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Arrrthritis posted:I really would like to give DMing 4th edition a shot, but unfortunately half the group is a much bigger fan of 3.5. I personally think that Fourth is better and more fun, but the group has a much varying opinion of 3.5 ranging from "money grubbing whores" to "Pretty loving sweet." Run what you want to run. If you think your game would work better in 4e, the people who have a vendetta against it don't need to play. Don't let players control your game. If they like 3.5 so much they can run it, you are under no obligation to do so. quote:I was going to have the encounters be in a "Schroedinger's Dungeon" sort of sense- where they're both there and not until the party becomes an observer. Could this work? Would I be better off designing what I want them to encounter, but not where?((assuming all theory arguments are null and void and the monsters do not count as an observer)) That works wonderfully, just don't let them catch you. I frequently move things around, and not in a railroady sense. More like 'they decided to go out to the old mill instead of stay at the inn and now I won't get to let them see my cool ghost...I'll just move her over to the mill instead.' My general advice is to give the PCs a situation and see what they do with it. 
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Jun 8, 2009 22:49
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As far as computers with knowledge type rolls, I like M&M's approach - access to google/wiki will let you take 20 on a knowledge roll. Another approach is just to assume they'll need access to it to do research at all - trying to do research without it will inflict stiff penalties. I do like the suggestion for failed rolls. If there was an anime or comic book character named the same thing as you're searching for, you're hosed. Bob Smith posted:I'm sort of worried that my campaign will be the same way - the villain has a plan, but he's not a sort of "MUAHAHAHAHA I AM EVIL SEE THIS GIRL TIED TO A RAILROAD" villain. Not only is this awesome, but I'm totally stealing it for my M&M game. I wouldn't treat it as literal time, but like the old nuclear doomsday clock. The closer his plan is to completion, the closer it is to midnight. If they fail, it advances. If they succeed it might move back. Love it.
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Jun 16, 2009 16:14
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Fenarisk posted:I DM this way as much as I can as well, but with 4e needing maps so much it's hard to not railroad a bit or set plot point areas specifically. I hand draw all the maps out ahead of time for quick and easy placement rather than just scribbles of wet erase marker for dungeons, so to some degree it depends on the system. If you do scribbles on the wet erase board method, it makes it a lot easier to do this sort of on the fly gaming. Also if you're running 4e and have DDI, making balanced encounters on the fly is a snap as well.
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Jun 18, 2009 17:52
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CDOR Gemini posted:Hello, new DM here for a very green group. We are all pretty big video game dorks, but none of us have played D&D before. We are following Keep at the Shadowfell, but I've been tweaking things to make the beginning a bit more interesting. I have created a weird sort of encounter for next week and was wondering if some more experienced players/DMs might tell me if it's going to suck or not. (I sort of want them to think outside of the box more in and out of combat, and this what I came up with to try to encourage that.) That's a pretty cool scene, just make sure you don't lock yourself into it. You've given them a challenging situation and one way out of it - drag the golem into the waterfall. But if they come up with something else, be open to that working as well. Maybe the warrior types will keep it busy while someone does a ritual to summon a rainstorm to flood the cave. Or they take turns dumping waterskins on it, making it more and more muddy. Or instead of grappling hooks the use the Genasai to herd it close, then the fighter does the rest with Tide of Iron. Or whatever. You don't want to get into a situation where the ONLY way to defeat this monster is the specific way you've envisioned. It doesn't matter how many hints you drop, they might not get it. That's okay, maybe they'll think of something cooler than you. The next step is to throw these challenging situations at them without a pre-determined method of overcoming it. Just put in something crazy they can't just stab to death and see what they come up with.
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Jul 7, 2009 22:40
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Ulta posted:Give them a moral choice they have to make (with consequences!) where the moral line isn't blackand white. Force them to make bargins with kobolds, an evil race who they could easily kill, but they'd be breaking their word. Make them choose sides between two both good sides who happen to hate each other. This. It can sound good to have a scene like that, but it nearly never works to say "Okay guys - roleplay!". They need something to roleplay about. Moral conflicts help them define their characters. Don't ask them if they are the kind of people that will stand up for what is right, let them show you. Maybe set it up so the king commands them to root out the kobolds. They are rewarded for doing so, both with money and fame. They have a few scuffles and capture some kobolds who speak common. They explain that the humans started invading their mines looking for ore. The kobolds have lived here peacefully for centuries. They only started attacking the humans when they invaded their homes and smashed their eggs, and only raid at night to take back what humans have stolen. Now the PCs can make a character defining choice. Do they ignore the kobolds plea and continue slaughtering them as cold-blooded mercenaries? Do they rebel against the King and protect the kobolds as idealists? To they try to make peace between the humans and kobolds? This is the kind of thing that engenders roleplay IME, because it makes the players think about who their characters are and what they believe. Just don't railroad them. It doesn't work if there's a 'right' choice. Just deal with the consequences. And you're really in for some drama if half the group wants to stay loyal to the king while the other half wants to become kobold defenders.
