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One thing 4th edition has really helped me with in running a tabletop game is preparing a session and understanding how to plan pacing. My first real experience with GMing was Deadlands and, while a very fun setting, it was usually terrible from a "running the game" standpoint. Fights were either super-easy, or impossible for the players as they required some ancient artifact to kill whatever monster was charging them. The dime-novels also tended to be very rail-roady and advanced the story in arbitrary and erratic ways. The focus on encounters in 4th edition has really helped me out, and my first few sessions have helped me develop what I think is a pretty good pattern for writing adventures and sessions. I think of it as the 4-passes method. 1st Pass: I write down the high-concept of the next adventure I want to run, and any 'cool bits' I want to try and fit in. This is what I used to do in all previous games, and I'm sure everyone does something like it. Here's the point where it makes sense to steal/crib from TV shows or books or whatever. The players get to a town after being stuck without supplies in the wilderness. They help the Mayor with a Kobold problem outside the town, and also investigate a murder that has some political reprocussions. A pair of future adversaries are foreshadowed, and I try to hint at some personal quests for characters. 2nd pass: Break the concept down into encounters. This is the key thing, I think, that makes your adventure feel like it's moving and not just you describing a setting until the fights start. I look at the concept above, and think about how many encounters I can build out of it. I'm getting comfortable using skill challenges and other "non-combat" encounter types, and given past experience with the group I know how long it takes the players to do an encounter (we can sometimes do 5 a night, but it's usually 4). I start writing down some encounters that can fill a session, and any "transitional pieces" that will help move the game from one encounter to the next. I'll also start a worksheet for treasure parcels and experience points earned in encounters. I decide I want the adventure to last no more than 2 sessions. I slot in 5 combats (2 kobold encounters, a pair of wilderness critter fights, and one fight relating to the murder plot), an longer encounter segment for investigating the murder, and 1 puzzle that will come up in getting treasure from the cave the Kobolds are in. I also highlight areas where I'll need to describe the town and narrate their meeting with NPCs like the mayor. Since the murder investigation and kobold hunt may go on simultaniously depending on player interest, I scribble some notes on how I can keep them from overlapping too much, and things I can do to get the players working on one problem or the other if they get stuck. Passes 3 and 4 are about nailing down the particulars of each encounter, and the nice thing is that I can pretty much do these 4-5 encounters a time between session, which gives me a chance to adjust stuff based on issues the players point out during the game. Pass 3 is just writing out the basics of a given encounter: write in the monsters, the treasure parcels, and a rough description of the environment. I'll also write a few sentences to read to the players to set up the encounter, and some notes about what they might find quest-wise investigating after the encounter. When I get done with a segment of encounters, I'll look back over them to try and make sure I like the order I suspect the players will see them; space out fights with puzzles or RP, make sure 'final encounters' appear to be harder than the initial ones, etc. Pass 4 is the clean-up pass. I'll copy/paste the monster stats out of DDI's compendium for easy reference, give an editorial once-over to the description blocks, and try to look at the encounters from the player point of view. Look for holes in my narrative, loose ends that shouldn't be there, and bad transitions between encounters. For the first session, I wrote up 3 fights (one nature encounter to kick off the session, and the 2 kobold fights), the investigation information on the murder, and a number of description segments about the town and the NPCs the players might meet. The second Kobold fight was meant to be the hardest of the night, so I made sure to use smaller encounter budgets in the other two, and thought about tactics in the 3rd encounter more than the first 2. I wrote up some notes on the town's sheriff, who I'd use to help get the players on track for both investigations. I then did my clean-up and final additions a day before the game. So far, my group has been having a lot of fun, and it's fulfilling their "Classic D&D campaign" wish pretty well. I'm sure it'd be possible to be more creative or sandbox-y, but I think the above can produce some solid (blue collar, lunch-bucket, flyover country) sessions.
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Jun 12, 2009 01:58
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Ulta posted:I'm going to give some unsolicited advice, because that is how I role. I really loved the setting as well. I'm pretty sure Clockwork Joe mentioned it somewhere, but they're doing another ransom for the second part of the setting. I think they're at ~70% of the ransom reached. If you liked the primer, it might be worth chipping in for the next installment...
