|
My players have a habit of running giggling in the opposite direction any time anything vaguely corrupting happens, and as a result the perils of the warp have kind of lost their teeth. The nice thing is that since their ship needs to use warp travel all the time I can pretty much visit any horrors on them I want. Lately they've also started to get complacent and arrogant with alien artifacts, forgetting that humanity was not the first to practice dark sorcery. Any ideas for bringing this theme of the game back into focus? In our first adventure they interacted with an alien map room that was controlled by thoughts but pretty quickly started messing with their thoughts. They all failed a will test and woke up from a trance hours later after experiencing a weird planetarium show of the planet's star being destroyed in an ancient tech-sorcery ritual. Except the rogue trader was missing and attempting to dig with his powe armored hands through a collapsed turning they'd passed. They all really enjoyed this plot but have also studiously avoided the location since and run away from similar. They don't know it but they've currently got a couple artifacts from the same curse civilization complex on board, one a knobby silver bracelet they took off an alien mummy in a big jar and one a sword that is clearly of Yu'Vath manufacture (Bad with a capital B) but they haven't really bothered to look at it before chucking it in storage. They've become kind of jaded with this loot and I'm looking for a way to bite them with it. Any ideas? I don't even know what either artifact does. loot blurb posted:Xenotech Power Blade – Unidentified Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 13:46 on May 16, 2024 |
#
?
May 16, 2024 13:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 20:58 |
|
|
You need a Night at the Museum style plot line where the artifacts were stored too close together and are activating to cause weird poo poo. Start off with minor, unsettling incidents. Crew is going missing, and mummy wrappings were found at the scene. Someone reports getting choked half to death by an ethereal hand. Foul dreams of blood and death with the image of the sword seared into their mind when they awake. Then, when they go to investigate, they find that a portion of the ship has become unmoored in reality, stuck in time. It’s repeating a traumatic episode from the history of the Yu’Vath—that exact destruction of that star system witnessed in the map room. The players become trapped in that section of the ship and have to escape or avert that star’s destruction lest they be lost forever.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 14:06
|
|
|
Any advice for what I should discuss during session 0? Here's so far How we will be able to play multiple characters. This gives us more opportunity for adventures and loot. Explaing roll20 and combat What characters people are playing In general what the campaig will look like.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 14:28
|
|
|
An ambitious ship NPC, Lt Margrave, breaks rank to approach the party, and warns them about a rash of thefts. Cargo crates rifled through, valuables misplaced, crewmen mugged. He intimates there's a high-ranking conspiracy to keep the PCs from knowing that their subordinates are robbing them blind. He's even heard that some crewman are unloading some kind of... howling glass blade? at the next port. He begs the players to at least inventory their archeotech and make sure everything is still there. And if he's right, remember him, their loyal servant Margrave. When the players check, there's clear signs of tampering with the outer door and the blade is missing. Guards have no idea wtf. Margrave will beg the party for a squad of toughs to investigate the dark belly of the crew while the PCs asks the highers-up. He'll use these toughs as brown-shirts to bill himself as the Captain's Boot, the bulldog fixer who Solves Problems. In truth, Margrave has planned the whole thing. He's a ladder-climber tired of being nobody, and he'll seize any scrap of power he can get. He wants to be a mob boss for the PCs, and maybe his amibitions go even higher. He's craven, he's pathetic, he's dangerous. He also does have the blade, which sang to him in dreams and warped itself to his bedside. He calls it J'lia, and sees it as his estranged wife nagging him from beyond the grave. It wants him to go... somewhere, and do something? Something beautiful.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 14:33
|
|
|
Hollismason posted:Any advice for what I should discuss during session 0? https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/ I wouldn’t start a campaign without it.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 15:10
