- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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I'm at another blockage and need ideas. We have been playing for about 3 months now. Two of the PCs are in jail. One (Bea) was legit set up in assassination of the mayor, the other (Revy) implicated mostly because he asked about the prison right before they left to do a mission. The assassination plan went through the prison. I still have no idea why he asked about the prison but it was a serendipitous godsend to be able to put him in a sticky situation. The third PC (Marble) is going somewhere else to plan while enjoying his freedom. So: My plan is to tell them, one at a time, that they wake up from their cell. It's open. Then present them with some sort of ethical test... They are actually in some sort of mind arena constructed by an inquisitor. The images are being magically shown to the city's council to deliver a verdict. I'm having a little trouble coming up with the test scenarios.
Bea is a female elf played by a lil asian girl. She loves food and seducing people for info. She is a lot like Claire Danes from Homeland, except not as smart.
Revy is a female kitsune played by a relative new rpg guy. She is a rogue and just can't seem to not steal stuff. She is infatuated with Alessandro, a gorgeous badass Elf lady, who is the leader of the city's royal guard / secret service types.
I'm thinking for Revy, a scenario that involves a magician appearing and telling her to kill Alessandro and that if she does the wizard will free him. I have no other ideas. Puzzles and tests are easily my worst area.
t.hanks
The most obvious one is The Prisoner's Dilemma. If they both say the other is innocent, they both go free, if one sells out their companion they get a minor punishment, but goes free to help the one on the outside plan an escape for their companion. If they both sell each other out I hope the one on the outside is good at making escape plans. Make them write their answers down in secret with no discussion.
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Jun 19, 2017 03:34
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May 3, 2024 22:26
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Generally speaking, for a prisoner's dilemma you want there to be a punishment if both protect the other, albeit a lighter one than if one or both accuse, and if only one accuses, then the other party gets the worst sentence.
So if they both claim the other's innocent then they each get a brief sentence or light fine, if just one accuses, then they walk and the other eats a long sentence, and if they both accuse they each get a moderate sentence, or maybe "community service," (the adventurer kind). That shifts the calculation away from incentivizing full cooperation into there being at least some temptation to screw the other party over.
Also, it's vitally important to the exercise that each party knows that the other has received the same offer, that way they know that saying the other is innocent carry a risk to themselves.
Play it like actual cops and only say "if you don't rat out your partner you're going to go to jail forever, and you better do it before your partner rats you out."
My friends and I actually passed this test in high school, but we had the advantage of having not actually done anything and the campus cop talking to us on different days, so we could compare notes.
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Jun 19, 2017 05:50
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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How might one D&D NPC or a small group of them quietly kill a silver dragon, especially in its humanoid form? Bonus points if they need some exotic materials or tools that don't instantly scream "apocalyptic event."
Trick it into stepping on some sort of exotic portal. A cursed object of clothing that slowly poisoned any food they touched but also gave an immunity from that poison so it just builds up in they're system and they drop dead shortly after taking it off.
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Jun 29, 2017 18:17
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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I imagine an ancient dragon, left to its own devices, could figure out a way to get back to the material plane eventually. I need it out of the picture for a while because the larger plot is to remove him so his regional influence fades and the clouds revert to their fluffy form and the city district built in the clouds falls from the sky to the rest of the city below killing thousands.
It's precisely the kind of major terrorist event I'm willing to believe a group would waste two magic items on.
gently caress, the easy way out of the bag of holding trick is eventually someone else pulls a similar trick on something that can teleport out and they bump into each other, if you want the dragon to come back.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:10
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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I'm going feel condescending to write this, but I'm earnestly looking for some feedback so I want to be clear that I feel at fault for this.
I run a Pathfinder table and one of the players has expressed concern about my GMing style. She's not an especially close friend but she's been on the table for a good long while. I like having her as a player and want to present a game that is engaging for the party.
She had three major concerns that she's grown leery about, and on some level I'm concerned that she's not an especially good fit for the game as I want to run it.
First, the setting guide I provided the party before the latest chapter of the campaign began made recommendations about her preferred character she found uncomfortable. The setting is my own long-running homebrew that started as "Age of Exploration High Fantasy" and has since incorporated more New Weird as I became a Mieville fanboy. Elves in-setting have three important traits highlighted: they take on aspects of their environment, they hunt and kill trolls and eldritch horrors, and their long lives and eidetic memories eventually makes them into sociopaths. I wanted to capture the amorality of the mythic Fair Folk and hit on the idea that, after centuries, elves have a hard time relating to anyone, especially mortals. I also wanted to answer the question of why there are dozens of kinds of elves and wrote in that in-fact, elves do spin off into subtypes when they move somewhere. Forest elves grow antlers and their skin becomes like bark, high elves turn gold and marble color, etc.
