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Whybird posted:Go for psychological tricks rather than physical ones, if it wants to gently caress with the party: I do want to have some clever mechanical traps as well though. Like, the way I envision this elemental, it's definitely capable of subtle cruelty and wants the party to lug around a useless iron weight, but it really wants to watch the party get ripped apart by sawblades while they're doing that, too.
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Apr 14, 2020 17:01
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Thank you for the advice, everyone. Some excellent ideas and some good reminders of who the PCs are supposed to represent in this world.
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Apr 14, 2020 18:46
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Esposito posted:Does anyone have any (preferably simple/lazy) tips for creating character-focused subplots? And how often might it be reasonable to reference them in the overarching plot without pulling the main quest off the rails? i love this and you have some exciting stuff to work with. elf: first - throw some ambiguity here. forums superstar my lovely horse has a thrilling suggestion on having someone defect to the orc tribe. but, what if the elves struck first? the orcs retaliated and escalated a minor border dispute with some hunters into a massacre. tempus wants war here... but we can do something real interesting. halfling: what your rogue did was an evil act. sometimes, good people do evil things. have the plot involve a quest to deal with a murderer who slighted a noble who is unrelated to this early on to draw a parallel(try to be subtle but like, dont be afraid if it comes across as blatant). then have groups of people sent to take down the Pcs after they have done some truly good things. on one narrative, you have an elf who struggles with how he should seek retribution, in the other, you have one who is trying to better himself and right his wrongs. the two together tell a very interesting and conjoined narrative about escalation of violence and to what extent retribution is justified. the halfling might never truly atone, but in their actions they have an option to explore a deceptively nuanced space around a single, focused theme that ties their backstory in on an intimate level.
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Apr 14, 2020 19:35
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Heliotrope posted:Monsterhearts is quite different then a lot of games - you don't create "adventures" for the PCs to follow, the PCs try to accomplish their own goals and you play to see how it turns out. This'll be a bit different if you have a Chosen, but even then the other PCs might not care about an idiot drama nerd summoning fae when they're trying to get revenge on Stacy for stealing their boyfriend or one-upping Bob to humiliate him in front of the rest of the team or whatever they're trying to do. The drama nerd's poo poo might fall into their lives but they could just treat it as a nuisance instead of the main plot.
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Apr 14, 2020 22:55
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Ok. So my new players asked about crafting for DnD 5th and I had to admit to them that crafting is pretty vague and up to interpretation, so it hardly matters. Honestly, it is so incredibly vague that they probably should have left it out entirely and released it as an optional file online or as part of XA. So I either have to be conservative or possibly give them a lot of potions on good rolls with little hope for good consistency. I want to add crafting of magical items, potions, poisons, and brewing. This is because I value player agency and learning their environment. So I want to encourage them to fiddle around with this stuff. I borrowed from this homebrew for foraging, potions, and poisons. https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L_QKEK7SbkqiW4ixd2r It is quite extensive, but generally on the boring side with just healing or damage so I will replace most of it with my own stuff eventually. I decided that I want to add potion, poison, and brews for this section and focus on smithing/tinkering later. So far this is what I got. https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/swPo_KDj8. If anyone here happens to be some sort of drink connoisseur or knows the process of brewing, diluting, etc. I would be glad for input so it is somewhat consistent with established ideas of brewing. As a TL;DR of the mechanics. You can create potions, poisons or non-magical brews by doing 15 INT or WIS check with appropriate tools (gained by foraging with survival or nature) and add a proficiency modifier if you are proficient with all the necessary tools. Quite simple, but brewing will make potions and poisons more interesting with these mechanics. Diluting: Remove a positive or negative aspect from an elixir with both attributes and makes it taste quite good. Done with fresh water, beer, mead or pale ale from worst to best in that order. Masking: Hides the scent, taste, and signs of poison in a drink completely. Done with gin, vodka or rum from worst to best in that order. Enhancing: Increases the magical properties, tastes may vary. Done with white wine, red wine or whiskey from worst to best in that order. I also added my own established brews for the area they are in. I plan to release different options for new areas. But they will then have to go up at least 4 levels before they reach that area. Midig fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Apr 15, 2020 17:48
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I've shoehorned crafting in as a downtime activity option. As long as the player is reminding me that they're looking for ingredients and are being reasonable, I let them do stuff. First tries are less effective, depending on the roll it might fail interestingly or take extra time and thus jeopardize other downtime activity. Difficult creations could take weeks of work. Another good limitation is to restrict access to certain tools or workshops or don't let them do something without tool proficiency (or at least with significant disadvantage).