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:They don't know it but they've currently got a couple artifacts from the same curse civilization complex on board, one a knobby silver bracelet they took off an alien mummy in a big jar and one a sword that is clearly of Yu'Vath manufacture (Bad with a capital B) but they haven't really bothered to look at it before chucking it in storage. They've become kind of jaded with this loot and I'm looking for a way to bite them with it. Any ideas? It sounds like your players are the type who in a zombie scenario are telling everyone if they get bit, and will cut off the offending limb. Or in a Lovecraft story they burn every piece of writing without reading it. So if they are dealing with it by not dealing with it, make the situation happen because they aren't dealing with it. Like that fridge from Control, where if you stop looking at it, things go really, really wrong. By themselves, the bracelet and sword would be a minor artefact. But together, they are 2/3 of a set, and the set wants nothing more than to be completed. You don't know what it does, the players don't know what it does, but I bet you there's a cult that knows exactly what it does. And what either of the items does immediately is paint a target on the cargo hold. You can have the crew try and off load the cursed artifacts to some random vendor, but no one wants to take it, because they know it's bad news. And bad news can travel quickly through the black market networks, bringing a spotlight on their ship for exactly the wrong type of people. I'm not familiar with the RT world, but I imagine the ship is staffed by an NPC crew? Then maybe have one of them mention something about organizing/inventorying all the items currently in storage. If the players take an active interest in that activity, then you can try and drop breadcrumbs to get them to do something to interact with either object. If the players delegate the inventory to an NPC, then that person (people?) is influenced by the cursed object and goes digging down that sealed corridor or starts behaving oddly.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 15:16
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:My players have a habit of running giggling in the opposite direction any time anything vaguely corrupting happens, and as a result the perils of the warp have kind of lost their teeth. The nice thing is that since their ship needs to use warp travel all the time I can pretty much visit any horrors on them I want. Lately they've also started to get complacent and arrogant with alien artifacts, forgetting that humanity was not the first to practice dark sorcery. Any ideas for bringing this theme of the game back into focus? For how powerful they are and how easily they seem to deal with threats, from your posts in this thread it does sound like they're generally pretty cowardly and conflict averse. Warp? Nah. Artifacts? NO thanks. Orks? Nuke the planet. Tyranids? Nuke the planet. If I were in your shoes I'd be going back through my notes on all of the things they've run away from or otherwise avoided and start thinking "well what would happen if someone else got to this place" or "what kind of xenos would survive on this planet after being glassed that I wouldn't want to gently caress with". Other traders/players can use those artifacts to edge in on PC territory, warp influenced factions can try to start raiding shipping lanes, things of value might have been left behind on planets previously abandoned that necessitate going back. Show them the consequences of their actions,a nd if they continue to ignore them and flee those consequences continue to grow. Take a night and just brainstorm to yourself with your notes on "what happens in the galaxy when the PCs aren't there".
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 15:18
|
|
|
Nephzinho posted:. If I were in your shoes I'd be going back through my notes on all of the things they've run away from or otherwise avoided and start thinking "well what would happen if someone else got to this place" or "what kind of xenos would survive on this planet after being glassed that I wouldn't want to gently caress with". Other traders/players can use those artifacts to edge in on PC territory, warp influenced factions can try to start raiding shipping lanes, things of value might have been left behind on planets previously abandoned that necessitate going back. Thanks, this is good advice. I just saw an interview with the designer of rogue trader who said that the d100 starts to break down when player skills and stats get above the 50s, so to some extent the players being overpowered in baked into the system. But yeah I'll have to go back and think about recurring antagonists and how their failure to follow through could produce more trouble. They definitely have passed on some powerful loot and fled some dangerous people on both sides of Imperial law.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 15:43
|
|
|
That’s I think a great joy for that setting and the Rogue Trader’s position in it. Rogue Traders are a Big Deal. They captain at least one city size ship and possibly a small fleet, have vast wealth, likely have multiple colonies and installations, and on the frontier are political players as big as the Navy or the local Inquisitor. I think you have to be careful not to let them become standard PC murderhoboes. They are necessarily entangled in the political mess that is the Imperium, and even if they wanted to escape their wealth and status depend on it. So I agree that you have to draw them in and show them that they are leaders and politicians as much as adventurers. And you do that by threatening all their Stuff if they don’t lead. I think you started doing that well by threatening their ship with the Ork invasion. You have to be careful to make it so they don’t feel you’re just loving with them, though. You know that feeling in crime dramas where the protagonist has just made a big score, but there was a complication, and so the next season is about how the protagonist will use their newfound wealth/power to deal with the complication? But then something