15:15
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Polo-Rican posted:I've never done a game set in the future Star Wars is set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
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Aug 15, 2018 15:20
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A bit of  about dealing with a player and also a homebrew ability:My (6th level) party recently entered into a foreboding wood and ran across a fairly duplicitous NPC who offered each of them the chance for a Faustian bargain. A PC could put forward an ability they desired, and either offer something of equal personal value or see what the Merchant asked for. Unfortunately, none of the players made any kind of roll against this NPC to determine his honesty, motives, or the efficacy of his methods, so in time they may find what they received was not exactly what they asked for. The NPC did not present himself as dishonest but had given a party member a free sample before with noticeable side effects. I had a player offer his eyes for Truesight. I told him the eye trade was a great idea thematically and likely would have been what the NPC asked for. We had a bit of a miscommunication though: it seems like he felt he was asking the DM though his PC for a guarantee that he would receive X for Y, whereas I was speaking as the NPC saying "for your eyes, yes, I can give you a form of Truesight". After the session I proposed a few abilities to him and he seemed incensed that he had been misled into not getting exactly what he wanted. I'm personally not a huge fan of my PCs always trying to look before they leap and confirm things with the DM. I feel like it is their job to tread carefully into situations especially like these and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of their actions as players, and my job to fairly telegraph the danger and uncertainty of this kind of NPC's bargain. That's not saying I'm gonna be a hardass, but it made me fairly unsympathetic especially seeing as the nature of the trade was to lose something to gain something else, not lose something (eyeballs) to gain a strictly better, permanent version of it (super eyeballs). The long and short of it is I am trying to come up with a solution that is marginally powerful for their level (6th) and will scale with them if it needs to. He said he wanted "a Daredevil like thing" which doesn't quite add up with Truesight to me and makes me feel like he was thinking Blindsight, but he's played DnD for a while and should know the difference. I absolutely can't give a 6th-level player Boon of Truesight for obvious reasons. This is the homebrew ability I've thought of so far. The second option is if he feels like he wants regular sight back. Edit: To be clear, I am working with the player on these, and will create more / other options if he is unsatisfied. True Seeing itself isn't something you'd get until 11th level as a Wizard, so I halved the range of it and gave the player an extra use to line up with when more 6th level slots become available for Wizard at 11th and 19th. I also tacked on Blindsight up to 10 ft. to make him not feel totally useless at close range (he's a bladelock) and Blindsense out to 60 so he can at least know where enemies are if he can hear but still suffer from the usual attack and check penalties of not having sight at that range. The forced activation thing I feel is an interesting add-on and with the pretty high damage for their level right now I feel like it has the potential to scale nicely. Zodack fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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Aug 21, 2018 15:18
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If it is entirely homebrew anyway you could scale the damage rolls to better represent a chunk of their life over the course of the game. As it stands I can't imagine him ever risking such a high DC save for enough damage that a bad roll could outright kill them.
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Aug 21, 2018 15:44
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Nephzinho posted:If it is entirely homebrew anyway you could scale the damage rolls to better represent a chunk of their life over the course of the game. As it stands I can't imagine him ever risking such a high DC save for enough damage that a bad roll could outright kill them. That's honestly what I would prefer. The high DC is intentional because I'd like the damage to happen more than not. I'm uncertain how to scale damage on a per-level basis. One the One-Eye ability, 4d8 was simply similar to some CR3 poison rolls from a few sessions ago, and that felt appropriate with a higher DC. On the No-Eye, you don't take the damage unless you elect to give yourself a migraine. Do you suggest maybe modelling the damage scaling similar to how spells gain damage at higher slot levels, maybe?
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Aug 21, 2018 15:51
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I'd probably just look at 25% of their hp pool and set it to (1d6+n). High enough to be annoying, low enough that they think about risking it.
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Aug 21, 2018 16:03
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Zodack posted:A bit of So now he can't see normally and can only use true sight a couple of times a day? That sucks dude
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Aug 21, 2018 17:01
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Ignite Memories posted:So now he can't see normally and can only use true sight a couple of times a day? That sucks dude ... Are unfamiliar with the term "Faustian?"
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Aug 21, 2018 17:18
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Keeshhound posted:... Are unfamiliar with the term "Faustian?" Faust is interesting.
