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What happened to the Jedi they talked down? 5ish BBY there are a lot of inquisitors running around the galaxy hunting down surviving Jedi, and their interrogation methods are pretty solid. If they were to capture an older weaker Jedi who was already suffering from years in captivity, they would probably give up the goods on any other Jedi (or former padawans) they knew of. Or, write in an inquisitor who is looking for their former master who disappeared during the clone wars, knew they were alive, and is suddenly becoming aware of some signature move/trait/something popping back up in separatist space. They're going hard after anyone who knows anything. Either way you have your hook to get some very bad Empire attention on your PCs, while also having them be a huge target for robbery, while also having them be swarmed with requests for supplies from the Rebels. Clone War era droids/ships are still very active through the end of the sequels all throughout the outer rim and are worth a fortune to outposts in need of defenses, warlords in need of bodyguards, etc, etc. You've basically got a whole new game worth of prompts.
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Nov 13, 2023 15:00
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Alan_Shore posted:I hope this is OK! Well, you need to find some Players to be the pre-made characters as well  Beyond that... Yeah, that's pretty much the purpose of those books. How well it succeeds at that is an open question, but it's definitely as good a start as you'll find for the system. I'd say have at it! Hobo By Design posted:I've got a problem. My players raided space Fort Knox and pressed enough chaos buttons to walk out with an economy-distorting amount of money. I think the advice given so far in the thread has generally been good - don't take their wins away, but it's perfectly legitimate to make actually turning that win into usable resources into a problem that attracts further problems. Beyond that, I'd point out that PCs having "gently caress You" money is less of a stick in your spokes than you might assume - yes, they'll be able to solve most of the problems that they were dealing with before by just hiring dudes and throwing them at it, but that just means you can graduate them to problems that Can't be solved by Throwing Mooks At Them, which was surely the plan long-term regardless?
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Nov 13, 2023 15:34
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Alan_Shore posted:I have a little bit of experience, plus watching Harmonquest. drat I miss Harmonquest. Can't believe how lucky I was to even get an animate Pathfinder game in the first place.
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Nov 13, 2023 16:46
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Alan_Shore posted:I hope this is OK! Just be ready for a lot of stuff to NOT be in those books. Off the top of my head, the halfling rogue’s sheet links him to Phandelver and it’s never mentioned in the DM notes, and there’s literally no reason for the party to ever go to Thundertree (and fight a dragon) unless you make one up for them. I’d google “improving lost mine of Phandelver” or similar and have a bit of a read round. Edit: That said I started with exactly the same as you, and managed absolutely fine just with a bit of help from this thread. If you’re okay at thinking on your feet and improvising then probably just go for it. Sanford fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 17:00
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Alan_Shore posted:I hope this is OK! Yep. DMing isnt hard, its just telling a story and adjucating the rules which arent hard generally. If that story is written for you already so much the better.
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Nov 13, 2023 17:05
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Alan_Shore posted:I hope this is OK! I'd also definitely try "soloing" some of the DMing first. What I mean is running through a few of the encounters, from some bog-standard easy ones to a boss one with lair/legendary actions, playing both the players and the monsters, to give you a better idea of how the combat rules work in practice so you're not fumbling through the books when the players stumble on those first four arthritic goblins or whatever make up the first encounter. Running combat is what you'll spend most of your time on, most likely, and is a bit more difficult than it seems from the outside, so get a little practice in first is my advice.
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Nov 13, 2023 17:14
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Jon posted:drat I miss Harmonquest. Can't believe how lucky I was to even get an animate Pathfinder game in the first place. Hopefully your players are soberer than they ever were on Harmontown. But Mulraine’s plans would’ve worked if instead of a ranger she was a multi-dimensional imp. So many times to solve problems with arts and crafts… Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Mar 7, 2024 |
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Nov 13, 2023 17:39
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I'm going to be running a game again soon with a group of familiar people, each with at least some RPG experience. I've got a bunch of stuff I want to pitch -- various D&D campaigns, a Vampire game, a couple indie options, with varying approaches between module, mix, and wholly homebrew. What's an effective way to pitch these? In person? Online doc? How much info can I throw at them without overwhelming them?
