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Kali11324 posted:I have been scrounging around for good resources. My friends and I play in a modern spy setting. I does anyone have a good place to get rpg maps of normal places like office buildings, airports, police stations, houses, mansions etc? When I was running a Top Secret campaign (remember that game?) I contacted the local library who put me in touch with the local Historical Society. It turned out that they had tons of blueprints of old mansions, buildings and whatnot that they let me buy copies of. Plus the local urban planning office of Public Works has great blueprints of parks and so forth for your outdoor encounters. It takes a bit of work and a little bit of cash for the copies, but there was nothing cooler than a bunch of players standing around a table looking at a blueprint of an old mansion to build the vibe that a bunch of secret agents and catburglars were standing around a blueprint of an old mansion planning a hit on the Big Bad Guy. That caper was killer because every door, window, nook and cranny was detailed to scale. That night loving rocked with agents leaping through windows, cutting through skylights, and whatnot. also, I think the newer (read: very old) Top Secret S.I. boxed set had a large sheet of generic places mapped to scale, like office buildings, residential homes, car parks and city streets. Check it out on eBay.
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Dec 21, 2010 20:29
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CHaKKaWaKka posted:Are there any published adventures that are mostly based around arena/gladiatorial combat? Any system. Not even necessarily adventures, I'd take articles and any advice as well. My players have expressed an interest in a gladiatorial style campaign, probably in Pathfinder 2e. I think if the campaign revolves around just arena combat and then some political intrigue it's going to get boring and repetitive quick. Ideally I'd find a way to mix arena combat with exploration and adventuring, but part of the appeal for them is to do the whole Spartacus thing so I'm scratching my head at how to mix the two. The one idea I had is maybe they've been marked by a god and the god occasionally summons them to take parts in fights in order to train them, and then they're just set free and can spend their time trying to figure out what the gently caress this god wants or see if there's a way to block their number. Have a look at Dragon Magazine issue 118 and Dragon Magazine issue 303. These two issues have tons of rules about gladiators. Tons of rules about armor and fighting styles, opponents, chariot races, fate of defeated fighters, magic duels, designing tournaments, etc. (Hosting is mine so no leeching worries) Question: how do you handle downtime between adventures in your campaigns? Once upon a time I ran a Twilight:2000 campaign and when it was all over it turned out that, in-game, my PCs had been in a firefight every day for three months straight. While it was fun for my (violent) players it seemed insane that that was the pace of things. Moving on to a decade later, I've recently started a Rolemaster campaign set in fantasy not-Siberia that is loosely based and inspired by Angmar, land of the Witch King and WoW Wrath of the Lich King. The players found themselves in a mountainous mining town up above the arctic circle and are wrapping up a short summer and looking at a long, cold, dark winter. Playing summertime was no problem because the PCs were dead-set on living well through the winter so they busted their assess adventuring and getting established in the trade industry so they could earn enough money to buy a house and provisions and servants to live through the nine month winter comfortably. The game sessions were packed and the players had this great sense of urgency because October was the begging of winter and starving- or freezing to death was a very real possibility. But now they have silver on account with the Merchant's Guild, provisions laid down in their permafrost-chilled basement, and a sturdy house to protect them from the winter and I have nine months of downtime to fill. Sure, I have a notebook full of plot hooks and ideas on how to advance things but it's the middle of September in-game, the first snow doesn't come until early October and my plot stuff depends on there to be snow on the ground and the passes to be closed and travel otherwise hampered. In my mind, I had the next "plot-advancing thing" to happen at the end of October, when the snow lies thick on the ground, the polar night was coming for the next two months and the winter beasties were out and about. I could just say "Okay, you've survived the summer and have provisions for the winter. Let's just say it's a month later when the snow has fallen. What would you do for a month of downtime?" but that feels empty somehow. Is that a legit storytelling tactic that y'all have used? Have you advanced in-game time in a different way somehow? Agrikk fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 17:31
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sebmojo posted:who wants what the pcs have? Lifted wholesale from A Fistful of Dollars the town has multiple mining and trading cartels. With the arrival of the PCs and their murderhobo trading, they've become a threat to the established order of the guilds. The three most powerful guilds have decided that the PCs are a threat to be eliminated. sebmojo posted:who wants the pcs on their side? Two of the trading houses are all but running on vapors due to the three major trading houses squashing them. They are planning on an alliance with the PCs in an effort to regain their former wealth and glory. sebmojo posted:who wants to gently caress the pcs up because they hate them? One of my PCs is incredibly superstitious and has a problem with crossing any kind of border or threshold without paying respects to the spirits of the place. When they took possession of their (first) house he forgot to pay respects when crissing the doorway for the first time. In an effort to appease the gods and purify the house they sacrificed a goat but rolled a critical failure on the "appease spirits" roll. So the house attracted a spirit from the netherworld who haunted the place. Eventually the PCs burned down the house to be rid of the spirit, but what they did instead was free it to seek revenge. Now this spirit possesses people at random (a la Fallen) and forces them to attack the PCs. So the PCs wander the town and get attacked out of nowhere from random passers-by. They haven't figured out that it is a single entity harassing them. They only know that they keep getting attacked by people wielding sticks and butter knives and rolling pins and blacksmith hammers. sebmojo posted:pick one of each, and have some or all of them act to achieve their goals each month. That's the plan. But my original question was how to manage downtime between events. It's not like all this stuff will be happening every day. In North Brilend time passes slowly in the winter so I figured there'd be 1-3 events a month for the nine months of winter that are "interesting" and/or advance the plot. My question is that there will be a lot of time between these events so should I just speed-game them, saying "$time has passed since your last encounter and until the next noteworthy thing happens. How did you spend that time?"