This player LOVES elves, she's a few years younger than me, but I suspect she had all the Legolas merch form the LotR movies. She likes her elves kind and impossibly pretty, which is very fair. She had no problem playing an elf that hasn't yet lost their empathy and that still looks basically human and conventional. But she says its very hard for her to get into the head of the character with the background provided, and was put off by NPCs that were described as monstrous and capricious. She's concerned that she doesn't want to be in a setting where her favorite fiction clashes with mine.
Second, she has expressed that she gets very nervous when her character is in peril. I don't consider myself a "killer GM', I don't write lethal "gotcha" style traps, I try to make it clear that "run away and live" is almost always an option the party can take. But I do know that I run a more dangerous game than some, which is probably my grognard showing. Another player got started at my table and, when she joined another for a while, her DM remarked to her that she was playing her character hyper-vigilant: checking every door for traps, covering the party's means of escape at all times. When asked, she basically told him, "My other DM is Dark Souls." A point about which I feel no small amount of pride.
That's intentional, pure and simple. I like putting the party in danger and running them up to the line. I think that's where the most interesting events happen when the party is unnerved and a little desperate. But this player in question prefers scenarios where she's in command of the action and not at risk. I try to mix up encounters when I set them up, it's absolutely important that the table as a whole have triumphant moments and desperate ones. But for her, I get the impression that one desperate moment washes out the triumphant ones -- being overwhelmed by a boss means that she wasn't empowered fighting the mooks.
Last, and if I haven't come off as an rear end in a top hat already I will now, we have sharply differing education levels, and this shows through at the table. I have a humanities degree, my best friend is a history PHD candidate. I don't consider myself especially well traveled or read, but I've got Ulysses on the shelf beside The Bell Jar and signed William Gibson novels. She didn't finish high school. I like to flex my vocabulary when I'm writing "box text" both because I think it makes the lovely prose of D&D better and, honestly, because if I know a word for something I'm going to use it.
She's not the only person at the table that's had to ask me to define a word I assumed would be understood. When one faction in the game uses the motto "Beg the Convalescence" I've had to remind her more than once what a 'convalescence' is. After one particular bad run, I asked her to look through some of my notes and let me know where the prose was confusing to her. A partial list of words she wanted defined: pangolin, boustrophedon, hegemon, and lay prostrate. The last one especially bugged me because I writing in more context would have felt almost juvenile. "You are commanded to lay prostate before the holy man. ...Face down, rear end up."
Other members of the table like having her, she's never unpleasant. But I'm having a hard time squaring writing the game the way that I comfortably do, and presenting an play experience that she finds approachable. And, more broadly, I don't want to be the grog that writes game that come from crazy town, because if we were in a more narrative system, I can basically guarantee that these concerns would be intensified.
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Jul 28, 2017 17:35
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Finally, part of being a GM is knowing your audience. I have a good vocabulary and I had to look up "boustrophedon." Side note: as a primarily narrative-style GM, I have a hard time imagining a situation in which that detail is relevant or important to the story, which does make it sound a bit like masturbatory vocabulary usage). A big part of GMing is effective communication - your job is to convey the elements of the setting and the action to the players as clearly as possible. In some sense I understand your frustration, but if your players don't understand what's going on, they cannot respond effectively. Tone it down and keep your Funk & Wagnalls in your pants.
Seriously, how the does he know that word? In what loving context is that a useful word to know? Now I'm going to try and find an excuse to use that word in a normal conversation and all of my friends will rightly hate me for it.
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Jul 28, 2017 17:49
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Keeping your prose simple and punchy is way better than writing long passages full of words that nobody has time to look up.
Everyone should read a Richard Stark book before they think they should write anything.
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Jul 28, 2017 18:16
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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I think I found the source of confusion.
It's literally a joke from The Wire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QbqyArOTdI
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Jul 28, 2017 18:22
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Honestly, it literally came up in my word-of-the-day calendar once and I thought it was neat. Also the word nychthemeron which just came up recently.
Okay, now you're just loving with me, I had to look that one up too and it wouldn't be that hard to use in a normal conversation. I have a job interview later today, if I try and pronounce that word during a job interview I'm suing you for my continued unemployment.
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Jul 28, 2017 18:30
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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We wrapped our last campaign a few months ago and I'm currently setting up to start a new game. She's vacillating on rejoining the party proper. I'm trying some new things for this game and have front-loaded a gently caress ton of notes ahead of it. I'm considering trying to put some of this stuff into something I could publish, so I may start up a session summary blog. Again, I'm less concerned about "usin' big words" than I am about the disconnect in education levels. I'm aware that I'm being an rear end in a top hat when I write like Mieville just for the sake of doing it.
You need to read better writers, you like Mieville, maybe try Melville, the names are similar. Or if you want Fantasy, try Michael Moorcock, at the very least his name is really fun to say to a librarian, "I'm looking for some Moorcock."
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Jul 28, 2017 19:37
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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I am getting a little in over my head with this idea and was hoping for some help.