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Jul 30, 2009 04:02
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My players are about to reach "the big city" in the campaign setting, and I'm trying to come up with a way to give the players a tour and sense of scope w/o me just reading a long, boring description. I keep coming back to the idea of fetch/tour quests like you'd see in WoW or other computer RPGs that force you to tour an area (head down to the docks to deliver this box! Fill it with fish and come back!), but obviously doing something like that in a tabletop game would be pretty bad. However, does anyone have any suggestions that might work along those lines? Minor tasks that engage the players but allows me to lay out some descriptions of the city's areas of importance?
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Aug 15, 2009 23:35
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Bob Smith posted:That's the plan - unless they're really stupid they won't end up fighting the most elite soldiers in the country after one or two sessions, they'll start with weaker forces and fights they can win. Another thing you might do is early on establish some methods they can use to spot the differences between the real top-tier guys and the off-brand thugs. Spotting marking and patches on their vests, body language, etc so they at least have some warning that they may be getting in over their heads.
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Aug 23, 2009 20:07
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Looking for some suggestions on a scenario I'm writing for Ashen Stars (Robin Law's space opera game for the Gumshoe system). It's meant to be a first play of the setting and system for a group of relatively experienced players, and I'm aiming for a Star Trek "morality stories and high-adventure" feel to the story and potential campaign. The concept I've laid out is as follows: the players are contracted to investigate a system with early interstellar-flight technology that has reported "Ashen Star" effects (bizarre solar flares/spots that tend to indicate something odd is going on in the area) and a mysterious alien satellite that's appeared. The players will discover that, in fact, the flares observed are the early signs of the system's sun about to age into a Red Giant, which will have disasterious effects on the civilization there, and the alien satellite is a probe from an unknown source that is designed to "re-light" the star and keep it from growing old. The twist on this is that the probe has achieved some level of consciousness and does not want to die. The issue I'm facing is that I want to pace the adventure out like an episode of Star Trek, and I'm worried the players will lock up. Ideally, I'd like the scenes to flow something like: 1) players arrive in system, talk to the locals 2) players meet with the probe and discover the real situation/twist 3) players leave the probe, do some legwork and get some experience with the combat system 4) players return to the probe and try to negotiate or force a resolution (convince the probe to sacrifice itself, let the probe live and the system die, come up with a win-win scenario if they push for it) My fear is that the players will hit (2) and and try to brute-force a solution, feeling like they can't or shouldn't leave to talk to the alien civilization or anyone else. I feel I need to have the probe give the team a side mission to get them away from it for a while. My current line of thinking is that the Probe has been monitoring radio transmissions from the civilization, which in part has led to it's current consiousness/fear. The players would ideally go back to the planet, locate this transmission, and return with some valueable explination that maybe helps open up the probe to sacrificing itself. Any thoughts on what this transmission could be? Or what else I could do?
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Sep 25, 2013 17:35
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I'm working on a story arc for my Shadowrun game, and I feel like it's going to go bad. After a few more straight-forward missions to start things off and get them situated, the group stole some biological research from [company A] for an unknown [party B]. One of the players also stole a vial from the lab to see if they could resell it on their own. I'd planned on that research somehow becoming a larger story, and the stolen vial seems like a lucky way to bring the group back in to the picture. I'm thinking both company A and party B will try to get them, possibly try to ambush the group at the same time leading to a huge messy crossfire for the group to run from, and that could kick off an effort to figure out what was going on. I figure a group like the Draco Foundation or Atlanteans (sorta do-gooders in Shadowrun) could approach the group if they get stuck on what to do next, and help uncover what it was they stole, and clean things up before that research causes real problems. I don't know if I have a problem with the story- but I just feel like this thing will go to poo poo. I don't have great experiences executing on larger stories like this, and something tells me this will become a big mess too. I think part of it is when I'm thinking of stories like this, I start assuming how players will react or what plans they'll come up with. No matter how straight-forward I think the situation and options are, I just have no faith this will go even remotely to what I'm envisioning- and I'm too lovely a GM to just improvise it to something else satisfactory. How do people handle this? How do you steer a larger story well?