else happens and it all starts to spiral? And then it usually ends with the protagonist’s crimes compounding until they can’t outrun them and it all comes down? And there’s a lesson there about how crime doesn’t pay, or about how the protagonist’s original character flaws were their ultimate undoing or whatever. You’re aiming for that feeling except the PCs are heroes and they manage to sort it all out so that it doesn’t all come down at the end. Edit also lol the one time I ran RT on discord with goons I started all their stats at a base 50 with modifiers because I was going for a superhero level feel. It definitely made combat smoother but the campaign petered out before I saw its high level consequences. Cantorsdust fucked around with this message at 16:16 on May 16, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 16:13
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Any ideas for bringing this theme of the game back into focus? Some cool items I've used, or seen used, in various games: A chest or trunk that "contains whatever is needed". So players can pull out mundane objects they require. Do that for a long while and then finally start dropping hints that the objects are being procured from owners that needed them, perhaps desperately, perhaps dooming them. A heavy bolter with 20% of its belt left and the barrel still glowing would be pretty obvious. They eventually asked me for a life preserver and I said it was wet, that did it. A book that is blank but, when opened, begins to draw all writing towards it like a black hole, bending and stretching the text and sucking it all into the pages. Letters get stripped off uniforms, data slates, purity seals. When the text is gone is starts stripping color and the players start to feel light headed. A mirror that you can step into and you're in a backwards version of the room, and you're backwards, too. Incredibly disorienting while inside, a -30 to all checks, but players can "embrace the change" in intervals of 10%, going all the way to a +30. When they finally leave (send them in to stop a villain that lives in there, was thought to have died, and has resurfaced with seemingly limitless followers), they check WP with a -10% for every degree of embracing they did. If they fail, they leave the mirror still being backwards and corrupt proportionate to the failure.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 16:37
|
|
|
Cantorsdust posted:You have to be careful to make it so they don’t feel you’re just loving with them, though. You know that feeling in crime dramas where the protagonist has just made a big score, but there was a complication, and so the next season is about how the protagonist will use their newfound wealth/power to deal with the complication? But then something else happens and it all starts to spiral? And then it usually ends with the protagonist’s crimes compounding until they can’t outrun them and it all comes down? And there’s a lesson there about how crime doesn’t pay, or about how the protagonist’s original character flaws were their ultimate undoing or whatever. 40k is such a great setting where everything is poo poo all the time, and I feel like RT by definition needs to be a scenario where your PCs are prioritizing which disasters to prioritize and which to cut their losses on. There should always be more problems occurring than they're capable of handling, and each of the ignored problems play out until they can't be ignored. Hostile planets breed stronger orks, artifacts attract tyranid swarms, territory disputes with Tau colonies, chaos raiding ships in/from the warp, inquisitors coming on board your ship to investigate literally anything, Imperial Guard conscripting a planet while your crew is loading merchandise, oops this crypt is full of Necron - and this is before even starting to think about other traders, inner imperial politics, specific chaos demons/captains, or literally anything with any flavor of eldar. The entire setting is perfect for taxing players, because no matter how powerful you might be you can't be everywhere at once, and eventually problems are going to get enough inertia to be a serious threat no matter how powerful you are.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 17:07
|
|
|
Golden Bee posted:https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/ I wouldn’t start a campaign without it. I should point out that in a traditional D&D style game the GM decides most of the items and conveys that information to the players in session 0. There’s not a requirement for you to negotiate all or any of the items, you should do what is best for your campaign design.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 17:57
|
|
|