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Aug 21, 2018 17:44
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Zodack posted:A bit of Specifically: quote:I'm personally not a huge fan of my PCs always trying to look before they leap and confirm things with the DM. I feel like it is their job to tread carefully into situations especially like these and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of their actions as players, and my job to fairly telegraph the danger and uncertainty of this kind of NPC's bargain. In general, it's fair to point back to the text/fiction in a case where a player is asking for information from the GM, but players should be okay with that. They're engaging player to GM to ensure they've understood the text/fiction, sometimes in gross terms (make sure they correctly heard what you said) and sometimes to make sure they understand intent. Not level setting back in those terms is never going to work and is frankly disrespectful to the players. Again, it's okay, if they heard correctly, to just say that they don't have a way to find out more in this situation, not without taking further action. But you need to be clear and answer as the GM. Specifically, regardless of what sort of standard table environment you're trying to establish, you clearly had a miscommunication here. The player thought you were answering definitively as the GM. There's no inherent fault there, miscommunications happen. Where I do find fault is not taking a step back and working with the player to resolve that. That is, acknowledging that the decision stemmed from a disconnect on what was being said, and if the player had been clear on what you were saying they might have made a different decision. That doesn't mean the answer is to give them exactly what they want but they should be involved in the process to make it right. The way this is being presented is pretty adversarial and very much comes across as justifying playing bait-and-switch games with the players by obfuscating when the players are running up against the limits of what their characters know and when they're running into a limit of player understanding. There are games where putting the responsibility for remembering and parsing things is on the player's side, but no edition of D&D is that game. It doesn't have the tools for it, and in fact the way it sharply separates fiction and mechanics really requires the GM to engage clearly and in good faith at all times. Of course sometimes that fails, but to fix that requires going back and level-setting again. On top of all that I don't understand why you feel the need to make sure the player doesn't get something "too powerful" here, or why you think what he thought he was getting is too powerful. Mechanically D&D imposes a huge number of penalties for not being able to see, and while truesight provides some cool tricks, how often are they going to actually matter, especially compared to how much additional work you're creating for both of you with your proposed solution? Especially when it already has a baked in way to limit it, with the max distance aspect. Narratively as well it's still a pretty significant trade off. The Daredevil example is a good touchstone - while certainly lazy writers have used his abilities to just ignore his blindness, the best Daredevil stories grapple with how his abilities are in some ways better than normal sight, and in others much less useful. Geordi LaForge's visor in Star Trek, again when written well, is another useful example. And given the specific situation, tweaking truesight for additional downsides does make sense - truesight is worded as an extension of normal sight, but the character has lost normal sight. So it would probably be a trade off that fits the intent of the player and the narrative to limit things like seeing normal color The whole key to Faustian bargains is that you get what you expected, but that has unexpected downsides. Having better than perfect sight out to 30 feet and nothing beyond it fits that. What you're proposing is very much being flat out worse in every way mechanically and narratively. It's not a Faustian bargain, it's just a screw job.
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Aug 21, 2018 17:53
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like looking at the list of Epic Boons on the SRD there's a really obvious division between ones that are good and that you want and ones that are basically useless flavor text, it's the same problem feats have in 3.5 like you can get +40 hitpoints, automatically turn a miss into a hit once a day, automatically negate damage once a day... or you can stop aging, because that's not just the most minor/flavorful benefit of picking "Elf" at character creation Truesight is marginally more useful than not aging but it's probably not going to break the game. Personally I would have just let him have it and then made true sight an absolutely miserable thing to have from a narrative standpoint. He notices every lovely thing people do to each other, ugly fashion is physically painful to look at, an NPC the party really likes is secretly a hideous cannibal lizard monster and he's the only one who can tell, Truesight lets you see into the ethereal plane so ghosts are constantly bugging him for poo poo, whatever. You can occasionally throw him a bone by having enemies with invisibility or illusion powers in combat, but throw these powers in as extras rather than part of the budget for the encounter (although I was under the impression that 5E encounter budgeting wasn't exactly robust to begin with). That way there isn't even really much of a mechanical advantage.
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Aug 21, 2018 17:55
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Also, again, Faust got totally awesome powers that encouraged him to sin and indulge himself (and ultimately to drat himself to hell in most versions of the story). It's not like having demonic servants and mastery of every field of study and regaining his youth was a curse.
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Aug 21, 2018 17:57
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If you think living for 700 years is the same as not aging then you're thinking small when you should be thinking large. Call me in 10^18 years and you'll understand. Not that that makes a bit of difference from a like, in-game combat tactics game perspective but taking that is super cool and thematic and why are you playing this past 20 anyway??? You take that so your character can have a cameo in the next campaign which takes place in 1920s connecticut.