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Oct 26, 2020 05:40
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Don't try to plan branching paths or anything like that. Maybe a few tentative contingencies but mapping it all out is pointless. I think this group is pretty railroad-y in the sense that I try to be pretty open with them out-of-character where I'm trying to take things, but also I don't want to like stop them mid-session to say "ok yeah you asked a now obvious question that I didn't think through and now I'm stumped" 
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Oct 26, 2020 06:05
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Huckabee Sting posted:I'm starting to theory craft up the core of my new long run campaign. This would be the 3rd and final of the arc. The reoccurring BBEG has time magic. The players are in charge of a kingdom, and are at war with this bad guy. I know all the pitfalls of time travel poo poo in TTRPGS, so let me bounce this idea and tell me if it won't work before I base my entire game on it. Is this a new campaign or the 3rd act of an ongoing campaign? Maybe doesn't matter much to your question, but that's a little confusing. I think my only advice would be that this is a pretty complex concept, so you probably want to be transparent with the players as much as possible in advance about what you're thinking of doing. Otherwise I suspect you'll get triumphs and tragedies that maybe don't work well with the premise...and also I'm not sure what kinds of campaigns and games your group has played before so no idea if this will be a curveball for folks who mostly do hack-n-slash stuff, or if a game where stories are driven by internal narrative/drama would be the norm for them...
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Dec 27, 2023 23:25
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A half-baked mechanic I'm thinking about and maybe want to write up in the new year: I've been reading about West Marches and Hexploration type campaigns and like the idea of campaigns where being in town or staying still is a little bit of a milestone and abnormality. Also I just generally like mechanics to exist- particularly ones that make players talk out a plan with each other and make decisions. It results in my favorite moment when GM'ing- where I take a break and try to figure out what I want to jump ahead to in my notes. So I was thinking of a system where the Group's time in town is limited. In particular, I was thinking the group gets a count-down timer based on some reputation trait they earn over time. Sure they're heroes who've cleaned out goblin nests or taken down a dragon- but they are are also weird mercenaries with bizarre anti-social behaviors in a world where most commoners never leave town. Adventurers wear out their welcomes quickly in this sort of world. Sort of like how I feel Witchers get treated in that game, Witchers. The group earns a couple of Reputation points every time they go out to the wilds. Maybe 3 on average. And each point can be spent on one full turn (a day) in town. While in town players do get to restore all their health, healing surges, spell slots, and so on. But the group also only get to do one action a day- they can refresh supplies at a general store, try to shake out rumors about the local woods, buy/sell/make a unique object, talk with an NPC, etc. In my mind- this inverts an experience I feel I've had a few times running campaigns where I'm telling the players they enter town and they're waiting on me to further give them motivations, and instead makes "we're entering town" a decision the players are making with purpose. I could also imagine an add-on mechanic where a player can opt to save the group 1 reputation point or extend their stay one day by taking a short term penalty on their next trek and roleplaying a scene of something unfortunate happening to them during their stay: getting beaten up at the inn after drinking too much, getting a letter from a family member with bad news, etc.
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Dec 28, 2023 00:09
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Golden Bee posted:Sounds like BitD Downtime. Is that an influence? I haven't read it. It's been recommended to me a few times but I never picked it up, then I caught wind of some BitD discourse this year where someone picked it up on a similar "oh- that mechanic sounds like BitD, check it out" and they found getting around the setting discussion in the game books to be daunting. edit- I should give it a read, but I feel like I have a list of 6 or so books I should get just to expand my horizons Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 00:29
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Oh nice! I think somehow I got pointed towards their blog about travel/exploration while reading up on that topic and really liked his way of framing stakes and risk. e- like, I think this is a really good section from that post: quote:Most importantly, though, the Tension Pool mirrors human psychology regarding the awareness of time, risk, and stress. People’s awareness of time and risk rises and falls, which leads to all sorts of interesting behavioral patterns including things like risk homeostasis and the gambler’s fallacy. Most people just aren’t aware of how the passage of time, tension, stress, and risk alter their behavior so it’s almost impossible for a role-player to portray a character under similar conditions. The Tension Pool imposes a rising and falling awareness of time, risk, and stress and tricks the players’ brains into playing characters as they’d behave under actual stress conditions. Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Dec 28, 2023 |
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Dec 28, 2023 01:03
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sebmojo posted:Also if you do a favour for someone appropriate you might get another town point to spend on specific things, e.g. rescue a merchants son and get a shopping point. And if there are risky things then roll d4 plus remaining town points to avoid trouble. Neat idea! Oh nice. Both good additions. My hope is that aside from other bonuses, this creates a sort of reinforcing loop for an exploration-focused campaign where the players are eager to get back to a town to rest/be-safe, but there's always something pushing them back out.