I could use some thoughts for my planning phase for a session next month. I run a session for 7 players that's a pseudo-dnd- my policy is we don't crack rulebooks open, all of my players save 2 are roleplaying first timers so we basically run a roll 20 dungeon world type system, which has been working out great so far for smooth fast sessions. My players aren't really in it for more than 2-2.5 hours, we start to lose them after that so I tend to plan sessions in a freeform sandbox way but with the idea that each session is kind of like a TV series type set of events. The players like to have about a combat/ puzzle plus conversation and world building per session. Some quick background - my players all met in the classic tavern but got into a huge brawl when local and federal government troops got into conflict. They killed several troops gave one brain damage kidnapped him and ran away to a local mine that had just collapsed partially. Inside the mine they found it corrupted by horrible blue fungus energy and crystals, and deep inside found a massive mcguffin sapphire orb the size of a backpack, and decided to take it. They traveled through tunnels to a local pacifist monestary where they learned they have one of the "keys to the world" and that one more was locked away in the basement. They know that these items are extremely dangerous and powerful but not much else. They also found that this monestary has unknown to outsiders secret teleportation gates between all of their towers, (so they may potentially decide to try and take one of these gates, I probably have to flesh out both options) Unbeknownst to them they're on a bit of a timer as the federal government is not only hunting them down but also hunting down and corralling in camps all magic beings and magic users for unknown reasons, and they will be at the monestary shortly. Diving into the catacombs below the monestary they found a second "key to the world", but this time it's a physical person who was locked in a machine eternally burning for possibly hundreds of years. They accidentally freed him by mashing random buttons and he collapsed unconscious. He's gone at least partially insane from the horrible torment, but he's been kept alive by one of a race of parasites that can live inside people and empower them. This is unknown to my characters, however one of my characters plays one of this race of parasites, though he was awakened in the mine collapse and does not have much recollection of his ancient history. The first revelation that may come to the players is that in times past HUMANITY enslaved the PARASITES, not the other way around, and used their power to create these immensely powerful macguffins that each control an energy of their universe (light and heat are the current ones in their possession). The party's stated goal is to free their local town from the federal crackdown but they also tend to go off in many different directions per session. And the current thing I have to consider is that my parasite player wants to infest the already infested unconscious burning man, which is a cool idea and I should have anticipated his character wanting to do so, but I'm torn on how to proceed. This will probably be his first action in the next session and I gave him a light DM warning about it but need to get my thoughts in order... Any brainstorming welcome. They also have an NPC monk ally who is disguised as a monk but actually a powerful high level spy for the federal government who only wants to steal both keys away, but she will take one if she can get it. The monestary asked the players to leave both keys locked away in the basement but they are pacifist and won't battle the players for them. Oh and also the whole world is slowly being engulfed in an evil fog that no one seems to return from. It's about a week away from engulfing the monestary.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 18:29
|
|
|
Nephzinho posted:The entire setting is perfect for taxing players, because no matter how powerful you might be you can't be everywhere at once, and eventually problems are going to get enough inertia to be a serious threat no matter how powerful you are. That's very much how our GM ran the most recent of his long, long series of Dark Heresy campaigns. We started the campaign with maybe a half dozen worlds, each with a nascent problem suggested at the campaign start, and we had to pick one to visit. That would last for several adventures and, by the time it was done, we'd return to a big star map and get updated on how much worse things were going on the other worlds. For example, we pointedly did NOT investigate a world with rumors of cult activity among the nobility until the very end, and by the time we resurfaced to the star map as high level PCs there was a full on tyranid uprising and our goal now was to land and buttress the crumbling imperial forces long enough to extract the NPCs we'd gotten stranded on the doomed world along with some artifacts they'd acquired.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 19:19
|
|
|
Jack B Nimble posted:That's very much how our GM ran the most recent of his long, long series of Dark Heresy campaigns. We started the campaign with maybe a half dozen worlds, each with a nascent problem suggested at the campaign start, and we had to pick one to visit. That would last for several adventures and, by the time it was done, we'd return to a big star map and get updated on how much worse things were going on the other worlds. For example, we pointedly did NOT investigate a world with rumors of cult activity among the nobility until the very end, and by the time we resurfaced to the star map as high level PCs there was a full on tyranid uprising and our goal now was to land and buttress the crumbling imperial forces long enough to extract the NPCs we'd gotten stranded on the doomed world along with some artifacts they'd acquired. And if your players refuse that level of problem, you've got the Inquisitor coming to ask how you allowed such a horrible situation to come to pass & have the artifacts fall from the imperiums hands & the swarm is on its way to turn the planet into a foothold in the area. Inactions have consequences!