One of my players is a paladin of the goddess, Artemis and her mission is to find and ascend Mount Olympis. I have hinted at a dungeon or set of trials that will reveal the secret location of Mount Olympus, and she wants to start taking on the trials.
So I am looking to build a dungeon with Greek-themed tasks, traps and enemies. It may also be a dungeon that cannot be completed on one visit...was thinking of it as a thing to return to between other big quests (gets much harder as it goes on, divided by floors like in Diablo?)
The one solid idea I have is the classic Labrynth complete with a minotaur.
12 Labors of Hercules would be decent to crib from.
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Jul 31, 2017 23:12
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Cut him some slack, it was on his word of the day calendar.
I've since forgotten that word and what it meant and am happier for it.
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Aug 11, 2017 07:38
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Sounds more like a nocturnal dinosaur.
Roll for random encounter
double zero
You encounter a Nychthemeron
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Aug 11, 2017 19:35
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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For my Dark Heresy game I have the characters owned by absent players be present but doing all the boring upkeep bits. During fights they act as offmap lookouts for enemy reinforcements, while exploring they're on driving/piloting duty for the party vehicle and investigating they do Inquisition paperwork or things like running background checks on npc's the party are talking to. Generally I let the players decide what the absentee is doing like "X's player is not here and X is the thief analogue of the setting so for today's game we'll let X break into the governor's private archives while we talk to the guests in the ballroom" and they'll generally come back with some form of positive but not exceptional result to avoid them dying off screen and/or having their greatest accomplishments happening without their player present.
Some minor contributions to the weird magic item table:
-Ring of immunity to explosions(5 megaton or above)
A heavy silver ring with
The wearer is protected from the shock and heat effect of one large(5 megatons of tnt or equivalent) explosion per day. The wearer is not protected from indirect consequences of the explosion such as starvation during a nuclear winter.
-Amphorae of translocation
Two large ceramic jars, each capable of 5l of liquid
When filled with two different liquids, the user can touch one jar while saying the magic activation phrase to swap the contents of the jars, three times per day. Solids(such as sand) are not transported.
The latter I'm planning to be used by a murderous alchemist to assassinate kings by giving them a jar of water/wine/something else harmless, then swapping it with a poison after it's gone past the king's food taster, then back to the previous contents when the party comes to investigate.
What would be some other good ways to kill somebody with this? So far I have:
-aforementioned surprise poison
-planting it somewhere(possibly as a literal plant pot) and replacing the contents with something that gives off toxic fumes
-like previous but filling it with pyrophorics(or just burning oil) and use it for arson
The planned setting will be around 1600 technology wise and magic mostly originating from artifacts of bygone ages with current wizards mostly involved in the study and application of them and only minor amounts of direct spellslinging(though artifact assisted rituals are ok)
I played in a Vampire game in high-school and when I missed a session another player ate me.
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Aug 28, 2017 00:01
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Skwirl, why are you in every thread I post in?
Because you're stalking me I guess? We have similar intrests and disparate opinions, cope with it, I stopped making GBS threads on you on purpose a year ago.
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Aug 29, 2017 08:46
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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See, now you're making me think about how to run a "non-magic persons are illegal" setting.
In the Xanth books everyone has one magic talent and people who are born without one are to the real world.
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Sep 29, 2017 07:15
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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I think you're missing a word or two in that sentence. Are they banished to the "real world" for the sin of not having magic?
Xanth is a magical land that maps perfectly to Florida, the rest of the world is called Mundania or something and doesn't have magic. If you don't have magic you're marched to the border of Georgia.
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Sep 29, 2017 09:27
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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I want to give more spotlight to the bad boy academic/mad scientist in my 1930s pulp game. We’re going to have him, the lounge singer, and the reporter as a trio… What dramatic things, not necessarily dangerous, could happen at an academic conference?
What are some weird places south of equator for those conferences? We’ve seen a lot of Australia.
Sadly most of the really weird scientists didn't move to South America until the mid 1940s.
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Jan 3, 2024 23:40
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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Yeah, basically when doing voices, don't do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-c-0WOyi_8
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Mar 10, 2024 22:15
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- Air Skwirl
- May 13, 2007
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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
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You're just giving your caster players ideas.
For current errata Conjure Animals has the GM decide what animals are summoned, so it's a negotiation about what kind of shenanigans players can get up to with it. It would be really lovely if an NPC was allowed to do something really abusive with it but then tell a player that tried the same thing "you get 8 rabbits," however. Maybe not the optimal play, but the idea in my head for it was just slamming an enemy with a herd of elk.
Dimension 20 had an episode where it was used to summon a flock of geese, but they were actually re-skinned velociraptors, that are also cr 1/4. They couldn't fly, they were just like a bunch of geese from Untitled Goose Game.
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Mar 28, 2024 04:27
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May 3, 2024 22:26
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Jun 19, 2017 03:34