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Oct 16, 2022 02:12
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I have a world building thing that needs to be fleshed out: In my world of not-Siberia, the mining town of Opal sits nested in the craggy mountains of the Upheaval- a magical cataclysm that erupted from within the earth bursting forth to target and destroy one of the planet's two moons (a la Startkiller Base from Star Wars) over three centuries ago (note: this was done deliberately. More on this at some future date). The resulting rupture in the earth's core created a ring of mountains that rise 25,000 feet over the surrounding plains (Mount Everest looms "only" 9,000 feet up) and will be eroding and collapsing for thousands of years. As an aside, the fragments of the destroyed moon will end up forming a ring around the planet in a few dozen million years, but in the meantime the meteor showers are spectacular and ever present. The Upheaval really scrambled up the earth's crust in the region, making the mining in the area incredibly lucrative and incredibly dangerous from the constant avalanches resulting from the peaks of the Upheaval slowly collapsing. Opal is a town of about 5,000 people, most of whom are in the mining, logistics or merchant industries, mostly human with maybe a few score of elves and half-elves and dwarves tucked away in the corners. It was founded about 50 years ago by some (racist against magic users) prospectors who discovered the wealth in the nearby mountains. About 40 years ago maybe two dozen Duergar showed up who built a fortress of fused stone on the outskirts of town. These Duergar are mysterious and keep to themselves mostly but have offered their services to the town, mainly by using their ability to move through the earth like earth elemental's earth glide ability to scout out veins of ore for the miners of Opal. The Duergar have also created a waterworks within the town, using hydrostatic pressure from melt from a large glacial ravine to move water into the mines to cool them and power lifts and drills and such like and providing warm running water for the town's elite. The Duergar obviously use magic to shape stone, but even the most anti-magic-user citizen can recognize the benefit of the Duergar presence. So the Duergar remain tolerated but shunned. I like the idea of the Duergar remaining mysterious while at the same time helping the town out with construction projects as they pursue their own agenda but what I'm asking all of you is: What was the motivation for the Duergar to show up unannounced on the outskirts of a human settlement on the surface and build a fortress, instead of just keeping to themselves underground? Why do they do the things they do for the town? What do they want? What are their long term goals?
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Oct 20, 2022 23:01
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Inkspot posted:Where does the water go when it's done being used to cool mines and heat baths? The water flows from a dam into the mines where stone heat exchangers heat up the water from the surrounding air. The heated water is then piped out of the mines and flows into houses to be used for radiant heating, washing/bathing, and sauna use. Water then drains from the manor into a viaduct that dumps the greywater into a ravine nearby. The EPA would be proud. habituallyred posted:Where was the Duergar capitol before the eruption? If it was destroyed near Opal that would be a strong incentive to scout ahead of the local miners. And by cultivating good relations with the local miners they can pick up any rumors of found artifacts or crown jewels. This is good! We can put a major Duergar underground city near the Upheaval where it was destroyed 350 years ago. A long time ago Duergar from $another_city mounted a major subterranean expedition to plunder the ruins of the city and 40 years ago discovered the human mining effort. A crew of Duergar showed up to volunteer to "help" with the human mines, when in reality they are steering the mining effort away from any chance of interrupting or discovering the Duergar expedition.
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Oct 21, 2022 01:07
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lightrook posted:I guess the question is, how antagonistic are the duergar supposed to be? Are they meant to be an antagonist, or just a neutral party with possibly diverging interests? The duergar will initially be an aloof and taciturn group of folks, but as the plot progresses they will become an essential ally (mining and smelting magical ore for the big war that'll be eventually coming down the pipe). But they have interests that are their own so a lot of politicking will be necessary to win their favor. I'm thinking "Go kill wolves and bring me ten pelts" for +100 standing. 
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Oct 21, 2022 05:34
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LurchinTard posted:I don't wanna rip straight off from the show, does anyone have any good reading or links about running mysteries? Why not? You don’t have to run a single episode straight through. Why not try combining cool bits from multiple episodes into an amalgam of pastel suits and drug kingpins? By combining and rearranging, you’ll create something new and original even if the episodes you crib from are recognized by your players.
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Oct 25, 2022 04:17
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I mean, if you are going to create a Miami Vice campaign you need to embrace it and not shy away from it. I'm assuming your players are as into Miami Vice as you are (or at least willing to go big on peak 80's style) so giving a nod to your favorite episodes is practically mandatory. It's like adventuring in Menzoberranzan: you'll expect to get a cameo from Drizzt and Guenhwyvar, Zaknafein Do'Urden, Quenthel Baenre, and/or Pharaun Mizzrym. Because why not?