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Aug 3, 2009 22:48
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Okay, I'm running a '4 shot' of 4e D&D. On one of our game nights we're alternating short runs of various systems, and I'm halfway through one for 4e. The PCs are in a frontier valley, with a single human town and lots of wilderness. In the first adventure, the PCs are present for a grand festival in the town. The locals are upset when the Dwarves don't show up with their beer. The mayor sends the heroes on an epic quest to find the beer. They travel and find some farmlands raided, villagers killed, and track down several bands of orcs. Prisoners brag about the huge horde that's going to rule everything. They go to check on the Dwarves and find their hall shattered, with goblins working the dwarves as slaves. They try to free them but are defeated. In Episode 2 they manage a daring escape, overthrowing their captors and freeing the dwarves. They do learn that a caravan will be coming to pick up the arms the dwarf slaves have been making, so they stage an ambush. They handily defeat the orc riders with the help of the Dwarves. The Dwarven prince tells them he can make two suggestions. They could run for the pass and try to get help from the human king, though that is the direction the Horde had travelled. The second choice is to seek out an old wizard that may have some knowledge. They choose the latter and meet with the old man. He tells them that orcs and humans lived in harmony many years ago, but a great war broke out in the valley, driving the humans off and leaving the orcs scattered. There was an old castle of the human empire in the mountains that keeps magical secrets meant to stop the horde if they should ever rise again. So, where from here? I'm planning Episode 3 to be exploration of the old keep to get the McGuffin, and 4 to be the showdown with the Horde. What should the magical McGuffin be? Ghost soldiers? Magic artifacts? An army of constructs? Something else? Also in the last episode I set the mayor up to be kind of a sleazy politician. Maybe they find some of the ancient orc coins, and can learn the mayor has been paid off in that same coin and refuses to defend the town. Not sure how else I want to run the final showdown.
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Apr 22, 2010 16:31
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Bishop Beo posted:The thing is, it seems that for them, everything between encounters is just semi-boring filler. Conversations with NPCs are inevitably really awkward and seems to halt the game. It also seems like they absolutely love being railroaded. It sounds odd, but it's all any of us know really. Here's my $.02. To me, its all about conflict. One side wants a thing, another wants them not to have it. That's why combat is so fun and easy when you first start. The stormtroopers want you to die. You want to not die. Conflict! And detailed rules for resolving it! Now if you try to set up a roleplay scene, you probably think like a dialogue in the movies. You'll have them talking to the weird guys in the Cantina and it'll be awesome. Except its as you said, awkward and uninteresting in play. This is because there's no conflict. Lets instead say that they learn someone in this bar is a spy for the Empire. And there's several suspicious characters - a smuggler, a bounty hunter, and some local 'traders'. They can't just shoot everyone, they're going to have to talk to people and figure out who the spy is. Give them 3-4 good suspects who all blame each other, and let them try to sort it out. Another good way to get off the rails is to not build them. Don't build your game with a premade assumption about how they will pull it off. Lets say they need to get some secret plans out of an Imperial base. The railroad way would be to put in a secret passage they must find and a guard they must bribe, and nothing else will really work. The non-railroady way is to simply set up the base, maybe make it tough enough that just charging in shooting won't work/would be suicide, but other than that leave it up to the players to come up with a plan. Maybe they'll think to look for a back way in and bribe a guard. Or maybe they'll disguise themselves as janitors and sneak in. Or pack themselves in a crate and mail it to the base. Or get a guard drunk in the Cantina and steal his passcard. Or something clever that neither you or I will think of ahead of time. If you go this route, don't be too rough on their plan. I like to say that the PC's plan should almost always almost work. That is, it should rarely be judged unviable. but there should always be some consequence they didn't anticipate. Maybe the drunk guard has a buddy come looking for him that the PCs will have to deal with. Or when they get out of the crate, there are guard droids in the storage area. Just keep them on their toes is all.  The trick isn't to worry about combat or noncombat, but to have interesting conflicts in your game. The more interesting the conflict, the more engaged the players will be.
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Apr 30, 2010 14:41
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Ray and Shirley posted:The next few sessions I'm planning all involve my players being set loose in a city that has been cordoned off and turned into a giant prison. They'll have a quest or two, and a few goals, and know roughly how to get to them. But how they get there is largely up to them. I'm not a fan of random encounters. Rather, have some ideas about what can happen, and serve the needs of the game. If they're getting frustrated, have a prisoner come up in a panic and say he needs to get out, and if the PCs help he'll take them along! Or if it seems like things are going too smoothly, a gang of thugs demands their bread rations. Or if they're interested in finding out what is really going on, they see some weird symbols carved on a wall, and hear men chanting inside. Whatever. But place them in as to the needs of the pace of the game, and you'll have an awesome time.