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 19:24
|
|
|
Nephzinho posted:And if your players refuse that level of problem, you've got the Inquisitor coming to ask how you allowed such a horrible situation to come to pass & have the artifacts fall from the imperiums hands & the swarm is on its way to turn the planet into a foothold in the area. Inactions have consequences! It was great two because every world would give us a couple NPCs to leave with, growing our list of NPC agents, and we'd send them to worlds we wouldn't visit ourselves; it was understood they couldn't resolve the actual problem themselves but it would give us more info and little advantages.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 19:32
|
|
|
Mirage posted:Fellowship has an interesting Long Journey mechanic. Each player describes some sort of obstacle that they encounter along the way, then passes it off to another player to solve it, either by themselves or with the party's help. Once everyone in the group has both created and solved a problem, the group arrives at their destination. The GM can give prompts or just let everyone riff. sebmojo posted:13th age modules do this too, it's a nice system. This is where I should have clarified that it's for a fairly small group -- like 1-3 people at most. Also the framework is a bit more traditional with the GM/player relationship, though I'll still put a pin in these 'cause I have been interested in reading up on more Co-DM style mechanics. Thanks! Clanpot Shake posted:Torchbearer 2E has rules for a Journey conflict in the Loremaster's Manual. I haven't used it personally but it looks like a good framework. I'll take a look, thanks! Glazius posted:There's a Dungeon World supplement called "The Perilous Wilds" that is kind of a rulebook to itself, but the practical upshot is only a couple moves and a little additional wilderness prep to create some things to find called "dangers" and "discoveries". Most of the book is other systems or support material. Huh, I think this might be where I skimmed some rules from before, I've definitely heard of or flipped through that at some point. Definitely a good idea to revisit, thanks!
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 19:39
|
|
|
If you don't have a map or a plan and just want to toss some random events at the PCs while they're traveling, grab something like Mythic GM Simulator and fling together a couple off-the-cuff road encounters. Mythic 2nd Edition in particular has a frankly ridiculous number of d100 charts to generate encounters for just about any situation.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 20:19
|
|
|
Rogue Trader is intended to buck that trend a little, in that they're adventuring out in the dark cold wilderness and returning years later with piles of alien treasure and a gleam of madness in their eyes. They're not really managing the general decline of the Imperium though they are affected by it. One thing that's a bit off between RT and Dark Heresy is the time frame. Dark Heresy has inciting events move rather quickly in Calixis with the whole Deiphage debacle set just a few years after game start. In rogue trader their first trip into the expanse lasted 6 months and their current trip into the expanse has been more than a year real time with no sign of going back to Calixis any time soon. Just because of the time scale I feel like you have to have "the Imperium is falling apart" events further apart. I now understand why in the Owlcat rogue trader game characters from the current setting 120 years earlier are still kicking around. Rogue Traders and everyone else taking long warp trips just have to get used to time dilation. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 20:30 on May 16, 2024 |
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 20:25
|
|
|
Jack B Nimble posted:It was great two because every world would give us a couple NPCs to leave with, growing our list of NPC agents, and we'd send them to worlds we wouldn't visit ourselves; it was understood they couldn't resolve the actual problem themselves but it would give us more info and little advantages. I love this idea. I was using acquired NPCs as surrogate players when someone missed a session or if they need a stronger landing party but that's a much better use for them!
