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If you're shooting for Gotham specifically, mix 1920's aesthetics of fur coats and white wall tires with current technology. Mostly rely on your NPCs to create the mood. Hard boiled cop in a corrupt department, gangsters, mayor with an iron fist on the city's industry. Set scenes in train yards, speakeasies, grubby meat packing plants, theatres. Comedy answer: set everything at night. Make it rain a bunch.
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Nov 10, 2010 20:48
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Dresden Files. American Gods / Anansi Boys, The Magicians, Dirk Gently, The Kraken, Harry Potter 
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Dec 18, 2010 13:10
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We wrapped up the Famine in Far-Go Gamma World adventure Monday night. It took the group 5 sessions, skipping some things here and there. It was my first time DMing outside of a one-shot or two so I made a ton of To run the GW published adventures you need to reference information in the setting/plot sections, the encounters sections, and the monster stats section. Every encounter references different pages in each area so bookmarking becomes a pain in the rear end. So I sketched out a rough flowchart of the adventure with page numbers and put every monster for the sessions into the offline monster builder. Way more organized, but gently caress that amount of prework for a drat published adventure. Though as a bonus for all that data entry, I was able to print out the monster stat blocks and use them to help track initiative. Unfortunately, the stat blocks have more information than required (dtas, especially on monster stat blocks) and are kind of hard to read in black and white. I was copypasting them into Publisher as pictures because both Excel and Publisher poo poo all over themselves as table data, and Word can't handle layout beyond a few columns. Anyone have better solutions for making stat blocks adjustable in size and easily read in b&w? The campaign's high point was sadly in the middle. What should have been a climatic final battle lasted too long and left everyone a little disappointed. In the midst of the brawl, the BBEG teleported away briefly to recharge some encounter attacks, and using some tech and alphas one PC bravely went after him. What followed was a duel to the death in an escape pod between the BBEG and a PC's increasingly belligerent hover pig, while the rest of the party fended of a dozen aliens and robots and a giant fusion core was going critical in the next room. And then the hover pig rolled four critical failures in a row. It was loving awful and completely destroyed any sense of pace and after the first two I couldn't really be like "and your shot goes wide, hitting the teleport panel and you all get sent back to earth in the midst of the players that can actually hit a goddamn thing!" Despite the sour final note, for all the bitching I hear about them I thought the skill challenges in general went pretty well. I improvised them quite a bit, or stretched them out over multiple encounters. I also never kept track of failures and successes out in the open (or really at all) or said "this is a skill challenge." I also tried to do immediate consequences at big failures, distant consequences and/or conditional successes right around target, and bonuses at 10+ or crits. I think the bonuses worked great at getting players into the challenge, but I hosed up pretty hard at linking distant consequences to failed rolls. That led to players feeling too over powered out of combat -- that everything they tried pretty much worked. A player said to me "I don't know what I'd do if you ever said no to us." And my first thought was what the hell, I say no to you all the time. Like, a player hacked into a sentry bot grid protecting a building as part of a skill challenge. And of course when it was time to move forward he wanted to take all of his new little friends with him. I let him spend standard actions to program any new target into his ad hoc network, and then let him know that while he could bring as many sentry bots into the building as he wanted, local wireless networks inside might be able to overpower his portable signal which may have... interesting consequences. Anyway, I think I'm most proud of being able to run with the players' retarded ideas, especially in Gamma World.
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Apr 20, 2011 22:12
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M.c.P posted:in case any issues turn up, I'm going to give him a talk. In case you haven't, try to talk to him before any issues come up. 1, you might solve it right there without anyone having to sit through an awkward session where all the characters are following a morality/feel that the players have agreed upon except him, and 2, it'll make you seem less arbitrary if there are issues and you need to escalate.