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Oct 25, 2022 05:59
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What do I do now? In my not-Siberia Rolemaster campaign, the PCs have set up shop in a mining town that has a not-KKK sect that is racist against mages with witchcraft met with kidnappings followed by lynchings and burnings miles away from town. The grand wizard of the Hoods is the second-in-command of the city watch which gives the Hoods semi-legitimacy as the Captain of the Guard is old and ineffective. There is a group that helps wizards by arranging sham trials and the witch is then fed a brew that “cures” the witch of their ability to do magic but actually makes them theatrically sick for 24 hours after which they recover fully. This happened to one of my PCs after she publicly used magic and has since been “cured”. The problem arises after this PC publicly humiliated the Grand Wizard who subsequently ordered the Hoods for her death. She was subsequently kidnapped and carried out of town and, in a series of events that I hadn’t planned on (using spells in really cool ways), got free and slaughtered 2/3 of the crowd, including the Grand wizard. The issue is that some of the folks will escape back to town. What will they do? If they say “PC is still a wizard!” This exposes the whole farce of mages being cured and puts the whole group of “mage-savers” at risk but leaves them open to charges of kidnapping and murder and being racist assholes. If the surviving Hoods do nothing, then the Second in Command of the Watch is missing (as well as a dozen or so civilians) with no real witnesses. Where do I take this? Agrikk fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Nov 19, 2022 |
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Nov 19, 2022 03:38
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Rutibex posted:Is your PC the spellcasting type of wizard or the racism type of wizard. Does the potion cure racism? The PC is a spellcasting wizard who got kidnapped by a group of anti-wizard racists called the Hoods who are led by the Second-in-Command of the City Watch (loosely based on Imperial wizard Sam Roper). The potion is a sham. It makes anyone who drinks it violently sick for 24 hours after which there is a full recovery. FWIW: this whole subplot originated from this image (hosting mine): 
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Nov 19, 2022 17:58
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Oldsrocket_27 posted:The wizard's cult of evil magic users (the party) has come to save her, they've murdered the grand wizard and are coming to attack the town! They were all secret wizards in disguise and they want us dead for our holy way of life and for revenge for curing the wizard! Krul posted:i second this explanation. sometimes, the only way to make sense of a lie (when revealed) is to blame the people doing the revealing. "the cure worked, but now we're being attacked by the kidnapped wizard's evil allies!!" or "the cure must not have worked because the kidnapped wizard had her magic cruelly preserved by the other wizards in her circle!!" This is great. I'd fallen into the trap of believing that the racist assholes would behave logically. But if I eschew reason on their part then anything is possible! Aliens from Hangar 51! Communists! Evil sorcerers! Duergar! Winter Elves! The Boogeyman! I'm envisioning a parade of Hoods marching down Main Street, holding banners memorializing the Grand Wizard and the slain Hoods, in a display that polarizes the town into anti-wizards and everyone else. With the PCs stuck in the middle, of course. Agrikk fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Nov 19, 2022 |
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Nov 19, 2022 19:15
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Dameius posted:Some I was running a BattleTech campaign back in the day in which the PCs were running a mercenary regiment. There was a pirate by the name of Redjack Ryan who was notoriously difficult to catch due to his infiltration of most of the Inner Sphere armies. One session started with one of my players deciding that the Regiment should hunt down and destroy Ryan's Rebels during what we called "the pizza decision" due to the decision being made while the players and I were eating pizza. Because the decision was so ad-hoc and the move so sudden, the PCs caught the pirate flat-footed and destroyed him. If they'd done any amount of planning at all, surely the pirate would have discovered their intentions, crawled into a hole, and pulled it in after him but no. So yeah. Some call it dumb, others call it brilliant.
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Nov 20, 2022 07:38
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Nash posted:Chases. How do you folks do them? For years my group has been doing a quick and easy chase system that has turned out to be really flexible: The scene starts with the Dm and the players establishing how big of a lead the target has in terms of N number of points. Then both sides roll a d8, with the winner getting a point- if it’s the chaser N drips by one. If it’s the target then n increases by one. If N reaches zero then the chaser is next to the target and can act, rolling initiative, combat, grapple or whatever. If N reaches X, determined at the beginning of the chase by negotiation between players and DM, then the target escapes. Every round, the dice contest contest continues, with player actions giving ad-hoc bonuses or minuses to the dice roll. Tipping over a bookcase requires a successful strength check and that gives a temporary plus one to the target. A dwarf getting chased by an elf gives the elf a plus one every turn. Haste give the hasted character +2 or whatever. The fun part of this system is that it goes very fast, with plenty of room for improvisation and creativity while giving the GM and players plenty of room negotiations that result in great collaborative story telling and action hero hijinks.