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Apr 15, 2020 22:55
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Glory to Italia!
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Has anybody got any opinions on Shuffler? https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/65402/Shuffler--Modern-and-SciFi-Map-Creator I'm GMing a superhero group for a quarantine campaign, and I'm trying to find a map maker that's not medieval. "Modern and sci-fi" fits the remit.
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Apr 16, 2020 06:09
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There are some questions I'd ask myself, and I hope I'm not being a spoilsport, but how much time in a session do you and your players roughly expect to spend on crafting potions vs. doing anything else? Is everyone expecting the group to spend the same time on crafting, or are you gonna have one guy who's incredibly into the finer details while the rest wait for him to be done? Moving on down to the details of crafting, the only real resource players need to craft is time, right? Are you regularly going to put time limits on tasks and events in the world, or could they simply declare they collectively spend two weeks foraging and crafting and end up with a huge stack of free potions? They might not make every single DC, but they'll make enough of them. When I decide to go hunting and crafting in a video game with a complex crafting system, I'm investing actual playing time that I'm not spending fighting the bad guys or advancing the main story. An hour of foraging might well be an actual hour of foraging. Around the table all it takes to spend an hour foraging is saying so and making one roll. Speaking of DCs, it seems like it should be consistently harder to find ingredients with better effects. I'm seeing the DC to find ingredients that provide Healing (2d4+2) anywhere from 14 to 20, for example.
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Apr 16, 2020 06:29
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Well. I thought the players can decide for themselves. So it is not a must. But the one thing that I think is interesting is that crafting and providing options usually tends to lead to more between game planning. So in a way, I hope that crafting might keep the more mechanically interested players invested even when sessions are not running. It is often said that players love creating characters as much as they like playing the game, so why not tap into that and have them gushing over the items they can create or special things they can do with new potions. That being said. I am still likely to simplify some of the mechanics since even with my more limited options it's still a lot to look through. As for time. I think this is the point where DMs usually throw in random encounters to dissuade such things. But honestly, I will just use this as expert railroading to get them on my owlbear sidequest hook. Having an NPC talk at them until they accept hook < Treasure map. I am likely to nudge them a bit if they spend more than 6 hours in-game to forage for ingredients. Since they will use an hour minimum to then create a potion. As for DC and healing and effects and such. It's mostly just a template. I am likely to balance it thoroughly before handing it to PCs because anything else is reckless. Midig fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 07:28
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Update on the issue I had from a while back where I had a PC die but I decided to rewind time and give a player a "GM Curse" Ultimately I think that I should have just let the PC die, but in the end it turned out fine. I decided that yeah, a curse tied to their character development is...it's just character development, that should happen no matter what. I picked one particular curse, and then gave them a choice between other pairs of curses. The one I picked out specifically is that they forgot all information about common animals, so their character no longer knows what cows, dogs, etc are. They chose that their hands are permanently clammy and moist, all furniture that they sit on is extremely slippery and if they try and sit down they slide off, if they look in a mirror they see themselves as a corpse, for four days the volume of their character's voice is randomly determined, and they now have nightmares about evil caves. They can take on small side quests to remove the curses if they wish, otherwise they are mostly permanent. I think I did too many, but gonna just roll with it and see what happens and if it turns out to be too much to keep track of I'll Just Talk To Them and get rid of a couple.