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Dec 28, 2023 02:34
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Also just saw this and felt like a really neat gimmick for a power-based combat system like 4e https://x.com/SprintingOwl/status/1740134930087383053?s=20
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Dec 28, 2023 03:44
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Cantorsdust posted:Yeah fronts are another good way to do this. Right. There's part of me that still wants to do a Kingmaker campaign at some point...but as I've thought about it more, the tension of hexploration and exploring the edges of the Stolen Lands against the Town/Kingdom building seems not great. I'd love to do a campaign that's all about exploring. I'd love to do one that's about kingdom building. I sort of think the meta-mechanics for each are probably going to be at odds. Also- as someone who's started a lot of failed campaigns, I've really come around on how much you need to think through exactly what you're saying and how you're going to execute something that seems like a basic principle that people should get. "This campaign is about traveling and not staying in towns." Ok does that mean there won't be towns? Will the players be punished if they're in a town? Am I expecting the players to just know to leave? I now know that I have to reallllllly think through what I'm saying with stuff like that, or it'll leave all the players imagining their own thing.
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Dec 29, 2023 00:35
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Ok question for people who do a lot of worldbuilding and lore stuff: are there any recommended formats for doing summaries of Kingdoms and Cultures? I'm sort of thinking about doing one of those year long create-a-X challenges in 2024 for a campaign I've been kicking around in my head for the last few months.
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Dec 29, 2023 00:40
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Any good articles or blog posts people have read regarding architecture in fantasy settings? Particularly: -Some "architecture for idiots" info to help people think about what could be important or interesting in defining a culture's style -best practices in describing architecture during games to help highlight and differentiate places
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Dec 30, 2023 05:23
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Had a bit of an idea hit me today on a mechanic I'd like to use at some point...but I'll likely never flesh it out and maybe someone here will take it and run with it. I think I posted an idea about how to do group skill checks with those Star Wars/ Warhammer FRG 3e dice and it didn't get dumped on too bad here...so maybe this goes just as well --- One of the little problems I've been chewing on for a while is how I'd make rituals interesting in a d20-ish game. I like the idea of rituals: big spells that should have big meaning in the world and on the game. But I feel like whenever I see them in rulebooks or in action they fall flat. Lots of reasons for that: lots of assumptions about d20 play tend to give rituals a short hand, high level spells tend to squat in to what I'd consider ritual turf, and lots of stories and settings don't have much use for them. But one other thing I see as an issue: casting a ritual doesn't feel interesting or distinct. It's just another role usually. Maybe a few rolls bundled up as an extended skill challenge, which I have plenty of issues with as a mechanic. And maybe there's some ritual cost, or the GM puts a component macguffin at the bottom of a dungeon, but overall the casting of a ritual doesn't stick out as a moment of play. It's just part of the big non-combat wall of stuff saggy skill checks. So this system is intended to make rituals stick out and feel like a unique moment for the players. purpose:
Other Stuff (pre-reqs, out of scope, etc):
The Big Idea: Rituals are ranked in difficulty, and assigned a Tarot Card hand that need to be met in order to cast. The players need to assemble that hand at the time of the ritual in order to cast it. The players have a few sources to pull their cards from though: they get a few environmental cards that are laid out by the GM and change slowly as the game progresses, they collect some earned cards from defeating major enemies or engaging in roleplay outside of the ritual, and then during the ritual they draw cards randomly. IF the group can't meet the ritual's success requirements, it fails- and the fail state will usually be something other than "nothing happens". To give the players a little more control at the time of casting, any player can opt to discard their drawn card, and have their PC take a unique condition based off the card, to draw a new one. Every player can do this once during a casting. Rituals: so aside from flavor description and what happens when the ritual is cast successfully, each ritual would include 2 details 1) The hand- this would be similar to a poker hand, growing in rarity/difficulty with the relative hardness of the ritual. A "basic" teleport spell to move the group 100 miles back to a known place might require a pair (2 wands/cups/etc) and a single major arcana to cast. A more advanced ritual to revive a dead