Nanja Monja posted:

I'm a first-time DM running Pathfinder for some MMO friends. Since we're all pretty new to pen and paper games, it's mostly hack'n'slash. While everyone's having fun, I've made some stupid mistakes and there are some things I'm not sure how to deal with.

The wizard (an evoker ) only prepares direct damage spells. He uses all his highest level spells on the first monsters the party encounters, and then plinks away at the bosses with force missiles. Also, he's been complaining that his AC is too low compared to the rest of the party. I asked him why he doesn't use scrolls of mage armor - I've given him a bunch! Apparently it'd be a waste since the scrolls "only" last for an hour.

The rogue has ridiculously high acrobatics and could probably tumble past anyone's CMD to flank and get sneak attacks, but insists on sneaking up on enemies in the middle of combat. He sneaks up on enemies by running behind a tree (we use maptool), rolling for stealth and then walking right back out thinking stealth works like in Neverwinter Nights. I gave him an amulet that lets him turn invisible for one round twice per day to get him to stop doing this, but he never uses it in case he needs it later.

This fear of wasting resources kind of runs through the entire party - they've all got a bunch of potions and the paladin has a wand of cure light wounds, but they almost never use any of them in case they'd be wasted. In the first somewhat-lengthy dungeon they went through, they spent all their resources fighting a sealed chamber full of ghouls and then a group of gnolls and their leader. With the wizard having something like 3 hp and everyone else around half their max, they pressed on to fight the actual boss, a sea hag who'd been abducting villagers to eat or whatever.

I had planned for the sea hag to ride a giant lobster and call for help from another group of gnolls. I didn't want to get a TPK so early in the campaign, so I turned the sea hag into a joke boss, whose harmless lobster only swam around as she threw sea urchins at the party chasing her in a rowboat. In the end the fighter died, but everyone else made it.

Should I have let them get the entire party killed? I'm not sure if I should try to adapt to their unwillingness to use consumables or not, but I just can't seem to change their minds about it. I've directly told them after a session that they should use their items, and while they all agreed that they should they still don't.

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

I'm kind of the opposite of MohawkSatan; As a GM I did virtually no pre-planning in terms of storylines and adventures. In my free time I did a lot of stuff that could be considered "homework" - I built NPCs, worked on setting details, and the like - but I never wrote out an actual adventure. Instead I just tried to have as good a sense of the setting and the goings-on as I could, so that when I asked my players what they wanted to do, I could have a good idea of how people and things might react and change in response to their answers.

Honestly, "how much work is involved" varies from group to group and GM to GM. Some are much more comfortable with winging it, like me; some like more planning, like MohawkSatan. So you really kind of have to find the answer to that one yourself. One guideline I find helpful is that the more powerful the characters and the more narrative control you're willing to give the players, the easier it'll be for a 'seat of the pants' type GM; if your PCs are meeting in a tavern to go adventure in a dungeon so they can get rich, you don't want to make up the dungeon off the top of your head, but if your PCs are capable of saying 'you know what, I think we'll go undermine the corrupt government of that city-state today, that sounds neat' without any prompting from you, then it's best to run with it and let 'em.

gradenko_2000 posted:

As a GM, how much leeway can/should I have to play a game that I want?

Say, if I advertised for a 3.5E/PF game with only Barbarians, Fighters, Monks and Rogues are allowed, or a B/X game without the Thief, or telling the players going in that I'm going to be banning certain spells?

I keep thinking it's like a free-market thing where if I'm being unreasonable then no one will sign up in the first place, but I'm trying to account for the fact that there might be far less GMs than there are players and maybe I'm being a dick. I try to tell myself that I'm doing this because I think it's going to make for a better experience - I try to handle as much of the admin for the players as possible, and dealing with huge spell lists just gives me a headache, same with not wanting to saddle players with an inferior class, trying to improve balance, and so on and so forth, but maybe that's just a rationalization.

Guildencrantz posted:

The group have to participate in some bizarre local wedding custom.

TheTofuShop posted:

In my experience, Players ignore all story hooks, kill important npcs, and decide to do things like "eat the holy bread that is literally god."

Basically, I've discovered that less is always more, and that it's best to just let your players just make the story as they go.

Davin Valkri posted:

That sounds like one of the spaceships from Tenshi Muyo. If I remember correctly, it's some space criminal's intergalactic starship that can turn into a cat-rabbit hybrid when landed. Maybe you could use something like that?

chaos rhames posted:

If a giant crab had a city on it, would it be cooler if it was built straight on top of it or connected in a hermit-crab style shell?