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Jan 7, 2023 04:01
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I’ve been encountering this more and more in my gaming groups. Especially my long time group of friends who are now mellower in our fifties than the bloodthirsty teens of long ago. More PCs have decided that they don’t want every bar fight to end in mass murder and not every antagonistic wilderness encounter results in a pitched battle to the death. What I’ve been doing is, when the game system indicates a “death” (via running out of hit points in D&D, or rolling 66 on a critical table in Rolemaster, for example) I pause for a second before I describe the result and ask the player if they want the victim dead or incapacitated. More often than not, the player just wants the victim out of the fight so a mortal wound gets handwaved to rendering the victim unconscious or in shock. I still grant full “kill” xp for the encounter and my players aren’t lamers who try to farm a victim for repeat kills on the same NPC or mob.
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Jan 12, 2023 17:14
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Rutibex posted:I always use a moral system, which is why I prefer old school monster stat blocks. Its just a score between 1-12 and you roll 2d6 to check against it. If you roll the morale or under the monster continues the fight. I usually do a check if they lose half their numbers, or get hit with a fireball or anything else that seems to turn the tide of battle and make them reconsider. Rules I've always wanted to use because they add ambiance and grittiness: AD&D morale AD&D Pain and wounds (Dragon #118) Twilight:2000 equipment upkeep/repairs Twilight:2000 coolness under fire Aftermath! mass combat Rolemaster fatigue Rolemaster healing wounds Rules I use because they add ambiance and grittiness:
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Jan 12, 2023 20:47
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Can anyone direct me to a big ol' black-sinister-castle map? At some point in my campaign my players are going to have to infiltrate the castle of the Sinister Baddy-Bad Bad Guys to steal a MacGuffin and I don't want to be ad-libbing the map. I'm envisioning a multi-session sneaky-stealth crawl though a Fortress of Ultimate Darkness / Minas Morgul / Death Star complex that, of course, goes hot and results in a mad dash, rolling battle to the gates. I'm looking for complexes and sub-complexes, multi-levels, and thousands of sentries talking about the new BT-16. They say it's... it's quite a thing to see. Anyone got a good map for this? edit: I'm looking for the map equivalent of this:  Agrikk fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 01:24
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Rutibex posted:Here you go H4 Throne of Bloodstone, suitable for level 99 characters. You will fight through at least 4-5 layers of the abyss, and the main fortresses of every demon prince. The final part is of course the fortress of Orcus himself. Watch out for the Tarrasque and the city of Liches! Thanks for the tip! I checked it out and it is bonkers. It’s as though someone looked at the Deities and Demigods book and said, “looks great. We’ll take all of it.” I think it just might be what the doctor ordered.
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Jan 16, 2023 23:06
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Phrosphor posted:Hello. My party are about to enter the crystalized corpse of an ancient deity dragon they have found deep underground. This thing is humongous, and an ancient civilization hollowed it out as a temple. There is a Dragon Magazine article from way back (1e) called “the Dancing Hut” and is about Baba Yaga’s house. Dragon Magazine #83 But an interesting feature is that the house is built around a tesseract that warps and bends reality so the map is all broken up and twisted. As far as exotic “bases” are concerned, that module is one of my favorites. Let me see if I can dig up a pdf of it and post it here.
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Jan 20, 2023 03:16
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One of the things I love about my long term group is that we are all in it to build a great story. While they themselves have tacitly agreed to abide by the rules of class and level progression and understand that their PCs can do this at that level, as the GM I can do whatever I want within or without the rules as long as I am internally consistent and it makes for a good story. For one session I invented an herb that strips the ability to cast spells from a specific realm of magic and sprung it on a player. It was a rude shock for the player but the story made sense so they rolled with it: my world has a not-KKK group of witchfinders and since they use no magic I deemed that they needed a weapon to render a mage helpless so I created the herb. It was a really fun encounter where a PC had to use wits instead of invisibility/fly to get away and the PCs have since discovered that cure poison removes the effect readily enough and have also identified the herb. My point is as mentioned up thread: it’s your world and if it remains internally consistent and if your changes add to the story without completely breaking the game then you are free to do what you want.
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Jan 29, 2023 18:01
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Pointcrawl. What an amazing concept! One of the end bosses in my current campaign will be to fight not-Miska the Wolf Spider to recover a McGuffin and I was feeling intimidated about mapping out a fortress carved out of pure chaos. But instead creating a smash of “interesting places” and connecting them via interesting routes is so much easier and much more liberating in terms of gameplay.
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Feb 4, 2023 18:47
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I did this for a recent encounter and it was great: Characters were stalking a creature deeper into a dark forest and they realized they were being stalked as well. A cat and mouse game ensued and when they finally sprung the ambush I played the fast zombie scream from Half Life 2 at full volume. It scared the piss out of my players and got a good jump-scare laugh out of them. Priceless.