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Nov 13, 2023 19:41
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Sanford posted:Just be ready for a lot of stuff to NOT be in those books. Off the top of my head, the halfling rogue’s sheet links him to Phandelver and it’s never mentioned in the DM notes, and there’s literally no reason for the party to ever go to Thundertree (and fight a dragon) unless you make one up for them. Well I don't think the people I'm gonna try and play with will care about this haha. Thanks, everyone for the advice! I just want to know the rules and how to play, sounds like those resources I have will do for now. I'll report back with how it goes!
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Nov 13, 2023 20:04
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I'm going to be running a game again soon with a group of familiar people, each with at least some RPG experience. One short para per pitch, all of them on one sheet of paper.
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Nov 13, 2023 20:14
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Alan_Shore posted:Well I don't think the people I'm gonna try and play with will care about this haha. If you're still reading this, being so green at everything, I'd also suggest having the players pick their premades before hand and then ideally they'd make a cheat sheet of their relevant mechanics but you might need to do it for them and then make it clear you're DMing one step ahead of their playing so everyone needs to be ready to help with looking up rules on the fly orrrr things will be played loose and if it goes too far off the rails you'll do some retroactive adjustments.
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Nov 13, 2023 22:15
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Most rules in D&D are pretty intuitive and based on rolling a d20, as long as they're not all "Okay I'm going to do a standing jump before making a called shot, then grappling the bad guy. Next turn I'm going to try holding my breath, give them a point of exhaustion and-"
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Nov 13, 2023 22:23
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I'm going to be running a game again soon with a group of familiar people, each with at least some RPG experience. One way I like is a survey that asks in the abstract what kinds of gameplay players enjoy. It lets you get a sense of what you should spend your time on in the sessions so that everyone enjoys your game. Some people love mowing down trash mobs, others are looking for combat that will challenge a power gamer, while others may want to focus on an epic story that cuts out the fiddly mechanical details, or want to focus on intrigue and social interactions. Knowing in the abstract what players want will help you decide on the concrete. A party that loves crunchy combat will want to do classic Forgotten Realms dungeon crawls a lot more often while a party that wants narrative freedom might be more interested in a sky pirate Eberron adventure.
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Nov 13, 2023 22:31
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Also be prepared for the idea that you might not be able to match everyone's gaming wants at the same time. It's OK for people to sit out for a while if a game is not up their alley.
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Nov 13, 2023 23:11
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Morpheus posted:Most rules in D&D are pretty intuitive and based on rolling a d20, as long as they're not all "Okay I'm going to do a standing jump before making a called shot, then grappling the bad guy. Next turn I'm going to try holding my breath, give them a point of exhaustion and-" Newbies have an infinite capacity for forgetting, confusing, and crossing rules in their head. So putting a cheat sheet in front of them to help keep it straight until they normalize it helps everyone.
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Nov 13, 2023 23:12
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Hobo By Design posted:I've got a problem. My players raided space Fort Knox and pressed enough chaos buttons to walk out with an economy-distorting amount of money. Are you playing FFG Star Wars? Obligation is the easy answer here. Whoever hired them may have said "take what you can grab" but they probably weren't expecting them to be able to grab trillions of credits and are going to be a bit salty about not getting the good stuff themselves. You can even have it coming from multiple sources - taking on the Jedi as a mentor means taking on the Jedi's agenda and anyone who's still after the Jedi, getting the money out of a bunch of droids is going to come in installments and get you tangled up with the black market resellers. Et cetera, et cetera.