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Aug 21, 2018 18:08
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Truesight is marginally more useful than not aging but it's probably not going to break the game. Personally I would have just let him have it and then made true sight an absolutely miserable thing to have from a narrative standpoint. He notices every lovely thing people do to each other, ugly fashion is physically painful to look at, an NPC the party really likes is secretly a hideous cannibal lizard monster and he's the only one who can tell, Truesight lets you see into the ethereal plane so ghosts are constantly bugging him for poo poo, whatever.  Go big with this and reveal to him that some manner of malicious, usually unnoticable thing is literally everywhere. Boom, the party are now the only people who can do something about the Menace of Secret Wraiths, and they have to do it without any support from the authorities or indeed without those catching on, because obviously, the authorities are secret wraiths. Great adventure plot.
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Aug 21, 2018 18:12
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Faust isn't damned by his post-deal actions, he's damned by the deal itself. That's the whole point, a Faustian bargain is one that only looks good if you don't take the long view. In most versions of the story, Mephistopheles outright tells Faust that he shouldn't take the deal because it's not worth what he'll have to pay in the end. Edit: going full They Live is definitely the better option, though.
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Aug 21, 2018 18:12
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Keeshhound posted:Faust isn't damned by his post-deal actions, he's damned by the deal itself. That's the whole point, a Faustian bargain is one that only looks good if you don't take the long view. In most versions of the story, Mephistopheles outright tells Faust that he shouldn't take the deal because it's not worth what he'll have to pay in the end. the bargain we're discussing right now is "gently caress you in the extremely short view" though e: "extremely short view" in this case being 20 meters heh heh heh
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Aug 21, 2018 18:13
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A lot of my hesitance from giving it to him is I have other players who are pretty far tilted on the type of DnD play that is motivated solely by gaining abilities and numbers. I'm okay with that - but if I award a player an ability that can correctly be identified in the book / elsewhere as a 20th level ability... efficacy of Truesight or not, there are going to be complaints. The deal was offered to ALL of the players simultaneously. One took it in a clever, fun way. One declined. Two are waiting and coming up with an idea to pitch to me of what they want, and the fifth is this player. A lot of what I read online about awarding players Truesight (because I've never grappled with it in a game before) are: 1) It's very powerful and game-breaking 2) When awarding it homebrew, go for Uses/Day Maybe I could do something like Truesight 30ft, Blindsense beyond that. Primarily came here for ideas like the ones you guys are posting so thank you for that. Comrade Gorbash posted:Specifically, regardless of what sort of standard table environment you're trying to establish, you clearly had a miscommunication here. The player thought you were answering definitively as the GM. There's no inherent fault there, miscommunications happen. Where I do find fault is not taking a step back and working with the player to resolve that. That is, acknowledging that the decision stemmed from a disconnect on what was being said, and if the player had been clear on what you were saying they might have made a different decision. That doesn't mean the answer is to give them exactly what they want but they should be involved in the process to make it right. I want to point out that I think you've misunderstood - I am literally taking a step back and working with my player to resolve this. I told him I'd come up with some abilities, and if he didn't like them he could veto them and we could work something else out. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about that in my initial post (yeah, going back and reading it, it does read like I am forcing him to accept what I create and nothing else). We are friends are fairly amicable with each other, which is why I was frustrated and embarrassed when this happened. I posted the homebrew abilities not as a final draft but as a very rough idea of what I am working to try and provide for the player. This isn't the first time I've posted in this thread and been dogpiled because of my apparent inability to word my posts in a way that doesn't make me seem like a total rear end so I guess I've got to tread even more carefully. At a surface level I don't feel okay with players neglecting to make rolls against an insanely dubious benefactor and then a) trying to directly confirm with the DM outside of rolls that everything will go the way they want and b) getting upset when it doesn't when they have an arsenal of abilities as players to glean more insight into a situation. And I don't get upset at b) because I think they're entitled, but because it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. My players haven't rolled Insight against dubious NPCs in the past and were promptly betrayed by them, so I'm wondering how this time is any different and how they don't learn. Makes me feel bad as a DM. I feel like a good parallel to this situation is my player saying "I offer the bad guy one million dollars for the nuclear codes", to which I answer "the bad guy says he will give you the nuclear codes for one million dollars" as a half truth, in character, voice and all. The player immediately takes the deal without making any rolls, and then gets upset to find out he's been handed a slip of paper that isn't quite the codes. I can't say "are you sure you don't want to roll Insight?" because at that point I've tipped my hand and every PC's guard goes WAY up. I mean, I obviously can't post a transcript of the session here, but I was in character for all of it except applauding him for a creative offer, and he likewise was in character the entire time. The fault there is partially mine and I'm working with him. Thanks for your take. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Truesight is marginally more useful than not aging but it's probably not going to break the game. Personally I would have just let him have it and then made true sight an absolutely miserable thing to have from a narrative standpoint. He notices every lovely thing people do to each other, ugly fashion is physically painful to look at, an NPC the party really likes is secretly a hideous cannibal lizard monster and he's the only one who can tell, Truesight lets you see into the ethereal plane so ghosts are constantly bugging him for poo poo, whatever. This is a functionally really cool idea but I don't think it would be very useful or cool with my party. I'll chew on it and see if I can make it work, because they've just now begun extra-planar activity, and part of the story is a long-dead (hint: probably not long-dead) race that invented planar travel and destroyed their own plane in the ensuing chaos. Maybe they escaped to the Ethereal plane, who knows? Zodack fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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Aug 21, 2018 18:51