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Apr 21, 2020 18:17
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sugar free jazz posted:all furniture that they sit on is extremely slippery and if they try and sit down they slide off Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbPeFs7uDLM. You could have social situations where he has to find intricate ways for him to not sit down. EDIT: Also, looking up at goblin images, it seems like Paizo has an incredible amount of stuff for hobgoblins. Is that from the video games or Pathfinder E2? Midig fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 00:25
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so this is rather a prosaic question, but what tools do you use to organise your GM notes? i don't mean a huge vellum tome in which lavishly crafted backstories for NPC_LANDLORD_03 can be inscribed, but more, like, a lot of games aren't face-to-face these days. anyone use any good online tools for banging character notes into on the fly mid-session ('elf referenced family -> bring up next session') or for putting some structure around encounter design? or is it all just google docs?
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Apr 29, 2020 18:58
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:so this is rather a prosaic question, but what tools do you use to organise your GM notes? I strongly recommend the program Scrivener. Someone on here recommended it to me a while back and it has been a huge boon. You can basically create little index cards for different things and organize them however you like. It's perfect for keeping folders/subfolders for every character, location, organization, etc. https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
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Apr 29, 2020 19:05
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:so this is rather a prosaic question, but what tools do you use to organise your GM notes? I've consolidated just about every notebook/cookbook/project tracking/db/etc app I used over the last few years into a single Notion workspace over the last 5 months. poo poo is great.
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Apr 29, 2020 19:12
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:so this is rather a prosaic question, but what tools do you use to organise your GM notes? Notepad, both physical and virtual. In my current game I keep a file open in a second monitor with quick reference notes on NPCs and locations. It doesn't have to be sophisticated, just let me enter text quickly while speaking into my microphone! Thread, I have a question about how to handle a curveball that's been thrown at me in the game I'm running. The PCs came up with a really good idea and I want to use it, but I'm trying to work out how without breaking anything. It's an Americana game, i.e. a murder mystery set in a fantasy 1950s small town. The PCs are all teenagers whose best friend has been murdered, but the adults refuse to believe them etc so they'll have to investigate and uncover a web of corruption and so on. Being a magical world I have established that the murder victim's ghost shows up as a flaming spectre near the site she was killed, still bearing her mortal wounds and looking ominous. A key plot point (which the PCs have worked out) is that her ghost bears injuries that sure as heck weren't in the newspaper reports of her death. Fair enough. One of the PCs is an artist. They sketched the ghost. Fine. They then had a run-in with the local biker gang (it's the idealised 50s, of course there are orcs in bomber jackets with aviator shades on magical motorbikes)...and to get on good terms with their leader, the artist PC convinced them this drawing of a half-skeletal ghostly figure was a tattoo design and they should all totally adopt it as a memorial to their dead friend. That's great. The local biker gangs are unknowingly carrying the face of a restless spirit. That's cool and should have an effect. I'm just trying to work out what effect, since even small-town 50s American police will presumably notice if e.g. the bikers start being possessed (and I really don't want a situation where the players can just ask their dead friend's ghost who killed her unless it's a Big and Cool Climatic Scene). Does the thread have any suggestions?
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Apr 29, 2020 19:19
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I use a combination of google docs, draw.io, and an empty discord channel just for me to write notes or upload pictures ahead of time.
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Apr 29, 2020 20:19
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Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:so this is rather a prosaic question, but what tools do you use to organise your GM notes? i... dont organize my notes. i just have a notepad file that i work off of, if even that. i just try to remember as much as i can i guess. for encounters though i prepare the statblock ahead of time, and seeing the statblock is enough to remind me what i was trying to do that encounter.