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 20:51
|
|
|
Later in the campaign you could reward the players with NPCs who could resolve some of the lower level but higher noise problems as well.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 20:59
|
|
|
It did give us blunt tools that wouldn't work as well as a player, like we had a straight up Space Marine that we sent to a world, things went wrong , and the marine's answer was to spend a year in the city's labyrinthine sewers, naked, eating the Tau troops sent in to find him. When we eventually made planet fall and found him he was essentially physically and emotionally fine*
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2024 21:24
|
|
|
That's pretty cool! I need to do a better job of communicating how the players can use their power, but also they need to do a better job imagining what they'd like to use their wealth and contacts for.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 02:11
|
|
|
One of the things I always ask players at chargen is "if your character acquired immense wealth, power and influence, what would they do with it?" It's so good for knowing what kind of plot hooks you can dangle in front of PCs to tempt them.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 07:06
|
|
|
Best way to gm a lawful evil racist elf. I was thinking making them really stick to the concept of lawful evil.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 17:39
|
|
|
Hollismason posted:Best way to gm a lawful evil racist elf. I was thinking making them really stick to the concept of lawful evil.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 17:48
|
|
|
no they said Elf
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 17:53
|
|
|
Sounds like a banker to me.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 18:01
|
|
|
Hollismason posted:Best way to gm a lawful evil racist elf. I was thinking making them really stick to the concept of lawful evil. Disregarding the idea that there's a single core "concept of lawful evil" that would let that second sentence even make sense, there's no such thing as a Single "Best Way" to play that character, because it'll all entirely depend on the tone of your games and the role that that character plays in it. Playing him as John Halder might work in a serious game that asks the players to deeply consider their moral stances, but would be completely out of place in a more wacky Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe, where you might instead want to play him as more of a Mr Burns or Uncle Ruckus. You're going to need to define your terms a bit more if you want a good answer.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 18:33
|
|
|
When I think of Lawful Evil in the old sense, I think of someone who has abhorrent values but who is also disciplined, internally consistent, and principled. Someone who can articulate what they're doing and abstains from cruelties or excesses that aren't necessary. This is the guy dumb thirteen year olds mistake for an anti hero. So: A militant xenophobic elf supremacist that is conquering lands and enslaving or subjugating those that surrender, and mercilessly killing anyone who opposes, but who also keeps their word and prevents rioting and looting during the subjugation and then enforces a kind of peace.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 18:45
|
|
|
I mean I said people could play evil characters so I mean Imma DM it but I was thinking of being like okay "What's your actual code" otherwise he's nazi elf.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 19:16
|
|
|
Oh it's a player character? No clue, sorry.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 19:59
|
|
|
DND alignments are horseshit, ask them to define concrete goals and desires they're going to pursue. Figure out what their loyalties are, and what would tempt them from them.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:04
|
|
|
Yeah it's a player characters. It's fine. I'm going to make them stick to the Dark Sun definition of alignment because it's the best example.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:07
|
|
|
what's that
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:15
|
|
|
Ominous Jazz posted:what's that Slaver/not slaver
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:17
|
|
|
D&D alignments gave us the concept of "it's what my character would do!"-chaotic-neutral-lol-random-style characters and for that it can never be redeemed.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:20
|
|
|
Its the water example from Dark Sun 2nd edition. It's to me at least the best concrete examples of alignment DnD has done. I'll post them when I get home.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:20
|
|
|
change my name posted:Slaver/not slaver Sorcerer Kings wield the ancient magics that destroyed the world in a self destructive pursuit of power like this , while player characters wield the ancient magics that destroyed the world in a self destructive pursuit of power like this.
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 20:58 |
|
|
Jack B Nimble posted:Sorcerer Kings wield the ancient magics that destroyed the world in a self destructive pursuit of power like this , while player characters wield the ancient magics that destroyed the world in a self destructive pursuit of power like this. They might not have been able to become dragons, but I think we can make it work
|
|
#
?
May 17, 2024 20:27
|
|