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Sounds like your players aren't in the "right" mindset for that sort of thing. Ideally what would happen is they say a thing, you confirm they know they're getting hosed over and they respond with "hell yeah, gently caress me up, my character would totally leap at this chance, he's too naive to learn from the previous trick" instead of instant metagaming going on guard or everybody trying to make 50 read intention rolls until they get the one they know is right. I think you need to just straight up tell them that sometimes NPCs will lie to them and they should use their tools to discern the truth. If that still doesn't work just ask for every important NPC "would you like to roll insight?" whether they're telling the truth or not to get them in the habit. If that still doesn't work they might not interested in that being a thing that happens and you'll have to have a talk about expectations.
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Aug 21, 2018 20:26
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Update: my player just confirmed he had Blindsight and Truesight mixed up some I'm gonna go fall on a sword somewhere. At least this was a fun exercise in homebrewing. Thanks all for your input, glad I can stop mucking up the thread so much with giant text walls now! Zodack fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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Aug 21, 2018 20:27
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Let him see souls, but nothing else. So he's in a permanent wring-wraith type situation, can see ghosts and invisible people with ease. But armour? Trees? Food? That's gonna be trickier. Bonus points if he turns to killing and eating animals with his bare hands, because that we he can at least see the meat.
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Aug 21, 2018 20:43
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I gave one of my groups a blindfold that granted see invisibility. But since it’s a blindfold that’s all you could see. Just an outline of whatever invisible people/objects. Our party’s monk took to wearing it all the time because he liked purposefully loving up his character. That same character also chopped off one of his hands by sticking it in an unknown device that was covered in blood and which pretty much broadcast “don’t stick things in here”. His reaction was to get a stump knife. Characters like that are fun.
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Aug 21, 2018 20:50
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Truesight is marginally more useful than not aging but it's probably not going to break the game. Personally I would have just let him have it and then made true sight an absolutely miserable thing to have from a narrative standpoint. He notices every lovely thing people do to each other, ugly fashion is physically painful to look at, an NPC the party really likes is secretly a hideous cannibal lizard monster and he's the only one who can tell, Truesight lets you see into the ethereal plane so ghosts are constantly bugging him for poo poo, whatever. I did exactly this in a 13th Age game as a One Unique Thing, having bet his eyes in a game and lost, then insisted that he only bet his eyes, not his sight. The trickster took his eyes, left his sight, and now he sees the world as it really is, and he'd have been better off not opening his goddamn mouth.
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Aug 22, 2018 13:35
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Sometimes I find music and my first thought is: "this would be great for D&D!!" I'm going to start posting the music I find here unless anyone objects! A few tracks from Djrum's "Portrait With Firewood" would make excellent tracks for exposition or coming across a magical place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD89jWk2YSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PTi45hcBX4 Spotify link to full album: https://open.spotify.com/album/3ngcrybWz1fUixAjS1ggl3?si=0yCegXZuQFSKfUWjQ69hpQ
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Aug 22, 2018 15:25
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True sight is exactly as powerful as you narratively make it because the DM has 100% of the say in whether or not true-sight-relevant enemies and situations appear at all. It's not like flight, where it can be used in ways the dungeon master doesn't expect to avoid conflict. If you don't put false-looking things in the game, it has no impact whatsoever
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Aug 22, 2018 15:36
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NinjaDebugger posted:I did exactly this in a 13th Age game as a One Unique Thing, having bet his eyes in a game and lost, then insisted that he only bet his eyes, not his sight. The trickster took his eyes, left his sight, and now he sees the world as it really is, and he'd have been better off not opening his goddamn mouth. I really like this. Assuming the game's over, did the trickster ever get his comeuppance or is he still out there dicking people over? Meanwhile I'm here for a few suggestions to jog my brain. My players are going to infiltrate this big party/auction in Hutt space that's been set up by (and for) all sorts of scum and villainy. Their main goal is to find and kill or capture the crime boss who's hosting it. Now, what they don't know (yet) is that a Jedi artefact (a gauntlet) is in the building's secret vault, and is going to be sold at the auction. The artefact is an important trinket for the campaign, and is already being hunted down by the players and the antagonists. Knowing my players, they're probably going to want to try putting it on at some point - but there's not a single Jedi or Force user among them! I feel like it'd be disappointing if I just said "Nothing happens when you put it on", but I don't want to make it something absurdly good, particularly as there's two other artefacts they're looking for. What sort of neat or unusual things could it do? I'd also like suggestions for what else might be sold at the auction and who's attending (bonus points if it causes complications for the players!). So far as the auction items go I was thinking an ancient war droid, some incredibly fancy jewellery, art, that sort of thing. The auction's taking place near the top of a skyscraper. There's a cafe and bar, a veranda, some offices, a stage, and access to a museum one floor below (which is where the secret vault resides).