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Apr 29, 2020 20:44
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I actually never got around to finishing the story summary and NPC encyclopedia, but I did use Notion to make a little landing page for my players: https://www.notion.so/Employee-Bulletin-Board-6f97a8923f5740d89a6061536d83c69b
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Apr 29, 2020 20:49
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Notes on my ipad which is an awful tool for the job, and 4-5 notebooks which always start on a specific theme but quickly just become "general notes". I have a notebook here that says "Magic Items" on the cover and halfway down the second page is the first thing that isn't a magic item. Page 4 has the first sketch of a map. I'm very bad at notes. I'm also bad at stories! Need help for the game I'm running for young children, next session is tomorrow. It's set in a village where they and a mysterious black knight got stranded whne the coach they were in broke down. They have been competing against the black knight to sway villagers to their side and become "the hero of horncastle" by solving various quests. It is established that a prophecy said this would happen and that if the wrong person becomes the hero of horncastle, the village will be destroyed. Most of the mayhem in the area seems to be malicious sabotage - a desecrated altar causing ghosts, environmental disruption leading to spider attacks, and a deliberate jam incident tempting giant ants to attack the village. Some villagers believe the mythical BEAST OF HORNCASTLE is to blame, and we are leading up to an obvious scooby-doo reveal. This has become a BIG THING and now I am struggling to find a way to link THE BEAST (someone from the village - probably the mayor) to every single quest they choose to follow. Currently the players are in a wolf cave. The farmers of the village said the wolves used to stay in the forest but six months ago became a real problem. They are facing down half a dozen wolves and a great big wolf. It would not be unacceptable for the big wolf to be able to talk. Off to one side of the cave is a rockfall, and behind it a tunnel to a further cave with a central pool and rock pillars. - don't know what to do with the wolf fight other than play it straight - can't think of what to do to clear the rock fall other than a boring strength test - no ideas for the cave behind the rockfall - can't even start to think of how to put a clue here that makes them go aha, this is sabotage again (they love this) - they would probably accept some lore or prophecy or connection with the Hero of Horncastle I'm so exhausted I'd normally postpone for a week but I've got a 7 and 9 year old expecting to play. I'd really appreciate anything to help get the wheels turning. They like puzzles but they are only kids.
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Apr 29, 2020 20:54
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I use evernote as a light version of Scrivener that lets me group notes into notebooks and tag notes with searchable fields. It'll search text in images with OCR pretty well too, if you want to take pictures of paper notes. OneNote is pretty similar. You can nest things in deeper trees than Evermore and you can lay out the notes in a more Word-like way, but you can't tag things to include notes in multiple groups. Scrivener is intended for narratives, so it has some nice purpose-specific organizational features, but I didn't find it much more useful than Google Drive for my images and pdfs and a note taking app for text. Scrivener isn't free either ($50), but there are free alternatives like Manuskript. There is some argument that you probably shouldn't be designing complete narratives ahead of time, so you go overkill by using those kinds of tools, but being able to keep character and scene notes organized is pretty nice.
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Apr 29, 2020 21:10
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Sanford posted:Notes on my ipad which is an awful tool for the job, and 4-5 notebooks which always start on a specific theme but quickly just become "general notes". I have a notebook here that says "Magic Items" on the cover and halfway down the second page is the first thing that isn't a magic item. Page 4 has the first sketch of a map. I'm very bad at notes. well, the answer is werewolves. but i think it would be interesting if the werewolf was the black knights brother(and the mayor), it would make for a surprising but not that unreasonable plot twist that would explain why the beast is causing these issues(he is trying to get the black knight, his brother, to be the hero of horncastle). 1) half a dozen wolves is an interesting enough fight on its own, make the fight in a clearing with wolves hiding in the trees and ambushing people. 2) explosions are cool. have them use a bomb to blow up the rock and then the boring strength test to clear the debris. 3) cool magic sword in the cave trapped in a rock a la the arthurian legend. magic sword that happens to be good against werewolves. 4) werewolves. if you do the cool magic sword thing you can have the mayor try to steer them away from the cave while acting extremely suspiciously as a secret clue here to build up to the big reveal 5) the mayor is the black knights brother and the two are in cahoots.
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Apr 29, 2020 21:20
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I find notes far easier to work with if I have something physical, so instead of organizing things online I keep a big ol' accordion file full of scraps of paper that have been vaguely sorta categorized.