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Feb 5, 2023 07:46
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You also might want to consider demons. The thing I like about demons and why they've become such a go-to mob for me is that they are immortal and yet not indestructable. You can literally create your own demon spawn that fits whatever role you want (bag of HP? glass cannon? tankety-tank? four inch long worm that breathes fire? galactic atom smasher? gotcha covered fam) because the abyss has a zillion layers with a zillion undescovered demon types. I love demons, especially with my current players to know the stats of every monster in every book, because I can make up stats and even fudge them on the fly to make combat easier or harder to make the story flow. Your dungeon might actually be a bridgehead to a lower plane that was sealed off by some adventurers centuries ago. What if the end of thedungeon was actually a gate to the abyss and the dungeon was populated during a demonic invasion? Three hundred years ago the demon invasions began, but a group of adventurers darted in, and slew the demonic mastermind. Demons being demons and now leaderless, the invasion stalled as various demonic factions fell to squabbling among themselves. this stall allowed the dungeon to be sealed off. Now the current adventurers are invading the dungeon (pergaps to close the gate once and for all?) and find that the dungeon resembles a classic EGG dungeon with kobolds in this wing, orcs in that wing and bugbears over there, but instead of classic prime material mobs, you have demons allied with various Obyriths or Tanar'ri with factions belonging to Pazuzu fighting Pale Night fighting Obox-ob.
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Feb 13, 2023 18:41
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So I have a problem: In my not-siberia campaign, I have been building up to the actual campaign arc (which involves a huge, world-shaping, high high level arc), but the current, lesser arc involves the PCs building up their local trading company in anticipation of a trade war with some local merchant houses. There would be intrigue and money to be made, favors earned and issued. The setting for this campaign is three mining towns ("the jewel cities") butted up against a big ol' mountain range each approximately 7-10 days travel by walking horse. The players are based out of Opal. The next closest is Beryl. Furthest away is Garnet. The PCs have been to Beryl once before and didn't like it (the mining town uses slaves for the really dangerous work) and Beryl went forgotten by the PCs. In one of the opening salvos of the high-high-high level arc, the Bad Guys, the Winter Elves, are building up their armory and are using information unknowingly given to them by the PCs to make weapons out of laen. Laen is a magic glass and gets harder as it gets warmer so the only way to work it is by using mythical Cold Ore (the physical manifestation of elemental cold) to melt it and fashion it into stuff. Cold ore is super rare and is found far far under the mines of Beryl. So after the PCs unwittingly told the bad guys about cold ore, the Winter Elves destroy Beryl and slaughter everyone in town to start mining for cold ore. Now, through a series of unfortunate events that I did not anticipate, the players went back to Beryl and discovered that the winter elves have killed everyone. They fled Beryl after scouting around and are now back in Opal. My problem is that this discovery happened too soon. The PCs are now worried about an impending destruction of Opal and could care less about all of the work they put into their fledgling trade house because they are now more concerned with stopping a pending invasion of Opal. I could drop the trade war arc easily enough and just follow the players actions, but I really like the trade war stuff they've done so far and would hate to see them toss it: If they get too far into the high-high-high arc they'll never go back to the tradewar bit. How do I blend the two threads so that the players can simultaneously prevent an invasion of Opal (which I never planned to happen- the Winter elves have all the laen and cold ore they need in Beryl) while continuing to build their trade empire? Any ideas? Agrikk fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Apr 5, 2023 06:04
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Yep! No fantasy reference left un-borrowed!
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Apr 5, 2023 06:09
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habituallyred posted:
Thee are some great seeds. Thanks! But this article is incredible. Holy crap. Talk about understanding market driven forces and all that. Sheesh. And here I thought "Let's monopolize the wagon-builders consortium" was a pretty neat gimmick.
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Apr 6, 2023 02:45
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Indolent Bastard posted:It really makes me wonder when you hear about the obtuse clues, puzzles and traps that were the bread a butter of 1st ed. how D&D ever succeeded. This leads me to my favorite/not-favorite things about early AD&D modules: they were designed to be a series of sneaky, trappy, puzzley one-offs rather that a setting integrated into a larger world. This is noticeable in the way traps are set out, most notably the glyph of warding. I’m currently porting an old Dragon Magazine module called “the House in the Frozen Lands” into my campaign and some of the traps in it are just bonkers. 1. There’s a room that you have to follow a winding path around a couple of columns to get to an altar and if you wander off the path you get lightning bolted or something. (Imagine this temple gets pilgrims visiting in the regular. Now imagine if they get slain if they step but one foot wrong.) 2. The main priest of the place has a glyph on the door to his bedchamber. (What if he sleepwalks? What if an aide comes to him in the middle of the night with a crisis and neglects to say the passcode?) 3. The door to the temple is also trapped with a glyph. (Because of course it is. Never mind the constant blasting of the aforementioned pilgrims who have no way of knowing about the glyph ahead of time.)
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Apr 14, 2023 06:45
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I remember playing in a friends Dragonlance campaign. I was playing for laughs so I made a magic-user with a high dex and high charisma and had con and strength as dump stats. He had one hit point at first level and three at second level and his favorite spell was charm person. He was a con man to the core and was always one step ahead of the last town’s law enforcement. Well the GM really wanted me to be playing Raistlin the Second and was railroading us every step of the way. In frustration we decided to ditch the plot and do our own thing and become bandits. Well the GM took the hint and decided to railroad us in /that/ direction which sucked the fun out of the whole thing so we stopped. It turns out that sometimes players just want to have a little thing that doesn’t need to become A Thing. Maybe that player was thinking the same thing? (We subsequently had a good conversation with the Newbie GM about railroading and he became a really good GM)
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Apr 19, 2023 03:59
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I've never used it, but I know a couple of GMs who use https://npc-tracker.com/.