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Apr 26, 2011 17:40
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Environment and flavor could go a long way here, too. The seal could be kept in a reliquary made of glass, but enchanted in the same way as the seal. Cautiously approaching the seal starts breaking everything around the players, risking a great collapse. Put various pressures on them like hidden archers or obvious but difficult to disarm traps that will make them move and interact with the environment in different ways which in turn will provide more clues to how to destroy the seal.
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Jun 22, 2011 06:53
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Astfgl posted:More than that, though, you just touched on a few things in that post that pretty much open a can of worms every time they get mentioned here. Sorry for jumping down your throat! This is it exactly. I saw the post last night, started typing out angry words, and caught myself, said gently caress it and went to bed. I do think there's a marked difference between random rolls for broad forces currently outside of the players control, and a "welp dice say rocks killed your favorite npc while you were sleeping. thems the breaks."
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Aug 11, 2011 18:24
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KakerMix posted:Sorry if our dynamic world system is too advanced for you, but with you playing 4th ed I'm sure anything beyond WoW's amazing realism would be too much. I doubt you could appreciate the groundbreaking systems we've developed.
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Aug 11, 2011 18:28
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Old School Hack does it best. Player experience is gained by spending x number of points to increase odds, hit harder, etc. The points are given to you when other players think you've done something awesome from a pool that only fills as the GM spend points to fudge dice. And you only level when the entire party has spent enough points... so everyone at the same time. It's quite elegant.
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Aug 12, 2011 16:17
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Baronjutter posted:I guess with everyone having the exact same exp no matter what they did, the only way to differentiate them selves was through ridiculous broken prestige classes they found in awful official books. Yeah this sounds like lovely players, not necessarily a knock against communal xp. Mostly because in what version of dnd are xp and powering the only mechanical, controllable ways to distinguish a pc from others?
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Aug 12, 2011 17:44
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Also it would be different if you could level during a session without killing the pace, but D&D just doesn't work that way.
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Aug 12, 2011 17:48
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Not sure if this will fit exactly, but check out how Eberron handles the Mournland in 4e - mist hazards that can put you on a Mournland Affliction disease track if you don't avoid them. Then just start hitting their healing surges. Final stages of the disease could be as extreme as costing healing surges to pop off dailies. Make it so you have to be outside of the zone to reverse the disease, then put a shiny mcguffin in the middle. I'd just be very up front with your players before starting to gently caress with their surge resource mechanics.
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Oct 17, 2011 19:04
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Lord Twisted posted:I literally can't kill them. The Artificer throws out so much THP its hard to even damage them! You're probably playing this right but we didn't in my first campaign so just to make sure... Temporary hit points don't stack. If someone is throwing out 5thp, no one can go above 5tph no matter how many times it's granted. Unless, for instance, someone else can grant 7thp, in which case it would override the 5 and the most anyone could have is 7thp. Not playing by those rules made things... easy.
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Nov 10, 2011 15:17
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My interpretation would be max 3 but someone else chime in because I get a bit fuzzy around this area honestly and I don't have a rulebook or errata handy.
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Nov 10, 2011 16:19
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We run with a couple on skype. A good microphone on both sides is essential. Our webcams have nice mics and they allow everyone to talk at normal levels and rates which is important otherwise the odd man out will miss tons of table chatter. Echo, having to yell or repeat yourself... this will completely ruin the pace. Throwing skype onto your tv helps too so you can see their facial expressions/body language. This is surprisingly important! If you're using a battlemat, I would go so far as moving the webcam so the player can see your faces every time you are not in battle.
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Nov 14, 2011 22:18
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Running Dread this week and thinking about using Beneath The Full Moon as a base. Any advice on swapping the Grand Canyon for the Boundary Waters? Thoughts on swapping the Monster of the Week for something more ghost story? My other (more ambitious) idea is that the game starts when players get off the water after a week-long trip, but no one is there to pick them up. After a 1-2 day hike back to town, they find it's been Silent Hill'd. I would need a way to force isolation in an empty town that should hold several thousand people/several hundred cars. And also connect the characters to the town when they would otherwise just be passing through on the way back home.