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Apr 29, 2020 22:44
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Sanford posted:- don't know what to do with the wolf fight other than play it straight - Wolves should speak if spoken to. If you want to encourage the children to speak to them, have them act "heroic" (taking damage for one another, dragging wounded packmates off the field, etc). - Strength test as fallback. Let the children think about how they'd clear a rockfall. If they're stumped, the ol' abandoned mine equipment trick should do it and provides loot. Could even do a "volatile nitroglycerine" puzzle where they have to get the blasting powder TO the rockfall without getting it knocked about. - Put a forgotten crypt or temple behind the waterfall containing inscriptions about the Hero of Horncastle, possibly carvings of the PCs doing heroic deeds (children love this). - The Mayor, being a mayor, presumably has a very frilly hat. He banged his head on something in the caves and left a torn feather behind. Bonus points if you make the PCs roll to "dodge" the low ceiling a few times, then spot something on the way out.
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Apr 29, 2020 22:48
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So this weekend I'm running my first RPG of adulthood, with a bunch of first-timers, and I've opted for a relaxed 5e homebrew of Dark Sun. I fully get that this kind of over-ambition is a terrible idea when starting out, but it's a setting I know well and love, and I reckon I can use it to offer lots of fun and surprise to a crowd of players who might struggle to get invested in well-trodden medieval fantasy tropes, but should hopefully be up for the sheer gonzo-ness of playing a psychic halfling barbarian wearing the bones of his enemies while riding a giant beetle over the dunes. I've planned out a beginning sequence that feels branching and allows for invention but hopefully shouldn't result in any awkward dead-ends or loss of momentum (they start out as prisoners being worked to death in a mysterious excavation site way out in the desert, controlled by an unseen master. They can work with the other slaves to coordinate an escape, start a riot, extort or listen in for information that will give them clues towards getting out, fight things out in the pits to learn the basics of combat, craft their own bone shivs or a deadly poison...and if things go horribly wrong and they're surrounded by guards, they can always retreat down into the excavation tunnels and begin a dungeon crawl to freedom while picking up some clues about the villain's plans en route). What I'm trying to figure out is the best way of conveying what comes next - the travelling. I'm thinking it should feel like a relief when the players finally make it to the first town; as if they've genuinely been fleeing through the sand for days and were at risk of running out of supplies. But I don't want the desert trek to feel like treading water, without agency or memorable events. But I *also* don't want it to feel like a theme park where there's another monster at the end of every breath. I've planned for some encounters (a stampede of erdlu, a desert trader, some nasty vegetation) and some more descriptive passages to allow for skill-checks (getting over that cliff, struggling through that sandstorm). I might also try and use it as a chance for some character downtime and interplay around the campfire. Is there anything else I should be doing that might help to make travel feel alive and interesting, but also give that genuine sense of a journey? (I'm also quietly terrified that they'll blow through the escape in 20 minutes and I'll run out of material in 30.)
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Apr 29, 2020 22:58
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Loxbourne posted:Notepad, both physical and virtual. In my current game I keep a file open in a second monitor with quick reference notes on NPCs and locations. It doesn't have to be sophisticated, just let me enter text quickly while speaking into my microphone! The ghost cannot possess those poor bikers. But the cops are extremely interested in how these bikers have info the public doesn't about the murder. To the point that one or two of the bikers picked up for brawling have lead to a full scale crackdown. And basically a full stop to the murder investigation. Edit: One of the bikers that hasn't been picked up yet has a lead, but doesn't have enough coppers to tell them over the phone. Do you know who the murderer is yet? If you don't consider tying the murder to the back in town, hometown hero, federal agent that gets called in to take down the bikers. Maybe his idiot brother did it? Edit: Even if the agent wanted to help the players they can't. The real killer has their true name. habituallyred fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 23:39