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Nov 14, 2023 05:01
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So I'm doing this intrigue plot and a good way to introduce it I think is to have the rivals of the party's unknown dark Eldar allies kidnap their seneschal, whom they left on Footfall to do an endeavor on autopilot. The dark Eldar want to know what's up and why the dynasty is helping their rivals from the other side of the sector move into the expanse. They also don't like the dynasty paying in slaves, which raises their rivals profile in the dark city. However the RT and his crew don't know anything about this, since their aunt hired the Eldar to help the dynasty move colonists and goods and into the expanse (and remove obstacles) without telling anyone. The Crimson Woe is happy to have a rich flow of slaves in exchange for the easy services of moving some humans and cargo through the webway, and the Splintered Talon is eager to learn their entry and exit points so they can seize a shipment of humans for themselves and cut off the crimson woe's foray into the expanse. Fortunately for the seneschal he doesn't know much of value so they'll just slowly flay him (which can be fixed with bionics) rather than kill him or worse, move him to the dark city. This is dark Eldar playing out their rivalries among humans, so both factions will be using human and Eldar mercenaries of the desperate and unsavory type that can be found on Footfall. Most of the people involved in this struggle will not even know they're working for Eldar. I've never done an intrigue plot with multiple layers of proxies before. It's especially weird on footfall because the player's military force is significant on a small human habitat, and the Eldar can't actually compete on this field. The challenge will be locating the seneschal and figuring out just what is going on as the kabalites and their pawns are just one of many criminal factions on footfall. Once the seneschal is located they can have hundreds of troopers descend on his captors so combat isn't really the challenge. Has anyone organized an intrigue plot in a wretched hive of scum and villainy? What kind of NPC archetypes might be useful? How would you keep it interesting for the players, who are essentially the Imperial authorities here, with more access to military force than their rivals on the station? Do you create a crazy guy cork board to keep the factions and possible social and combat encounters straight?
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Nov 14, 2023 14:35
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Arglebargle III posted:Do you create a crazy guy cork board to keep the factions and possible social and combat encounters straight? An easy way of doing this is to make a bunch of tags relating to characters and give the tag a one sentence explanation and a priority, using a generic fantasy setting because I'm not up on warhams it'd look like the following Say you have an Elf Mercenary for Team Red they have the following tags. Elf: Mercenary - Want to get paid, don't want to die, doesn't care about specifics. Elf - Dislikes dwarfs Team Red - Wants to further team red objectives If party interacts with the elf with the proposition to betray team red for lots of money and/or the opportunity to mess with dwarfs they'll do it. If party suggests that they betray team red for no money and no dwarf disruption then they'll refuse. If we flip the priority around to: Team Red Mercenary Elf then no reasonable amount of money will cause a betrayal, because Team Red takes precedent over getting paid, dying, and messing with dwarfs. You don't even have to pre-tag your characters or factions, if it comes up just think about where a potential tag would be in their motivation
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Nov 14, 2023 19:39
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It sounds like you’ll want to borrow the conspyramid from nights black agents. My general base when running intrigues always give people a little more information than you think they need, because they don’t have access to your prep and thoughts. Also, if it’s going to be multi session, demand the players take notes as a group. Otherwise your reveals won’t be that interesting. (“Wait, how do we know this guy who’s the mastermind? MY aunt? No way…”) Edit: wild to think I’ve been posting this thread for 11 years. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 19:43
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Defenestrategy posted:An easy way of doing this is to make a bunch of tags relating to characters and give the tag a one sentence explanation and a priority, using a generic fantasy setting because I'm not up on warhams it'd look like the following this is extremely clever. added one obvious point above.
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Nov 14, 2023 20:30
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Golden Bee posted:Also, if it’s going to be multi session, demand the players take me to the group. What do you mean by this?
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Nov 14, 2023 21:36
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Arglebargle III posted:What do you mean by this? players take notes as a group. Text to speech, man…
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Nov 14, 2023 22:18
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All my friends are hardcore tabletop-cels and I've begrudgingly accepted that it's a pretty fun thing to do. I've played a few CoC one-shots and am considering running my own based off the Alan Wake mythos. I've never GM'd but I'm a creative writer by trade, I'm good at thinking on my feet, and I love doing zany voices so I figure I'm a pretty good fit. Any advice? Is there a more suitable engine than modern CoC? Should I just abandon the idea entirely? EDIT: Just found out about Delta Green, that seems a lot better. LMK if there's anything even more appropriate mutantIke fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 22:36
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mutantIke posted:All my friends are hardcore tabletop-cels and I've begrudgingly accepted that it's a pretty fun thing to do. I've played a few CoC one-shots and am considering running my own based off the Alan Wake mythos. I've never GM'd but I'm a creative writer by trade, I'm good at thinking on my feet, and I love doing zany voices so I figure I'm a pretty good fit. Any advice? Is there a more suitable engine than modern CoC? Should I just abandon the idea entirely? Don't write a story. You're there to make a story with your friends. At most have a list of things that might happen, and drop those in when you feel like it - but don't think 'here are my key story elements and my players will proceed along them to my exciting conclusion'. Alternatively, do have a story in mind but it's your players antagonists' one and it's what will happen if the players don't disrupt it. Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World are both really good reads for tools to help foster good GM practices if you want to do research, there's probably a related Cthulhu version.