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Oct 6, 2014 15:41
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Oh I'm dumb. The correct answer is a modern retelling of Algernon Blackwood's The Wendigo. Duh.
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Oct 6, 2014 17:46
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fosborb posted:Oh I'm dumb. The correct answer is a modern retelling of Algernon Blackwood's The Wendigo. Duh. This was the correct answer, FYI. It was my first time running Dread -- I've been trying to get this damned game on the table for 4 years and the stars finally aligned last night. The premise: old college buddies drift apart and 10 years later get together again for an adventure camping trip in Minnesota's Boundary Waters in early October (off season). They awake on the forth night to the screams of their guide being mauled. I lifted significantly from Beneath the Full Moon. I adjusted the age of the characters, the setting, and the creature feature. The themes were survival, keeping the guide alive, and the Wendigo hunting them. The Wendigo was great because it's not a very well known myth. Lots of room to adjust "powers" and descriptions on the fly without making players feel cheated by red herrings. I did more prep than I usually do. In part because it was a new system, and also a new genre for me. Questionnaires. Lots of room for notes on these but they were hardly even glanced at once completed. I think that's the power of the questionnaires; you can get into a character's head quickly and not need to refer back to a sheet. I'd keep the autopsy diagrams though -- I think they helped set the mood that not everyone was going to get out alive. Beneath the Northern Lights. The second column of the first page was reserved for all of my notes on the characters. I did refer to these constantly. When a player hands you "My greatest fear is dying alone" you have to remember that 2 hours later when they're tired, frayed, a little drunk, and the only one on watch in a blizzard and they see something move at the edge of their vision. Scenes marked with a star were key scenes that I had to hit. Other scenes were more circumstantial or could be cut for time. Cold, blustery wind became a central feature of the Wendigo's foreshadowing, so the Snowstorm scene became essential. By the final confrontation it was complete white out conditions. If you ever need wilderness maps, PaddlePlanner is kick rear end. This was the area characters were in. I did more mood setting than I've ever done for a game. Cats were locked up (for obvious tower-related reasons), we took down the standard folding tables and had a little black Ikea end table in the middle of the room with the tower. There was indirect lighting from behind the seating area, and I had a camp lantern behind me (so I could see my notes, mostly). There was also a dying lantern next to the tower. It went fully out (completely coincidentally) at the end of narrative's first night. It wasn't dark, dark, but the room was dim and focused entirely on the tower. I ran two youtube videos together and on repeat for the entire night. An ambient horror track and howling wind. The volume was set fairly low, but after three hours it was really effective at catching the tension and not letting the players off even if they didn't want to look at the tower. Holy poo poo, Dread. By the time the session was over everyone was wound up very, very tight. Some players were refusing to even look at the tower while others pulled. With the narrative blizzard plus three hours of howling wind, two players were physically bundling up/feeling shivery cold. Two character deaths were heroic sacrifices by intentionally knocking over the tower. They did it because it "felt good." I think it was cathartic just to have that bit of control again even if it meant not being a part of the game going forward. Also, and this is in the book, but I cannot emphasize enough how effective it is to quietly remind the player what's on the line while they pull. We spent about 20 minutes after the game to talk through how it went just to give people a chance to unwind. On escalating the situation. Dread is paced differently than any other game I've ran. You look to the clock for general time concerns: does Act II need to be extended?, etc. But in terms of what scenes you throw at characters, you're really looking at the tower and players. Here was my guide: By the end of Act I, the tower should be rickety and players should start to intentionally fail pulls. By the end of Act II, someone should die and the tower needs to be reset. In Act III, do not throw a final confrontation/climax until the tower feels close to collapse. If every pull has a character's life on the line, the encounter itself will be a life or death situation. Very simple, but I'm not used to gunning for PC blood so I needed this to remind me to not let up.