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Aug 22, 2018 23:57
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The bracer could be a Holicron that has a force ghost in it, or a full AI recreation of a Jedi. It'll interact with whomever wears it but won't really divulge its true secrets to anyone other than a alignment aligned force user. So they could use it for some investigation stuff but not get full use of it. Khyber crystal/s should be up for auction, or just a full on functional lightsaber. A notable slave of some kind, like a Chiss or something along those lines would make sense for a high ticket Hutt auction. Something that would be useful in the short term for a heist job, like the security codes to a vault or a one time use program to get past the security (because it exploits a zero day flaw that will be patched after they use it and the target realizes the vulnerability) would be good as well. Also, how has your sessions been going with your players and their level of enjoyment since last time you checked in?
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Aug 23, 2018 00:53
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Dameius posted:The bracer could be a Holicron that has a force ghost in it, or a full AI recreation of a Jedi. It'll interact with whomever wears it but won't really divulge its true secrets to anyone other than a alignment aligned force user. So they could use it for some investigation stuff but not get full use of it. The holocron idea is pretty neat, but somewhat redundant since the party are also gathering three holocrons (one ex-Sith/"neutral", which they've already gotten, one Jedi, and one Sith-with-a-capital-S). I really do like the idea of it being something that provides non-combat utility though! Your other ideas are also cool - I could see them picking up a slicing program from a black marketeer, or maybe getting the info on the vault codes from some kind of information dealer or a disgruntled ex-security guy. My players seem pretty happy - I can't remember if I talked about it in here but I took the thread's advice to heart and the session after my rough patch went off without a hitch. Unfortunately a player's had to leave due to scheduling issues so we're down to three guys (an investigator, a pilot/scout combo IIRC, and a gunner). But it's currently smooth sailing.
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Aug 23, 2018 01:24
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What does everybody do to get the creative juices flowing for GMing games? I've heard advice ranging from listening to APs, to reading books, to just pulling poo poo out of your rear end as you go.
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Aug 23, 2018 03:05
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Pollyanna posted:What does everybody do to get the creative juices flowing for GMing games? I've heard advice ranging from listening to APs, to reading books, to just pulling poo poo out of your rear end as you go. I remember reading a study that said you're at your most creative state when you are bored. I generally find this to be true. Long showers and long shits are where my best algorithmic/programming ideas come from at any rate.
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Aug 23, 2018 03:12
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get really really really high than write down everything into a world bubble map.
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Aug 23, 2018 05:40
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Steal plots, characters, aesthetics and setpieces liberally from whatever video game I've played or movie I've watched recently.
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Aug 23, 2018 06:31
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My Lovely Horse posted:Steal plots, characters, aesthetics and setpieces liberally from whatever video game I've played or movie I've watched recently. This, plus one time I based an entire isekai campaign off two songs. "Never Ending Story" (by Limahl, for the movie) and "Aura" (from .hack)
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Aug 23, 2018 12:45
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I take long walks. A study shows a marked increase in creativity while walking, regardless of environment. Of course, I was doing this before I heard of the study, I just thought getting out of the house let me focus on other things. It also helps that I'm in a rural area and can have long conversations with myself without seeming like a crazy person. If you're in a crowded city, maybe do this at the gym or at home. It's a little hit or miss, though. Sometimes I'll come back with a great dungeon and cool boss to put at the end of it, sometimes I come back with half a dozen new implementations of a technology in the setting, sometimes I'll just come back having vigorously explained type mechanics in Pokemon to myself.
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Aug 23, 2018 15:19
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