character may require 1 card of each suit and a major arcana. An archmagus level ritual to open the portal for Asmodeus to step on to earth and conquer may require specifically Death, Heirophant, Hanged Man, Tower, and World cards specifically. Getting this hand (and for now, it's this hand specifically...maybe the rule could be that hand or a more valuable one like in poker) 2) Failure- if a ritual fails in this system, something happens. It might be to the players, or to the story. For teleportation, the ritual takes the group 1/2 the planned distance in a random direction. For revival, failure may destroy the body, or raise it as a zombie, or cause another life to be extinguished to revive this one. Failing the Asmodeus summing ritual? You better believe that sends the ritual leader to hell. The Players' Hand: Ok so the group knows they're going to want to use teleport in the near future to get back to their home base and rest up. They have some options to plan ahead before the ritual. Environmental Cards: environmental cards are 2 or 3 cards that the GM controls and are always available to the players for their ritual hand. These cards don't go away, but they should rotate based on something. The idea here is to sort of weave this system in to the background of the world, and to tailor it to the system and campaign you're running. Some ideas I had while chewing on this. -Moon Phase card: every time the players take downtime, this card changes. It just represents the slow changing of fate and magic over time. Here it might make sense for the card to change on a defined pattern, like the phase always goes sword-cup-pentacle-wand...and maybe every 4 cycles it is a random major arcana -Local Ley-Line card: this is a card that changes as the players move from region to region in the game world, and represents the local magical powers. This feels like a place where trying to tie the "meaning" of tarot cards to the game world could be fun -Curse card: a special card the GM can use in more grim games or games that feature more magical antagonists. This card is a card the GM can swap in to the players' played cards to cause them to fail Earned Cards: earned cards are collected as another reward for the PCs as they play the game. This is intended to give them a pool of resources to use, and some stability/predictability in their ritual casting. This helps lightly link the ritual mechanics in to the rest of play. Earned cards could come from a few places, depending on the focus of the system. -Defeating elite enemies -Hitting quest milestones -Successful scrounge/forage actions while exploring -Resolving a disagreement or conflict with another PC The GM has to manage a bit of a balance here though- the players should have a few (2-3) cards in reserve at most, or else it'll make the actual ritual casting an afterthought. Casting the Ritual: So the players will have 2-3 environmental cards to call on, and maybe 2-3 earned cards they can spend. for a basic ritual, they might be able to just complete the casting based on those, if they don't mind spending their earned cards. But let's maybe assume they haven't earned any cards yet, and the environmental cards aren't enough on their own. All the PCs that participate in the ritual can draw a card from the full tarot deck (we're not going to try and manage all the environmental cards or earned cards being removed). Maybe wizards or characters that want to invest in feats can get a "ritual expert" feat and draw 2 cards and keep 1. Once all the players have cards, they can coordinate to try to play a hand that matches the needed hand for the ritual. If they can do that immediately, then they're all set. If not, they fail and the GM manages the ritual's particular failure mechanic. The players are afforded another point of action and control though- if their initial cards don't allow for a successful ritual. Each player may opt to discard their card and draw a new one. However, there is a consequence for this. The discard imparts a non-permanent but lasting consequence to the PC. This is one of the points I'd like to lean in on the meaning of the cards, to give this a bit of flavor. Some examples of what I'm getting at there: -Discarding a Wands card saps the character of willpower and energy for some time. For the next X hours (x equaling the value of the card, aces being 1 and face cards being 10), the suffers the fatigued condition or takes a -1 to will saving throws or etc etc -Discarding The Star leads the PC to experience faithlessness and insecurity. For the next day, any beneficial spells from a divine source that affect them cannot critically succeed, any and divine healing heals 1 less hitpoint per level of the spell. So anyways, that's been an idea kicking around in my head for 2-3 days. If I didn't post it here it'd probably just live on a google doc somewhere and never get used. No idea if some system already has something like this. If there is something out there, I'd bet even money it's Ars Magica . For myself, part of the inspiration came from reading some of the work Josh McCroo has been doing on his Tarot-centric dungeoncrawler His Majesty The Worm and simply thinking "oh, tarot cards! That'd be cool to use for rituals!" But also as I worked out the system I realized I was sort of hacking the original Huckster casting rules from Deadlands 1e.