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Oct 10, 2014 15:15
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Glukeose posted:As an aside, I want to run a one-shot game inspired by XCOM using a slightly modified Call of Cthulhu system. Is this a good idea y/n? It sounds like an interesting challenge! Apart from the basic monster reskinning, I'd
Because it's a one shot I'm not sure you can emulate the regional prioritization of threats. That's a pretty central theme of the XCOM games, but those are long term strategic decisions that are only indirectly felt after several encounters -- I don't think you'll have enough encounters in a crunch-heavy system to make satellite placement, ignoring Europe, etc feel like meaningful, game-changing decisions.
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Oct 17, 2014 19:45
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You're welcome! It sounds like a really fun one shot! A Delta Green character sheet may hit most of your needs for XCOM skills in a CoC world, though even some of those limited skills I'd chuck out unless you're expecting to, you know, drive cars around.  Honestly, if I was already digging around in the guts of a 90's system, I'd just rip out the skill + ability mod system altogether and put in: a class-defining skill that succeeds almost all of the time two support/flavor skills that succeed most of the time a blank skill that succeeds most of the time that players can fill out with whatever to give them some ownership of the characters then promotions can boost those support skills or add new skills at the "succeeds most of the time" level.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:50
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You can go the InSpectres route too and let your players define the mystery. Here, skill checks determine if a supposition is true. "I find a theatrical makeup kit in the grounds keepers tool box that is part of his disguise." *roll something and fail* "No sorry, you find the makeup and also a script that says property of the local community theatre." it's way more freeform and low prep. Gets you to the action sooner and makes sure your players are invested in the mystery. Might go too far to sidestep structure depending on the themes you're trying to hit, though. This will make players Excited about the mystery, and you're unlikely to get any Horror or Apprehension unless you're inserting it on failed rolls. Then again, your target genre frequently involves slide whistles..... The general rule of thumb is to prioritize characters reacting to the puzzle over players solving the puzzle.
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Oct 19, 2014 16:43
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OfChristandMen posted:Does anyone have any experience doing a Heist in DnD? I think it depends on the type of heist you want to evoke. It'll generally fall into 3 stages. Planning, Stealing, Running. If your players get off on intricate plans, give them everything up front and allow a nice, long first act and let their musings guide your final act complications. Let their interest world build for you. Allow them to show off their planning with lots of bonuses during the theft. If you want ACTION, make stealing part of the planning phase (think Ocean's 11), make the theft simple/fast, and make the escape central to the night (See: theGood, the Bad, the Weird). The Stealing phase need tension if you're making it a focus of the night. Add a real world timer, or hint at monsters moving in for the kill, or make it occur during a pitched battle. Whatever you do, make the object unquestionably what the players want to get, and then throw everything you can to distract them from it.
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Oct 23, 2014 22:40
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I'm sure others will have a more general framework for you to build hacking mechanics around, but hacking doesn't necessarily need it's own subsystem. One of the hottest things in hacking these days is social engineering. This is, for example, calling a bank and using information found off of Facebook to convince the lowly CSR on the phone that you have the credentials to access the account. Often times credentials are built off a series of accounts, starting with public information, then less secure accounts like email or even utilities, and then using those combined bits of info against the actual target. This attack vector requires very little technical "hacking" skills, and could probably be handled by any charisma/social mechanics your system already has.
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Oct 25, 2014 17:49
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That is Baba Yaga's shack.