Olesh posted:

What I'm saying is that more people should use the surprise round liberally instead of debating edge cases, and accept that sometimes characters get an advantage out of it.

Reveilled posted:

My group rolls initiative (which I’d consider “combat” to be synonymous with) any time someone in a scene takes an action someone else might reasonably wish to prevent.

sebmojo posted:

i mean sure it's a technical rules question but if i was that player i'd be like why is the submicron law ruler being applied to my situationally useful talent the one time it's actually useful, rather than the guy who can snap his fingers and summon 3 black dragons

nessin posted:

I'm playing out an exercise in learning how to manage/note take a campaign, basically taking Curse of Stradh and re-writing it in short form notes (seriously why in the world are all the modern D&D, including third party and Pathfinder, adventures so wordy?). Figured I could double it up as eventual material if I ever wanted to try and run it under a different system so not entirely just a learning effort.

Going through the book and cutting it down is fairly simple but I've just bene using a combination of Google Spreadsheets and Docs, which has generally been okay but I imagine there is a better way of doing this and there are a few problems I've ran info that I can imagine a better solution exists. The two main things I'm looking for:

1) Since this is a D&D module with everything mapped out, I kind of want to just take a map and annotate it with some pins that I can edit the notes for. I know a couple ways I can do that using office products certainly not suited for that but I feel like there has to be an easy option for this in the RPG sphere. Or as an alternative a tool for keying in something and having an output that can be printed afterwards. Not directly listing everything on the map/image, just keying the image with note numbers and then additional pages with the note details in a standard key entry format.

2) Something I can use for note taking that can quickly link things together. I know I could do something with OneNote which I use at work, but don't have at home. I've seen the the Notion.so tool used by the Lazy GM author, which is probably what I'll try out unless someone here can recommend an alternative. Mostly looking to either simplify re-using ideas/characters/notable objects/traps/so on or creating on-going notes for something I might use more than once, like say notes on running a Vaesen monster so I could have one entry for a monster and just link back to that whenever I want to use it instead of filling in everything in an individual adventures notes or copying them forward.

Fidel Cuckstro posted:

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.

Admiralty Flag posted:

The die jar is a neat mechanical solution to the "town problem," but if your plot allows it, you could as a result of a 6/in addition to the roll allow news of a known/potential threat advancing their nefarious plans to reach the players, and intimate that in general that no one else might care enough/be powerful enough/have the focus to deal with the threat. ("Disaster! The bandit lord Fertingoxar's men have raided Fairhaven, a mere two days' travel along the Forest Road. Reports are sketchy, but they apparently made off with some of the villagers' livestock and killed several bodied defenders. No doubt that blackguard will be emboldened by his success, especially as the Duke doesn't have a standing militia in this part of the Vale.")

This is of course just stealing fronts from PbtA games.

Golden Bee posted:

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.

Agrikk posted:

Anyone have recommendations for narrative descriptions of battles being fought between large armies (100,000+ per side) in which spell-users are involved?


We might be heading towards a reckoning in my campaign in which the spell using army of the good guys will be fighting the spell-using bad guys and I'd like to be able to convey the tactics employed by spell using armies to my PCs who most likely won't be directly involved. I'd like for my description of the battle to be more than lighting bolts and fireballs tossed around, but more interesting use of illusionary terrain, walls of stone/ice/fire, stone to mud, how magic could enhance or hinder battlefield logistics and communications, etc. I'd also like to see the tactics and counter tactics of spell users and what a mundane army might do to protect its casters.

Any suggestions or articles/books to read?

Agrikk posted:

I'll be throwing them into a position where they'll need to stop the fighting, because every death is one step closer to the liberation of whatever is in the prison. Alternately, they need to teach the spirits in the Upside Down how to fight better in order to win the spirit battle in the upside down so babies can be born instead of winter elves and boost the global population of humans up past the critical point.

Squidster posted:

EDIT: Or take it the opposite direction, and costume a squad of hardbitten veterans as the tackiest mages imaginable. Taxidermied raven on the shoulder, rhinestone bucklers, a bandolier of wands, everyone carrying a suspiciously fancy walking stick. There's a lot of fun imagery in there.

road potato posted:

Some way that they can use dice and game mechanics to solve a problem, but I'm totally drawing a blank and don't want to just spend two hours talking and traveling.

Anybody have any suggestions?