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Apr 20, 2023 05:39
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Whybird posted:A priest's beliefs require them to provide healing to any who come to them, regardless of past actions. Their healing helped an deserter escape justice, and said deserter went on to flee to an enemy kingdom and sell military secrets. The priest stands by their actions. Should they be charged as a traitor to the state? Look up Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. He’s the doctor who set Booth’s leg after he broke it leaping from the balcony to the stage after assassinating Lincoln. Mudd was convicted of treason (but later pardoned) but most medical professionals I know say you set the leg that’s in front of you. Does your PC convict or pardon Mudd?
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Jun 7, 2023 19:20
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My group uses a d6 method: I roll a d6. You roll a d6. Start at a number representing a head start, say 5. If I win number goes down by one. If you win, number goes up by one. If we reach ten you get away. If we reach zero I catch you. Each side gets agreed upon modifiers to their roll. High dex elves get a bonus. Chunky ogres get a minus. Having a demonstrated running/sprinting skill adds a bonus. Wounds or fatigue is a minus. It’s a quick negotiation then the chase is on, with the GM adding color to the event. Sometimes obstacles get in the way and a skill check can be made to add a temporary bonus to a roll.
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Jun 8, 2023 04:44
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Whybird posted:Yes, this is the piece of advice I was gonna give after I read your plans. Don't wait until after character generation to tell your players the main plot of your campaign. If your main plot is about working with the cardinal to defeat 13 witches, call your campaign 13 Witches, tell your players "This is a campaign about working with the church to hunt down 13 witches who are forming a cult", show the impact of the cult's evil magic everywhere they look and I'd suggest even starting the game with them already working for your cardinal dude. I wish my group learned this a long time ago. How many times did someone roll up a character concept that was woefully out of place in the budding campaign? How many times did druids and rangers languish in city campaigns? How many courtly characters whither on the vine in the wilderness?
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Jun 13, 2023 06:05
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Dameius posted:We also nominate a player to be in charge of session scheduling and another on session day task master for everything not the game. Usually it's a rotating position, but it frees the DM (whether it's me or another player this time around) up from having to worry about that stuff and just worry about planning the next game session I’ve been gaming for forty years, the dedicated GM for the last fifteen. Why am I only now seeing this? Because goddamn, shepherding four fiftysomethings to the virtual gaming table for one evening every other week is excruciating. This on top of world building, keeping the gaming blog mostly current, building encounters and the rest is just… a lot.
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Jun 13, 2023 15:16
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Indolent Bastard posted:It is a rule, players will hyper-focus on a throw away line of description, a non-essential NPC or a useless item and ignore the biggest most obvious plot-hook or clue. This. My last Rolemaster session, my players came across a Mirror of Life Trapping. Among other people, they released a person who had been imprisoned in the mirror for 10,000 years. My intent here was to have the players meet a potential link to The Times Before, learn some facts, get more info about the plot, and move on. Instead the session got derailed because one of the players decided that the mirror was not actually a prison, but was actually a portal through time and space and might actually be able to go back in time. Now. Just because I walk into a closet and want it really, really hard, I can’t make the closet into a Time Machine (though i did consider it because I am not above letting the players drive the plot, this is not that campaign and time travel is not something I want to gently caress with at all). My point is that I gave my players what I thought was a straightforward encounter with a magical prison, and due to a line about a prisoner being 10,000 years old we got derailed until the end of the session. I’m going to gently fix it with a meta conversation between sessions so we can move along, but yeah players can focus on the weirdest things, slowing the campaign down a lot. Give the players a straight stone corridor a hundred feet long with a chest at the end, and there will be a derail as one player gloms onto a comment about the grout being crumbly in one place and decides a mining expedition is in order. It’s Checkhov’s Gun in the worst kind of way. Agrikk fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jun 17, 2023 |
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Jun 17, 2023 17:18
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My PCs will be traveling to not- Minas Morgul to retrieve a MacGuffin. Rather than flesh out the whole town, I need a dozen or so encounters that I can throw at them as they move through the city to the demon palace to steal the thing. The adventure is loosely based on the AD&D 2E module “City of Skulls” fwiw. The Dark City has a population of about ten thousand combined demons, undead, githyanki and orc slaves and human quislings. I’m playing it straight and grimdark so I’m looking for encounters that are themed for horror rather than goofy schlock. Anyone got any ideas?
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Jul 4, 2023 02:01
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That’s pretty good! I like turning normal mores on their heads and making wrongness all the more apparent.