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Oct 26, 2014 23:34
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Morpheus posted:Any suggestions for this sort of thing? It's pretty much the first open-world thing I've planned out, so I'm worried that I'd be somehow pushing my players down a particular rail-roady path. In my experience, players will find the pirate ship first, and then proceed to bomb all areas of interest from the shore before sailing off into uncharted territory. But maybe your players are more reasonable. Fronts are a quick way to organize forces that should continue to grow and evolve if players are not directly confronting them. http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/fronts
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Oct 27, 2014 18:12
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Your player probably just really likes magic missiles. Rename/reflavor all of the his spells as magic missile.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:Yeah, understood. Again, it was more a general question about how entitled am I to houserule a game, across either scale. It's clear you know the most important part of the answer to your question: communicate your changes. After that, go wild and if you're up front and open and if anyone avoids your game because of what you've put out there, and you for some reason find out about it, you have either dodged a bullet or have an opportunity to get better at describing your hobby and gaming style. Win-win. For what it's worth, I'd walk right past any game with 20 pages of house rules meticulously documented. (Not saying you're planning that; just an example at the extreme.) In general I'd prefer more adaptation and experimentation as a campaign develops, and I push back pretty hard when the rules start getting in the way (or I just completely disengage). So in my case, putting the rules up first could help you dodge the bullet that is me; a player that might be a total rear end in a top hat in your game.
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Dec 23, 2014 20:47
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"Saturday morning cartoon" reminded me of Danger Patrol. Episodic, rules light, early 20th century pulp sci-fi. And free. It never made it out of beta, but the core is a solid game. I actually disagree that Dungeon World is light on plotting. Fronts are the same if not more detailed than any plotting I'd normally do for a campaign. And I think they're necessary (or at least something equivalent is necessary) for any game that's going to run more than a few sessions. Bonds help, but I don't think they're enough to carry a group week to week on their own.
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Jan 2, 2015 17:27
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petrol blue posted:I do agree that they're necessary, but I can't think of any game (with a continuing plot, rather than pure episodic) that'd take less. Oh absolutely, I can't think of anything else easier either -- and that's my point. As awesome as Dungeon World is, it's unreasonable to expect it to be good and zero prep for extended campaigns. I think that way lies limp, sputtering games which is why its one of the GM principles: "Think offscreen, too." I do think it holds up at 3 or 4 sessions, but longer games need something more than just bonds to keep motivations focused, in my experience. But as other posters said, I think it's fine if you're up front and embrace that it's going to be episodic. And that should work with any game, really. I can't think of anything that can't be run as a one shot. And for me that's the great thing about running episodic games: there's no expectation that we have to play those characters or even that system next week. By avoiding grand stories I've knocked out dozens of RPGs that I would never had played or ran otherwise. edit: thinking on it, "think offscreen, too" doesn't really mean "do prep for your game" but I think fronts require it. I also think it's awesome that Dungeon World tells you to not build your campaign until after your first session. That's just brilliant. fosborb fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 04:10
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Captain Walker posted:Quick, I need Metal Gear Solid/Rising the RPG for this weekend, is there a *World game that'll work or will I have to use FATE which I'm not sure I understand? slightly hack Death School
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Jan 14, 2015 01:49
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The marriage is happening on a roof top, and after the assassination attempt you get to have a rooftop/sky carriage chase. I assume you're playing in Eberron or the functional equivalent.
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Jan 16, 2015 00:11
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DalaranJ posted:So, I'm going to run a 6-8 hour one shot of Mouse Guard. I have never run a burning wheel game before. What should I run? What do I need to remember (that first time GMs would be likely to forget)? drat, at that length you could do a full recruitment session, but I think I would avoid it. Walk in with a few pregens, allow some tweaks, and that will leave you enough time to do several GM/PC cycles. Print out a map of the territories, put it in the middle of the table, and keep a pawn where the players are. From what I've heard lots of people forego the strict phases of the game. I think you should keep them. The heart of the system is tests, and the Guard are not going to survive tests unless they work together. Keeping a hard PC phase, where you take your players up to the test right away, will keep them focused on working together to overcome the test rather than getting sidetracked on what the test should be. After those tests, they'll have their own phase where they can figure out how to recover (which will absolutely result in more tests!). If it doesn't seem to be working, you can always loosen up as you play. I ran a 3 or 4 session mini-campaign a few years ago. The mission started at Lockhaven in the very first of spring. They were directed by Gwendolyn to: Travel to Pebblebrook at haste to deliver the first mail to the frontlines (Deliver the Mail adventure) Travel south along the Darkheather Tunnels and repair the scent border as necessary (weasels!) Pick up elixer at Sprucetuck and convince them to increase their production for Lockhaven The Patrol Leader received these orders, sealed, and was only supposed to open the next when the last was fulfilled. I made sure at least one other guardmember didn't like secrets/wanted direct action/distrusted the Patrol Leader/whatever Sorry, the other point is that you should not shy away from intraparty conflict. The system handles it beautifully. Mouse Guard offers a wide range of ways to resolve conflict. If your players are only used to drawing swords, make sure you hit them with types of conflicts beyond Fight during the GM phases so they realize what they can do. Especially Argument and Speech.