PharmerBoy posted:

Anyone have good advice/think-pieces with regards to pacing, moving scenes along, and ending them? Particularly in the context of a more investigative campaign.

I've come to realize my regular players are prone to seriously dragging things out. Turn over every rock, poke & prod NPCs every which way they can imagine, re-hash info. For my part, in this realization I recognized I've also been bad about just letting them do so, and not driving the pace of a scene myself when needed. When I realized this mid-session and tried to end a scene (just them futzing about their quarters before bed, in a way so inconsequential I can not remember what it was), I ended up with a waterfall of "Wait, I do X," "And then I'm gonna do Y," and so forth. I've been pretty lax about it, figuring I should let them investigate at their own pace, but I just took a step back and realized the short interlude scenario (3-6 sessions) we're doing between larger campaigns has been going months. Its draining my enthusiasm to continuing running a game, so something's got to be done. I haven't explicitly talked with the other players yet, but plan to once I've got a firmer idea of what I'm looking for in direction.

Our last campaign was Blades in the Dark, which took the problem out of our hands by forcing action, and we all would try to keep to a pace of finishing up a heist by the end of the game night. Considering just laying things out for players at the start of the night along the lines of "By the end of tonight (real time), you should be X much further along in game," but that doesn't feel ideal to me. Wondering what other people have done.

Pantaloon Pontiff posted:

And if just doing a 'cut away' doesn't work, you can use prophetic vision if there's magic, gods, psychic powers, or the like in the setting. It's pretty typical in fantasy settings for gods to be limited in their ability to intervene directly, but be able to send dreams or visions to guide people. I'm always amazed at how many DMs don't tap into this as a way to get the players information to move the campaign forward and give context to what's happening in the campaign.

Arglebargle III posted:

Thanks for your advice on villain exposition. I created a couple characters at odds with the villain leadership and had one of them call the players.

She used a secret spy-bug the players had planted on them unawares quite a ways back in order to try to get them to go away and leave the villains alone. Well they get this whole holographic message played to them by the little coin-sized machine with metal bug legs that appears out of nowhere. (It crawled out from inside one of the players' capes where it's been hiding for months.) One of the players then picks it up and no kidding puts it in his pocket, and then they have a long conversation about how to trap the villains' ship so it can't escape or hide. Then as soon as they put their plan in action, the villains know exactly what they're doing, and the players are wondering out loud how they knew...

Boogan posted:

I'm running a campaign set in the Forgotten Realms and I've introduced a mechanic called Shards of Madness. A player with a Shard of Madness can "spend" it like an Inspiration Point, granting Advantage, but doing so requires them to roll on the Long-Term Madness table.

My first Shards were granted for trying to read text from the Far Realm. I'm wondering if any of y'all wicked creative goons have any ideas of other things that might inject some Lovecraftian madness into someone?

Agrikk posted:

CzarChasm posted:

I really like this, but crank it up to ludicrous and you have a way to damage or hurt the library (or the whole system).

It's magic based, so rather than needing to confiscate physical materials and have a scribe make a copy, the library has an enchantment that can magically read and copy any written material. You bring in a book, the library senses it, reads it and in some corner gets to work making a copy of that book.

Agrikk posted:

That’s just it: I don’t know who she is. And I’m asking for ideas on how she should act and what her desires are.

I kinda feel like a book author.

Agrikk posted:

All I really know is that she has two driving motivators: gratitude at being rescued and cleaned up and jealousy that she failed at her quest and got to watch the next person succeed while she was drugged and abused for years.

Morrow posted:

So the first thing that comes to mind beyond just the CEO getting crushed to death is for him to be 3d printed, and still alive, into a door or another part of the mansion. The AI starts experimenting with organic raw materials so it's 3d printing the employees into human furniture. And they're either insane and trying to kill the PCs or maybe begging for death.

In terms of wrapping it up, just as the AI needs to print parts of the mansion, it needs to demolish parts in order to recover the materials. So the final boss is some giant construction bot when you decide the session is done, which is a big threat to the PCs but also exposes the inner workings because it lets them get "outside" the mansion.

Arglebargle III posted:

My players continue to throw me for a loop. They now have their light cruiser pacified, and I was planning to have them tow it back and launch into a siege episode where they would have to rush through its repairs in order to fend off an invasion. Or maybe they could go do a mystery adventure if they're not ready to go home. But now they want to stash it in deep space and go home! So there's not really any narrative hook, they just want to regroup and now if I fire the siege plot their new ship won't be threatened. They keep foiling all my plans...