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grobbo posted:Is there anything else I should be doing that might help to make travel feel alive and interesting, but also give that genuine sense of a journey? My first thoughts go to the opening of fallout, with a prison instead of a vault. Make them want to leave the prison after establishing the setting and some mechanics (attacked from outside, a riot, abusive guards, bad living standards, lack of freedom), but leave them with no real way to know where they are or how to survive (a set of tracks leads into the distance, can barely make out a water tower). Introduce resting and meals on the road and then throw a low level fight at them that they're poorly equipped to deal with, but have to do to endure/evade to reach the water tower. Then the wasteland village with a dinky shop and new plot hooks will feel like salvation. You can throw in some roll-to-succeed downtime activities like gathering/scouting/praying/ hunting, but I find that trying to make travel feel like a slog can be tricky to do without slowing the game down. Sprinkle in traveling companions, encounters that add flavor to the setting, and give the players incentives to roleplay and explore their characters on the road. When players get a sense of the world you can start alluding to evolving conflicts in the world outside of their experience. ILL Machina fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 23:41
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So I’m thinking of running a short (2-3 sessions) arc in Over The Edge, and I’d like to read some game summaries from people who’ve run this system in the past. Any recommendations? The hook is that the players have been sent to conspiracy island to trace the root, and hopefully eliminate the creator, of a tweet that went viral - literally
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Apr 30, 2020 01:33
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My players will probably encounter the alleged BBEG in the next few sessions, and I want to make sure my plans aren't bad. Sorry for the long post, but I think a little backstory is probably necessary. The guy they think is the BBEG is the king's wizard who was with him when he disappeared over the mountains a few years ago, and just recently showed back up and raised an army of hobgoblins after prophecy stuff foretold the return of the Raven King (who is maybe the real BBEG? Idk, I think he cyclically comes back and destroys the world or something). Anyway, BBEG wizard sends hobgoblin army to the town the PCs are in to try and steal some important books of the Raven King from a townie that didn't know he had them, PC's and local army stop the hobgoblins, but one of the hobbo mages steals 2 out of 3 books in the chaos of battle. PCs have the 3rd volume that is sort of the 'key' to the other 2-useless by itself, but critical to understanding the other 2 volumes. PC's say 'gently caress this wizard we gotta kill him' and set out on their merry way. They are now invading the wizard's mountain fortress, which is simultaneously under attack from below by drow. The drow have kept popping up in the campaign and each time the PC's have chosen not to investigate, so I guess all their plans have come to fruition now. To the drow, the Raven King is a great prophet/savior (are their beliefs accurate? I have no idea yet) and will give them control of the surface again. They are attacking the wizard to get the books so they can resurrect/resummon the Raven King. The PC's don't know why the drow are here, only that they seem to keep popping up in odd places and attacking the hobgoblins. The BBEG wizard is in fact trying to stop the Raven King from returning, and is using most of his power to keep a dragon (a scion of the raven king or something) the PCs awakened entombed. He wants the Raven King's books so he can understand them and use them to keep the Raven King from returning (unbeknownst to him, reading them may drive the reader mad and turn him into an actual BBEG). So, the PCs are invading his fortress, and the final battle is probably going to be a 3 way fight between wizard/hobbo minions, the drow, and the PCs. Am I robbing them of their prize to reveal that the BBEG wizard isn't actually a bad guy, just a guy who has used questionable means in the pursuit of what he sees as the greater good? Is this a good plot twist or a let down for the PCs? Obviously his armies killed alot of people and ticked the PCs off, and I am completely prepared for them to go 'no gently caress you' and try to kill him (and possibly succeed-he's going to be pretty exhausted from fighting the drow and keeping this dragon imprisoned). Obviously that's going to have consequences (the dragon gets released, for starters), and so would keeping him alive and helping him. I think part of the last big battle is going to definitely be the drow and the wizard each trying to convince the PCs to join with them against their common enemy, and I have no idea how any of it will work out. I occasionally worry that the PCs don't feel heroic. I think they are all enjoying the game and story and feel they do have agency, but they have so far been small pieces in a much bigger game. They've intervened in critical places and changed the course of events, but most of their victories have been sort of turning a worst outcome into a slightly better outcome-they stopped the hobgoblins from destroying the town, but they still stole some of the books, for instance. If they kill the wizard, they unleash a dragon, etc. Is that good or bad or just a question of flavor? I feel like I'm having an existential DM crisis about the tone of the game for some reason.