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Feb 9, 2015 03:44
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DalaranJ posted:I'm planning to go by the book because I want to run Torchbearer later this year, and I'm fully aware how much more complicated it is, so this is a Burning Wheel training session. I'd improvise into the beliefs. I kept a reference handy that was "these are the tests" and "these are the beliefs/instincts in play" to give you an idea of how often I thought about them in play. (constantly) Take them to the river. This is super railroady compared to what I'm used to in other systems, but give them a very defined obstacle during your phase: here is your mission; you walk for a bit; oh no big rear end river; figure out how to cross this big rear end river. Then let them hem and haw about how to cross it. Whoever comes up with the idea that is used roles the dice on their skills (with copious help, hopefully). Reminder here that failures are good too and introduce interesting twists. The important thing is trying.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:41
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I hear Fate is pretty good PbP as a GM simply because it gives you enough time to track all of the Aspects in play (and Compels) turn to turn, but I admittedly haven't tried it PbP.
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Feb 20, 2015 00:01
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Turtlicious posted:Playing SixthWorld tonight, and my players just betrayed the Yakuza because the Mafia was bidding higher. How do I drive home that betraying people is not always the best idea even in Shadowrun, without being a soul sucking monster? They're all kind of new to RPG's and have stated they want to be able to make mistakes, I don't want to go all scorched earth on them because I don't think that would be fun. What's a good way in game to show they maybe should have kept the original contract because most of their contacts were yakuza? Wait for a hard move. Sweep in with yakuza complications accordingly. The mafia has heard of the betrayal and now doesn't trust them either. Yakuza "forgives" them for the "regrettable mistake" if the turn on the mafia and also forfeit pay. assassins that could be hired from either side! throw all three at them.
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Feb 22, 2015 02:24
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...insane revenge-fuelled one-finned whales....
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Feb 27, 2015 16:37
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Yeah important parts of the genre: the killer is among the first people the protagonists meet everyone is lying but only one person is lying about committing the murder protagonists hit rock bottom before figuring out the mystery
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Mar 4, 2015 00:25
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Mendrian posted:I find the presumption of the neverending game which strings week to week with no ending in sight except "when we get sick of it" tends to lead to ennui. A thousand times this. Hell, you can still play consecutive seasons in the same game with the same characters, but giving the players and plot a chance to periodically breathe outside of the expected chronology of a weekly game is... necessary. It's also a great way to focus your storytelling and push poo poo faster and harder for your players.
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Mar 5, 2015 06:23
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Cold opening on a blank slate world without prompts is going to be as hard for everyone else as it is for a GM homebrewing their own setting. The only difference is the number of people sitting around staring at that blank piece of paper, trying to get their creativity into gear. I've had more success saying things like "we need a mountain range, where is it?" especially when those kinds of questions happen part way through a session as the need arises, instead of everything decided up front.
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Mar 9, 2015 18:47
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Still lolling at the idea of rolling for "ethnic earth counterpart." My savage/shamanistic, fantasy skin toned, reproduce-through-rape, no soul hulking monster orcs are... huh... 19th century Swedish-emigre Wisconsin farmers.
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Mar 9, 2015 19:11
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That's awesome. Good job!
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Mar 14, 2015 15:23
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