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Jul 4, 2023 04:16
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Krul posted:would love to know more about the setting. are there discipline patrols looking for escaped or dawdling slaves? are there groups of quislings enjoying their privileges? where do the slaves get their food, and could that be an encounter (some sort of captured supply caravan, or a group of undead hunters, etc.)? demons are traditionally chaotic; how does that square with the ordered hierarchy of the city? are there power struggles? alternative factions? are there places of worship at which slaves prostrate themselves for demon-granted perks? what was the city before it became not-morgul, and are there any remnants of that past? The overall plot is that the "reality" that the PCs know and understand is actually a pinched off part of the Prime Material (in D&D terms) and has been whisked away to an abandoned plane in the Abyss. The reason for all of this is that this "micro-reality" is really a prison for an Obiryth and life energy is what powers the prison and keeps it running. The problem is that the abandoned plane in the Abyss, originally deemed to be literally nothing but void, is actually populated by these entities called voidwalkers who were accidently summoned into the prison by a collection of ancient heroes. The voidwalkers as a whole are pissed that their plane of nothingness was used as a dumping ground for the Obyrith's prison and want to get it out of here so they can go back to being nothing. Demons from the Abyss are now using the voidwalkers to penetrate the prison and slay mankind in an act of genocide that has been ongoing for ten thousand years. The wrinkle here is that the original voidwalker summoned into this world slew his summoners (the god of knowledge and the god of death) and, since this is a prison and a closed system, the act of reincarnation that was originally managed by the god of death isn't working properly and souls that should be matched with a new baby aren't, and thus population growth has stopped and humans are actually dying out over the millennia. Babies are still being born, but people are dying slightly faster. The physical keys to this prison are the two moons that orbit one of two planets that orbit the single sun in this micro reality. Three hundred fifty years ago, the population of humans (and therefore the life energy required to power the prison) dipped below a critical threshold and the voidwalkers were able to destroy one of the moons, weakening the prison. This allowed some demons of the abyss to also breach the barrier and enter this world. The beam of energy that destroyed the moon, death star style, was controlled from this city. Incidentally, because of the pinched off nature of the micro-plane, there are no stars but instead for the last 350 years the debris from the shattered moon have been flying all over the place and making really cool meteor showers full time. Weather is crazy, and tides are sloshing around all over the planet. In a million years or so the debris from the destroyed moon will form a ring, but for now there's just this crazy, eternal meteor shower and a sky with no stars. Now that this city has served it's purpose the voidwalkers, commonly known as winter elves as they appear in the prime material micro-plane, are moving to a new city with magical resources thought to be sufficient enough to destroy the second moon and release the Obyrith once the total population of humans drops below a second critical threshold. I say all of that to give background on this city: This city has been emptying for the last 350 years as the next "trigger city" is staffed. So in the current city of maybe 10% of its peak population we have the Voidwalker/winter elves that run the place, demons (who felt the pull of the Old One, who have entered the micro-plane prison out of curiosity, are now trapped here, and are pissed about it). They serve no actual purpose but their chaotic energy is actually a pain in the rear end for the more ordered hivemind of the voidwalkers and could even accidently operate at cross purposes (demons being demons after all). The quislings and the orcs are slaves, duped or forced to perform the menial labor around the city, though I like the idea of perks and factions forming as the demons, who are actually pointless to the jailbreak, revel in the attention. There has to be food imported into the city, and I imagine that is managed by quisling leadership - that leadership established by voidwalkers granting boons to humans and orcs who have played the game well enough to be recognized and given perks. edit: I really hope my players aren't secretly goons.  Agrikk fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jul 5, 2023 |
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Jul 5, 2023 00:08
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Woah! This is serious food for thought. When I made my first post I was thinking “run encounters one through twelve and then they’ll be there” but all my ideas felt flat. I’m now realizing it’s because I hadn’t fully thought through the city itself and the concept of five factions/groups all struggling to attain their own goals creates an amazing dynamic that readily lends itself to encounters that Make Sense. I feel like the concept of making NPCs have goals that they can attain offscreen was discussed upthread as a way to enrich the world. Am I mistaken? Anyways, I’m tempted to post off the cuff answers but your effortpost deserves a well thought response.