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Nov 14, 2023 22:50
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sebmojo posted:Don't write a story. You're there to make a story with your friends. At most have a list of things that might happen, and drop those in when you feel like it - but don't think 'here are my key story elements and my players will proceed along them to my exciting conclusion'. Alternatively, do have a story in mind but it's your players antagonists' one and it's what will happen if the players don't disrupt it. To just emphasize this, have a start and an end in mind for your campaign, but your players will tell you how they get connected and you're there to help them along that way.
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Nov 14, 2023 23:03
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mutantIke posted:All my friends are hardcore tabletop-cels and I've begrudgingly accepted that it's a pretty fun thing to do. I've played a few CoC one-shots and am considering running my own based off the Alan Wake mythos. I've never GM'd but I'm a creative writer by trade, I'm good at thinking on my feet, and I love doing zany voices so I figure I'm a pretty good fit. Any advice? Is there a more suitable engine than modern CoC? Should I just abandon the idea entirely? I ran a one-shot this past weekend based around Control, wherein all PCs were agents of the Federal Bureau of Control, and used Night's Black Agents/GUMSHOE as the system. Seemed to be a hit with the group!
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Nov 15, 2023 02:28
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sebmojo posted:Don't write a story. You're there to make a story with your friends. At most have a list of things that might happen, and drop those in when you feel like it - but don't think 'here are my key story elements and my players will proceed along them to my exciting conclusion'. Alternatively, do have a story in mind but it's your players antagonists' one and it's what will happen if the players don't disrupt it. Cthulhu Dark was supposedly an inspiration for both BITD and Trophy Dark: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/341997/Cthulhu-Dark Or the Critical Role inhouse system Candela Obscura covers a lot of the same ground. https://darringtonpress.com/candela/
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Nov 15, 2023 09:20
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Lamuella posted:Cthulhu Dark was supposedly an inspiration for both BITD and Trophy Dark: yeah i was looking at cthulhu dark recently, it's extremely taut and elegant. good halloween one-shot.
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Nov 15, 2023 21:40
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We played a one-shot of it a couple of weeks ago, it was a good time.
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Nov 17, 2023 19:19
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Alan_Shore posted:I hope this is OK! Yeah, you'll learn a lot by just winging it - you'll get a lot of rules wrong, but your group will have fun and eventually learn the right rules (or adopt things as your new house rules). My one big recommendation that makes life much easier is to make a list of a dozen or two quick NPCs. (You could do them on a sheet or two of paper, index cards, or something digital). You don't need stats or anything detailed, just a name (I'm terrible at making and remembering distinctive but not stupid names on the fly), a quick description, and a bit of their personality, plus some space to write down how you use them. While the module will have a bunch of major NPCs detailed, your players will inevitably want to talk to someone at a bar, or the store owner of a shop that's not explicitly listed, or the stablehand at the inn, or some other NPC that you have to make up on the fly. Having a name and quick description keeps you from getting writer's block in the moment without doing a ton of prep work, and makes it seem to your players like you've actually detailed a crazy amount of the world. If you use the space to note how you used them, they can become a recurring NPC if they work well.
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Nov 19, 2023 22:42
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Pantaloon Pontiff posted:Yeah, you'll learn a lot by just winging it - you'll get a lot of rules wrong, but your group will have fun and eventually learn the right rules (or adopt things as your new house rules). yep this is great advice. also, when you make something up, write it down. that's part of the world now. Another useful tip is to give the rando enemies in fights descriptors, like fat orc, lazy orc, educated orc, smelly orc. helps make combat more interesting and can lead to all kinds of weird little stories for minimal effort.