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Apr 30, 2020 18:16
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As long as you leave it entirely up to them whether they buy it. A BBEG giving an explanation for their actions is fine. But let them decide if they buy it or still think he's a total bastard and decide to deal with the Hard Man who made Hard Decisions. Let their take on his explanation guide the story rather than a predetermined idea about it.
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Apr 30, 2020 18:23
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I think it's OK for villains to have a greater purpose the player isn't aware of, which come to light as/when the villain is defeated. What you don't want to do is make defeating the villain not a victory. Stopping the wizard should be a good thing in itself, because they're doing bad things, even if they're doing bad things for justified reasons. With him gone, the local towns will no longer be attacked by hobgoblins; that's good! As he dies he can warn the party about the Raven King; that's also good! Depending on how they play the mission they may also get the books, or maybe the drow get the other two books; either way the drow become a more immediate threat. And of course you can't ignore the dragon. You want to play those as "hey the story isn't over yet" not as "because of your actions, things just got worse". I think what I'd do is have the dragon, weakened by its imprisonment, throw in with the drow, and the drow claim their prizes and retreat to start the countdown to the resurrection of the Raven King. The upshot is that all of the immediate threats have been neutralized, but the players now have a doomsday clock ticking; they'll need to figure out how to stop the drow, and assuredly will be fighting that dragon at some point as well.
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Apr 30, 2020 18:26
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Night10194 posted:Let their take on his explanation guide the story rather than a predetermined idea about it. This. If they decide the ends don't justify the means, he's still a bad guy even if not your planned BBG. Let them finish it out. If they decide to entertain his explanation, how are you going to pivot it into the "true threat" - use the momentum to throw them onto the real BBG in a way that this is a reveal on the same path, not the end of one path and the beginning of a completely new one they're not invested in. "Ah yes, I had to burn down that village because it was infested with a plague that was turning its denizens into abominations. I couldn't risk it spreading and I couldn't save them all, the only thing I could do was raze it to the ground and continue my pursuit of the source of these experiments."
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Apr 30, 2020 18:37
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BBEGs generally don’t think they’re the BBEG. They started off trying to do something good, if maybe selfish, and it all got twisted. Or they have to make sure that society is ordered, with a strong leader to protect the people from the dangers of the outside world. These agitators for ‘democracy’ are naïve fools- the people don’t know what’s good for them, so it’s regrettably necessary that the rabble-rousers have nasty accidents. Or they just want their birthright as king back, only they died 750 years ago from an arrow in the throat at the climax of the coronation ceremony, and this nice fella in a black robe brought them back out of kindness and concern. Or something awful happened to them in the past, and now they’ve found a group to blame, and nothing’s going to stop them getting justice and making a new, better, cleaner world.
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May 4, 2020 09:42
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Oh man, my group, I love 'em dearly but they can make it hard on one. We're playing Eyes of the Stone Thief. For anyone who doesn't know it: there's a world-ending monster around and each of the big players has a different idea what do do with it. I did a fairly simple setup: each of the factions the players are aligned with wants to control the monster and they've formed a loose coaliton, while their opposing factions have united to destroy it. The idea was to have one big antagonist and a network of allies to manage and balance/play against each other. Now my folks have decided they want to kill the beastie, because they realized the danger is just too big, and they don't trust anyone with it. But it's not as simple as switching sides because they still oppose their old enemies ideologically and have already dealt them a massive blow they won't soon forgive or forget. So I guess in the mid-to-long run it's gonna be more like there's one big antagonist, several individual antagonists that the party has only themselves to blame for existing, and really very little in the way of friends. Totally on board with them deciding to switch plans, mind, either way makes for interesting quests and situations, actually the killing one even slightly more so.