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Jul 5, 2023 04:25
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Krul posted:so, if i'm understanding correctly, you have five factions, each of which could provide encounters depending on the mood you're trying to set. i'm not sure how many of them are fully aware of their conditions, so feel free to remove the stuff about the prison for those who wouldn't know. Only the demons and the winter elves are aware of the true intent. The difference is that the demons are chaotic and the winter elves are a hive mind that exists in tiers in groups of thirteen: Thirteen tier 1 winter elves are controlled by a tier 2 winter elf. Thirteen tier 2 winter elves are controlled by a tier 3 winter elf. And so on up to a Tier 7 winter elf that holds sway over all 4.8 million winter elves. The tier 1 elf is basically a drone, a semi-aware worker/warrior ant, with intelligence and autonomy growing as the tier increases. quote:1) unwilling slaves: don't particularly want to be trapped in this city or plane, don't want to be worked to death serving their own destruction, want to be free (even if only of the city). humans who have noticed their lives shortening and population shrinking are likely to be even more extreme or radical, given the stakes of their struggle (freedom fighters leading a small skirmish in the streets? insurgency attempting to smuggle themselves out of the city? spies for a larger organisation trying to disrupt the process without overtly rebelling?) I like the idea of slaves, both human and orc, but they would be rebelling against being slaves. There would be tension inherent between the quislings and the slaves and the players witnessing a mini-uprising against a group of quislings only to be brutally put down by demons/voidwalkers/undead could be a cool encounter. Maybe the PCs save a slave who can add color to the scene as he reveals what life in the city is really like. quote:2) quislings and taskmasters: do want to serve in so far as it makes their lives better or confers power, but probably differ in how many are self-destructive fanatics vs. narcissistic opportunists. any humans in this faction are almost certainly unaware of their true role, or else have so internalised their suffering as to be completely unreasonable (a procession of fanatics leading a march of captured rebels or self-flagellating slaves? a patrol looking to root out dissent and report resistors? a group of drunken revellers trying to drown out their guilt, or celebrating a big bust of rebels?) As above, the quislings would be well paid because, after all, voidwalkers don't care about money. But they would be ignorant of the true purpose here. Patrols looking for escaped slaves, quislings to a particular demon or higher-tier voidwalker might be at odds with another faction and come to the PCs looking for allies, or looking for scapegoats. quote:3) servile undead: only wish to serve, must be supervised and or controlled by someone other than the quislings, who would otherwise try to use them to seize power (a meat wagon collecting dead slaves for reanimation? a collection of ghouls dragging an enormous component for an occult ritual? the personal entourage of a necromantic demon or voidwalker, headed to investigate a disruption in their power?) I like these suggestions. Especially because undead can be played up to build on the horror vibe. Meat wagons are repulsive and would really work to deliver the horror element at work here. Perhaps PCs get tangled up with "fetch wagons" rounding up unlucky orcs and humans for voidwalkers experimenting with the life energy holding the prison in place. quote:4) frustrated demons: want to wreak havoc, escape, and/or potentially free the obyrith, with varying degrees of willingness to collaborate with the other factions. demons usually want power or satisfaction however they can get it, regardless of other loyalties (a group of minor demons, harassing a work detail of slaves? a pocket of resistance, captured by and enthralled to a wannabe archdemon seeking escape? a hidden market where trapped demons trade slaves and souls while they look for ways to escape?) Demons are probably the easiest to deal with. Hell, they're chaotic evil. Who needs a motive with these guys? quote:5) voidwalkers/winter elves: want to return to nothingness and have a collective consciousness. the most interesting aspects here are the plan (what clever strategies are they employing to speed up the process, and how would that look?); the death drive (do they recklessly throw themselves at problems? treat eachother as disposable? do they ignore bodily needs?); and the hivemind (do they see/feel/act as one, drawing the attention of many if alarmed? are there any dissenters or disruptions to the collective? how do they treat sentience outside themselves?). i could easily see you taking them in lots of directions, from an insectoid and alien cruelty and ignorance of suffering to an aristocratic if rare in number pyramidal hierarchy To convolute the plot arc even further, the tier 7 voidwalker, the original voidwalker summoned accidently, has been imprisoned as well. Imprisoned by a second group of heroes in the reality defined by the obyrith prison without anyone knowing it. Because he is imprisoned and cut off from his underlings, the underlings are operating at a fraction of their intellect and ability and the voidwalkers currently behave stupidly, erratically and behave more like a cargo cult than efficient killers. Ultimately, the PCs will have to release the head voidwalker to retrieve a macguffun that was imprisoned with him. Once they release the top voidwalker, they'll experience the full fury and cunning of the voidwalker heirarchy, which has heretofore been disorganized and relatively stupid.
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Jul 7, 2023 06:04
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Dameius posted:Where is the voidwalker imprisoned? Can they retrieve the mcguffin without breaking the prison confining it? Seems like a nice challenge that could reward the players. Either way they get the mcguffin but the fail state for the challenge is full force of the voidwalkers. The voidwalker is imprisoned on a Super Secret Hidden Spot on the world... somewhere. My original half-formed thought was that, as the voidwalker was being banished to the SSHS he swiped the macguffin and pulled it into his new abode with him, the mechanics of which I haven't quite fleshed out. Certainly the players will try to steal it without letting him out, and that would be some pretty rad gaming as the heist played out. By my players also take the straight line where possible so I need to plan on them just cracking open wherever he is banished to and grabbing it, leaving the newly-freed voidwalker boss as a problem to be dealt with later.
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Jul 7, 2023 17:51
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habituallyred posted:Is the chief voidwalker aware of what happens outside of their prison? A good "out" if the heist goes bad might be a temporary team up with the heroes. Or just do the Hollywood thing of giving the heroes a chance to talk to the villain face to face. The prison is made out of handwavium, which I always assumed provides him with a limited view and influence over outside events. But now I’m going to make it a thing because I like both of your suggestions: perhaps the voidwalker bargains for his release by giving up the macguffin in an opportunity for cool role playing.
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Jul 8, 2023 03:14
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