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Nov 19, 2023 23:06
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God dammit, my players just removed something from their cargo bay and hid it somewhere else, something valuable that one of their NPC allies was plotting to steal. Now my heist finale to this adventure is in doubt. How do I go about this? The object is a "crate" a large heavy steel shipping container containing a cryo tube containing a young woman who is the rightful heir to a vast commercial empire, someone whom the players have been sent to recover, unbeknownst to them, by her cruel and wealthy sister who now controls the business and wants to keep the other heirs frozen and locked up. The NPC ally, who has been nothing but reasonable, knows the identity of the cargo, and how valuable it is, but the players don't.* The NPC ally is in debt up to her eyeballs and hiding it, but desperately needs a huge payday, the kind that selling a rightful heir to the business empire's enemies could gain her. There was supposed to be a big parlay where if the players don't agree to sell the crate (for a very reasonable price, to be honest) to their NPC ally she'll try to steal it from under their noses, even walking the woman out the door in disguise if they can't get the crate. This was supposed to be a big finale in a large cargo bay with deckhands moving large pallets of all their plunder: gold bullion, alien trinkets, exotic flesh golems, mysterious computer cores etc. But now the players had the good sense to hide the crate somewhere other than the cargo hold. The players failed all their rolls to discover the clues about what's in the cargo and are for some reason not questioning the very unsympathetic quest-giver who was very clear that they should not look inside the crate. They're going to go hand the girl back to her evil sister to be a prisoner for another century, for a pittance of a reward, and be none the wiser. Their NPC ally is willing to pay them quite a bit to take it off their hands, but she wasn't going to take no for an answer and she was planning to heist it while they pooled their loot from the adventure, with the help of one of her officers who has an implant that lets him mimic voices. How do I navigate this without railroading my players? I want to preserve them from being played by the evil sister trading something of enormous value for a dubious reward, give them a decent payday, and turn an affable ally into an affable frenemy. But they went and hid them drat thing so now they will feel it's railroading if they get heisted. * The players had the chance to find out what the cargo was either by inquiry or by opening it, but instead they opted to rush off on the mission the cruel and dangerous aristocrat sent them on. They never tried to find out what it was they were so hotly pursuing, so I have no sympathy that they now are sitting on an incredibly valuable hostage and are prepared to turn her over for a pittance. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 00:08
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Could you have the cryo tube malfunction and the girl get out?
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Nov 20, 2023 00:18
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Could the npc just proceed regardless then be flummoxed when the crate isn't there? If it's a good deal it's a good deal after all.
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Nov 20, 2023 00:24
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Always nice to reward the players for being clever.
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Nov 20, 2023 00:24
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"There wasn't... anything else, was there?"
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Nov 20, 2023 00:31
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Arglebargle III posted:How do I navigate this without railroading my players? I want to preserve them from being played by the evil sister trading something of enormous value for a dubious reward, give them a decent payday, and turn an affable ally into an affable frenemy. But they went and hid them drat thing so now they will feel it's railroading if they get heisted. Why do you feel the need to? Let players be free to make bad decisions. It sort of does sound like you want to railroad them. But if you must intervene, it seems like it would reasonably follow that the NPC ally might panic when she realizes her payday is missing. You could just have her come clean and spill the beans to the party in the hopes that they'll reward her for the information. Whether they do reward her or not, that seems like it avoids them being played by the evil sister, and then puts the ball back in their court for how they want to proceed from their strengthened position. And most important, from what I understand of the situation, it makes sense.
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Nov 20, 2023 00:32
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Yes, she's not just going to go away empty-handed because that's just not her character. But she doesn't want to fight the party
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Nov 20, 2023 00:37
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i mean, she thought she was gonna play them but she got played, imo you can just have her play it straight. 'This is embarassing. i had a whole.... Look, I need to be honest this is not how I pictured this conversation going. But!" Players looove that kind of thing. And if they then side with the evil lady, that's even better. i think you're fine.
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Nov 20, 2023 00:43
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Just read several pages to catch up and gently caress, it is so refreshing sometimes to have a place on the internet that remembers gaming is a collaborative experience. Most recent discussions are a perfect example, players “outsmarting” the DM doesn’t ruin a drat thing. They get to feel smart, you get the satisfaction that they buy in to your game enough to think things through (even if they missed 30 other things on the way to that 1…), funny third thing It’s just nice to have a place to talk that doesn’t preach how your players are scum and you must ruin their fun at all costs [Edit:] RE the “Ghostbusters, but gig economy” talk from a few pages ago, I remember liking Ewen Cluney’s Spooktacular when I read it a while back, and that’s the whole premise. I still use the D6s he made for Wraithzappers: 
AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Nov 20, 2023 |
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Nov 20, 2023 05:35
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