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Apr 14, 2024 03:15
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sebmojo posted:That's extremely cool, I'd definitely be interested in the written up version if you do it. Thanks I suppose next step is I need to either find someone who's worked out tarot deck hand probabilities for different sized hands, or try to refresh myself on probability math that I barely understood 20 years ago lol.
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Apr 14, 2024 14:36
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Silver2195 posted:PF2 is really bad about this. Not only are rituals all gated behind the Uncommon tag, but the relatively high DCs to cast them (which the rulebooks suggest could be reduced by situational plot devices) are effectively a way of adding an extra level of GM fiat on top of that. To be fair, this fits PF2's design philosophy of not, by default, giving the players forms of agency that can completely derail Adventure Path plots. I'm pretty much only playing PF2 right now and it's definitely a big reason I decided I decided to make rituals a system I wanted to play with. And yeah- I think they have a uniquely frustrating approach to adventure and adventure path design :-/
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Apr 19, 2024 00:50
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Ok I tried to refresh my handle of probability and combinatorics, and I've realized I am not going to be able to do this on my own. Also I just don't trust AI on this, I'm not finding a lot posts that seem to lay out this case, so I suspect copilot or whatever will just go find poker hand probabilities and send them back to me. I might search fiver for someone who might pull together some probabilities. Basically I want to make sure I'm coming up with a system that has reasonable success chances. A basic ritual should probably be able to succeed 65% of the time or more, the next level more around 50%, and so on downward in ~15% increments.
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Apr 19, 2024 03:22
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Cantorsdust posted:If you're doing 15% increments, then maybe a simple d6? First ritual succeeds if you roll a 4 or lower, second if 3 or lower, third if 2 or lower, etc? That'd be the most direct way for sure- and in part I'm picking ~15% increments because I feel like that tends to be a good increment in DCs for a lot of F20 games. But I'm trying to do this with tarot cards and hands based on a few reasons that can be sort of summarized as "I want this to feel different from the usual dice rolling for combat and skill checks"
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Apr 19, 2024 03:42
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Cantorsdust posted:Oh, I didn't get the context. Assuming a Tarot deck of 78 cards with the major and minor arcanas: Thanks! would be interested to see what you suggest edit- Actually looking at your suggestions I think that could fit pretty well in the design I'm considering (although I have to admit having played a bunch of Balatro recently, the idea of using poker hands remains appealing to me). I like the idea of the players going around drawing cards from the deck one at a time. If they all draw minor arcana up to the ritual level (a basic ritual maybe is 2 cards, intermediate is 3, etc) then the ritual is a success. If they get a major, then yeah it goes wrong. Only problem with this approach is that I want a couple cards to be drawn even on a basic ritual because I want to make sure most of the players get involved every time. BUT if I allow for wildcards or substitutions (example- the wizard and cleric get a feat to always draw 2 cards and can choose which to use, the group can "earn" cards from defeating enemies and a player can opt to use one of those cards over what they drew as long as the group agrees, etc etc), then that might balance out some of the diminishing chances of drawing 3-4-5-6 cards. Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 04:03
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There's two ways I can see approaching major arcana in this: 1) major arcana are all unique special snowflakes, throwing a wrench in more complex hand design because they eat up 20% of the deck and can't be used for pairs, flushes, etc etc etc 2) treat major arcana as a weird 5th suit where the rank order is defined on a table somewhere. EX Fool = 1 World =2 ... ... ... Hierophant = 13 Death = 14 Or whatever. I suspect there's probably some tarot instruction guide that does rankings like that out there. This does allow for more poker/etc options, but it does make the tarot deck feel a lot more like an oversized playing card deck, which is a little disappointing.