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May 4, 2020 10:26
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Filboid Studge posted:BBEGs generally don’t think they’re the BBEG. They started off trying to do something good, if maybe selfish, and it all got twisted. This really depends on the kind of narrative you want to tell. This advice is really great if you want a primarily heroic character driven narrative. But there are other ways to do it and many ways to do it in the same setting. Take the Dragon Age series. Dragon Age Inquisition: Corypheus (or however you spell it) is the main villain follows basically everything you said. Dragon Age II: Society is the villain. Sure, each chapter has their own "bad guy", but everything is basically instigated by the social forces that make up Kirkwall bringing everything to a conflict. Dragon Age: Origins: Existence is the villain. Your primary antagonist is technically is Archdemon, but it is only so because that's literally the purpose of it's existence. All games could easily be adapted to a pen-and-paper campaign, and all would be pretty good stories in their own different ways. In my own experience, the character driven conflict tends to be the most difficult to get right in a PnP setting because you're basically balancing between making your antagonist seem interesting and sympathetic (else the campaign won't be interesting since it's predicated on the villain being interesting) without going too overboard and making the party just decide to join them. I've had one campaign where the GM panicked because my character basically just agreed to join the BBEG because they agreed on the problem and the best solution, and then the GM had too hamfist a bunch extra evil and backstabby poo poo which by this point felt incredibly out of character for the BBEG for me to change my mind. Point is, you don't have to have a super-indepth and personable BBEG if you don't want to focus on that. Just saying the BBEG is Lavos, it's a planet eater, it wants to eat your planet cause that's what it does, it's well aware that it's a BBEG and it doesn't care is completely okay too.
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May 5, 2020 06:10
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Hans Gruber in Die Hard knows he's a bad guy but doesn't give a poo poo and he's an awesome villain. I've never done it, but setting up the BBEG as a misguided but principled ideologue only to pull the rug from under the players and have him reveal he is actually just out for cold hard cash and gently caress everyone else would be a great third act twist. Can a BBEG do a heel turn?
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May 5, 2020 07:15
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tanglewood1420 posted:I've never done it, but setting up the BBEG as a misguided but principled ideologue only to pull the rug from under the players and have him reveal he is actually just out for cold hard cash and gently caress everyone else would be a great third act twist. Can a BBEG do a heel turn? Got a Count Olaf vibe to it.
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May 5, 2020 08:21
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tanglewood1420 posted:Hans Gruber in Die Hard knows he's a bad guy but doesn't give a poo poo and he's an awesome villain. This would be really good if the PCs have had a track record of 'going easy' on those that they perceive to be misguided, with tragic pasts, etc. The villain can be all 'I just really wanted to do what I thought was good and just, and lost my way..." and when they soften up or trusts him for some reason he can just smirk and gloat about how they fell into his trap mwahahah. Or...something with some more panache.
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May 5, 2020 14:47
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Morpheus posted:This would be really good if the PCs have had a track record of 'going easy' on those that they perceive to be misguided, with tragic pasts, etc. The villain can be all 'I just really wanted to do what I thought was good and just, and lost my way..." and when they soften up or trusts him for some reason he can just smirk and gloat about how they fell into his trap mwahahah. Or...something with some more panache. Oh yeah, there's always room for a good ol' sociopath. You have to tailor it to your group's expectations, likes and behaviour.
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May 5, 2020 15:11
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tanglewood1420 posted:Hans Gruber in Die Hard knows he's a bad guy but doesn't give a poo poo and he's an awesome villain. one of my most beloved(read: absolutely despised. it has been 4 years and players of that game still hate this guy) villains was like that. he was a lying, extremely potent hate sink that fought using cheap and infuriating tactics and psychologically attacked the players at many times, but had a tragic backstory and noble intentions. they thought this means he could be redeemed, but no, whatever intentions he had in the beginning were replaced by sheer malice in the end. chaotic evil through and through, this sociopathic villain only uses the memory of the misguided ideologue he used to be for mind games. and then laughed when people felt betrayed - why did you even trust him in the first place? sometimes it is good to just make a villain that people want to beat the ever living poo poo out of in a game with a heavy focus on combat
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May 5, 2020 15:24
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| # ? May 27, 2024 03:48 |
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Sometimes Magicman is trying to teach you there is no lesson, he's just an incredible jerk.
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May 5, 2020 15:56
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