|
My players are all D&D vets of past editions. In our current campaign and first time DMing for these guys, I'm trying the open-world thing. So on the subject of railroading vs open games... Near the beginning of my campaign, after some introductory sessions, they are 3rd level and had a number of options for what to do next. Besides their own personal quests, there was rumors of a young swamp dragon allied with lizardmen, a town ruled by a vampire and another town taken by slavers. With 4e, whatever they chose to tackle first would be perfectly fine, I can easily use level-appropriate monsters. So basically my players are giant pussies. They are still in the pre-4e mindset that certain death is around every corner, despite being 13 sessions in without a single player death. Their thought process went like this: well, dragons sound too tough for our level, we wont go to the swamp. A vampire is also way above our level. Lets do the slaver town, we can probably handle that. Its annoying and they continue to think about things on a level basis even when I call them out on it. And in a funny way, its a self-fulfilling prophecy: they level up doing the other quests first, making the dragon higher level when they eventually faced it. The last session they found a 'Loadstone of the Planes', which tells the direction to the nearest portal to the Shadowfell. I've written a whole adventure about this portal and whats on the other side, which has major story bearing on the campaign. Reaction from the players after looting it: whoa whoa whoa, the Plane of Shadows is way too high level for us. Lets not use that stone or we may die. Instead they went off to do other things. Long story short, I railroaded them with a McGuffin that could only be destroyed on 'another plane', which an NPC refused to give them because they couldnt possibly handle planar travel. Greed is a nice motivator, so they finally use the Loadstone and are ready to take the McGuffin to be destroyed on the only other plane they can get to. Finally I get to use my adventure, several sessions after I planned to. So they travel out to the drat portal, get in a battle with some guardians, then decide to sleep right outside the portal so they can go in 'fresh' (ie they blew all their Dailys on one easy encounter). Not about to let them get away with that, they are ambushed at night and driven into the portal as the only way to escape. And thats where our last session left off...sometimes you have to railroad a bit. ritorix fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Jul 7, 2009 |
#
¿
Jul 7, 2009 06:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:03 |
|
|
Hey Arrrr. For world building I like to give the major exceptions to the genre, the bullet points that differentiate your world from a generic one. Explain those important details but don't infodump on players. Say you are doing a D&D game in a world with no gods and the elves are villains. Explain those two points before a player gets their heart set on playing an elven cleric. But you don't have to explain that dwarves live in mountains and mine things, that is generic to the genre. I tend to roughly outline the setting and make details up on the spot, but if you are doing a specific setting you might need lists or references handy. Say you are running a game in ancient Rome, it helps to have a list of cities and names handy so even random NPCs have the correct feel. You could add Softrope as an audio tool. I use it with soundtracks from things like Skyrim and soundbites from http://www.freesound.org/ - a good place for screams, bumps in the night, whatever. You blend it together into a sound scene, so for a sewer scene you might play an eerie soundtrack with running water sounds, the occasional random squeaks of rats and, rarely, a distant monster roar.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2012 23:56
|
|
|
God Of Paradise posted:Does anyone have advice as to how to convert D&D 3.5 into a more strategic/urban plotting and scheming role playing game rather than a hack and slash? You don't have to 'convert' anything. Just stat up some NPCs and make a plot. This guy is a doppleganger replacement for XYZ evil guild. That guy is a polymorphed dragon running the such and such cartel. The players start out working for a beholder and don't know it. Just flesh the game out. Define about five factions with basic goals for each, have the players start working for one, plot will happen. Sembia is a great setting for something like that. It's a huge merchant nation with a seedy underbelly of slave trading and whatnot. The little blurb on Saerloon in the campaign guide lists like 5 factions at play right off the bat. You should be fine.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2012 19:16
|
|
|
P.d0t posted:For perspective, I am thinking of using lines of lyrics from music or else scenes from movies to set the tone. I am planning to have a friendly Bard NPC accompanying the party most of the time, so I could have him coming up with random lyrical musings that he "can't quite explain where they came from" as an alternative. Or use actual music, I've had a lot of success using softrope to set up scenes. Sound files can come from movie soundtracks or sites like freesound for monster screams or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2013 18:37
|
|
|
Tendales posted:You know, now I kind of want to put together a game where the players collectively are responsible for a poorly-trained nigh-uncontrollable murderbeast. They can't stop it, they can't get rid of it, all they can do is try and channel it for more or less positive ends. I vaguely remember an old adventure where your boss tells you to go to market and pickup some merchandise he bought. It's a lizard with a bag over its head. The guy hands you the critter and says whatever you do don't take off the bag. The rest of the adventure is getting little baby basilisk back home while rivals or whatever try to get it. Maybe it was a cockatrice.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2013 22:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:03 |
|
|
P.d0t posted:Should I take this as a hint that no one gives a gently caress and call the whole thing off? Take that as your chance to run whatever the gently caress you want. Always wanted to run a pirate game? Players are all monsters defending their lair from nasty adventurers? Whatever, do it up. At worst they will start telling you what they want.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2013 23:36
|
|