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Apr 19, 2024 04:51
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Also, just to give some sense of what I'm imagining for rituals here, as that might help people think through how the mechanics could work. Teleportation Description: the group spends 15 minutes making incantations and ritually creating a connection between an anchoring talisman from their target location and their current location. This ritual must be performed outdoors, and only the active willing participants will be teleported. Their anchoring talisman is left behind. Difficulty Level: teleporting 50 miles is a basic difficulty ritual (65% success rate or better) and increases in level (-15% success rate) for every 50 miles beyond that Failure: If the group fails in the ritual casting, the GM rolls a D12, and uses that as a clock direction from their target destination. The GM then draws a path along that direction for 1/2 the distance of the initial teleport ritual. The PCs are transported there*, or an appropriate nearby point of interest (within 5-10 miles). Other notes: An individual may only participate in one teleportation ritual a week Exorcism Description: After defeating a spirit or demon, the group gathers the target's body and/or fetishes and soaks them in lavender and oil for 30 minutes. The ground where the spirit/demon was defeated is marked with the runes of Invantenese using red salt, and then burned. Finally, the weapon used to defeat the spirit or demon is buried in to the ground, no less than 1 foot deep. Difficulty Level: This is a basic ritual for a spirit or demon of level 1-5, intermediate for levels 6-10, advanced for 11-15, and archmagus for levels 16-20 Failure: A small portion of the demon or spirit escapes the ritual, but has to find a living anchor to survive. Pick a random spell or power the spirit possessed, and pick a random living entity in the vicinity (1 mile radius). That entity now possesses that power/spell, and a deep dislike of the PCs if they meet them. Restore Life Description: Bringing a corpse in good condition to an appropriate holy space, the ritualists submerge the body in holy water for 5 days, along with their 3 most important possessions. Hymns to the godesses of death and birth must be sung every hour, and offerings to every major star made each night. Difficulty Level: This is an advanced ritual for a body that has recently (2 weeks) passed and is generally whole. A archmagus level ritual can be attempted for bodies that passed within the past year, or were largely destroyed in or after death. There is surely no ritual to bring back anyone who has been dead for more than 1 year, all the priests agree. Failure: The GM picks or rolls from the table below
Another big part of this effort is going through and giving rituals interesting failure conditions- meaning something more than "it doesn't work" or "it backfires to the point you wish you hadn't even cast it" As I type some of these out, I also realize this system could benefit from scaling failures. Like in exorcism- each trump card could mean another creature is affected by the escaping spirit. Or for Restore Life, multiple failures cause a few NPCs to die, and the players take a HP hit, and the restored character comes back w/ a curse...
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Apr 19, 2024 05:34
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I’ll admit I was going to avoid doing normal/upside down meanings as it felt like it’d be even more work
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Apr 19, 2024 18:30
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Air Skwirl posted:Yeah, if you were going to do the work of having individual events effects for each of the major arcana, having two for each seems like way too much on top of that. An idea I had was something like that. If I took Cantorsdust's resolution mechanic, I was imagining that each Major Arcana would have some sort of standard effect. Most negative but temporary. Maybe 1-2 of them would be positive. And the idea I'm thinking is that the Major Arcana causes the ritual to fail (activating the ritual's failure rules) BUT the player who drew the Arcana could opt to 'take the hit' of the Trump and be hit with that Arcana's particular effect. Most of the effects I'd try to loosely base on the reverse meaning of the Trumps. EX: Fool- Recklessness/Duped- The next time the PC enters combat their first action must be to charge towards the enemy, OR the next time an NPC has to make a deception check against the PC it automatically succeeds, whichever comes first. Justice- unaccountability/dishonesty- In the next day, the PC is compelled to lie about something. The PC is under reverse Liar Liar rules, and cannot confess the lie until after the day has ended. If the PC is not in a position to lie for a day, they take 5 + [PC level] of damage, which can be healed through any normal means. The GM is the final arbiter of when the day has passed. Hanged Man- stalling, needless sacrifice- For next day, any time the PC rolls initiative, they are moved to the bottom of the initiative order regardless of the results. The PC can end this curse by opting to use a free reaction to "needlessly sacrifice", triggered by an enemy hitting and damaging an ally. The PC can opt to take that damage + [PC level] in damage as a needless sacrifice. These might need to be tuned up a bit since I think most of them are no-brainers to take as a debuff, but basically they can't be so painful that it leads to players never casting a ritual.
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Apr 19, 2024 23:35
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