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May 3, 2010 19:03
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Whybird posted:No, this is a good idea. My advice with any city in an RPG is that the physical geography less important than the political geography: you need to know who's in charge and what they're like. This, exactly. I've ran a lot of Buffy games, which are inherently urban (well, suburban, but close enough). I never once mapped out any of the towns. It was far more important to have an idea of the neighborhoods and what might be located inside them. It was also more event and character driven - what matters is the Slayer is having a showdown with the popular kid who is secretly a werewolf, and matters less if this is happening in front of the high school or the coffee shop or whatever.
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May 4, 2010 17:05
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Who are the PCs? You've said lots about what is going on, but we know nothing about your heroes. If we know what motivates them it should be pretty easy to give them a reason to get into the prison city. Or if you're starting with fresh characters, pitch it to them and let them decide. At generation, simply say 'you've entered the prison city on a mission to stop group X upon the orders of the King's Nephew. Why have you agreed to work for the King's Nephew?' I sort of like the barfight scenario if done right. First, you must be willing to accept that they might blow off the insults and not start a barfight. It could happen, and have a backup plan. Second, when you pull out the King's Nephew, if you can play it off like their random violence derailed the gently caress out of your game and this is some NPC you pulled out your rear end to save their bacon, so much the better. Could come off really cool. And after all, having bar patrons insult PCs is almost certain to result in violence no matter what system. 
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May 4, 2010 17:12
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I have AToE, and its a lot of fun. If I were to do it, I'd use Call of Cthulhu, BRP version. System mastery really isn't relevent, as BRP is about 100x simpler than anything d20. You have a % chance with each of your skills, roll that or under to succeed. There aren't really any feats or system mastery stuff to worry about. The core book has adjustment for three different eras, Modern, 1920s, and Gaslight (1890). The Gaslight should work just fine for that setting. I really can't imagine a group having much problem with CoC. There would probably be more of a struggle going from 4e to d20 Modern than to CoC.
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May 11, 2010 18:54
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Gunfighter_IX posted:Maybe I should rephrase my question: Noncombat encounters are just as exciting as combat ones. I think of combat and noncombat encounters as not being two different animals, they're all about conflicts. Conflicts make for interesting games, and are why newer gamers and GMs gravitate toward them - they're easy. There are some orcs that want you to die. You, the PCs, want to not die. Conflict! Here's my recommendations for getting more noncombat encounters - This is important - let it work! If you resist and call for death from a thousand skill checks for trying to talk your way past the guard or whatever, they are just going to pull steel and fight, because that works. - Figure out what their characters want or what they value. Set up a conflict that has to do with a character's goals or desires and the game suddenly gets very interesting. - Don't assume outcomes. When you set up a scene, don't decide ahead of time if it will be a fight or a talk or an argument or a race or whatever. Just set up some interesting pieces, introduce some conflicts, and see where the PCs take you. To be honest, from what I've heard d20 CoC isn't that much less lethal than BRP CoC. The way that game encourages noncombat resolution is that combat is not very effective. Most monsters can kill you in one or two hits, do damage to your sanity just for looking at it, and are not in any way 'balanced' proportional to the PCs. A far better option is to research, investigate, banish, or as a last resort ambush. The last thing you want in CoC is a stand up fight.
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May 14, 2010 14:59
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If you're running 4e, you're better off getting a few months of DDI than any book they make. It is a phenomenal value.
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May 18, 2010 20:30
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You're not using the Obsidian Skill Challenge System http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/241440-stalker0s-obsidian-skill-challenge-system-new-version-1-2-a.html I found it to be a much better system. For starters, they get rid of the punishment for failing a roll - You get three rounds, and need X successes in those three rounds. It splits the skills up into different types - mental, physical, and social, and you should only rarely allow them to go outside of it. I found it to be a lot more enjoyable using that system.
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Jun 23, 2010 20:10
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On the issue of introducing new characters, the first step is to realize that if having a PC die is going to be a big pain in the rear end, your system should make that hard to happen. Or even impossible. You can easily tweak the rules to make it so that while a PC can be taken out of the action they aren't permanently removed from play. I tend to run episodic games, which in addition to creating tighter stories also tends to be more resilient to people missing sessions or only playing sporadically. For games with high lethality you can set up in game justifications for turnover. For my long running call of cthulhu game the PCs all ran a newspaper, giving an easy introduction to either new PCs looking for work or game ideas. Also, for a system where you mitigate damage by taking a consequence you pretty much want FATE.
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Aug 23, 2011 19:09
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The current version is a savage worlds setting. Anything Savage Worlds would be pretty good for your purposes as well.
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Aug 30, 2011 14:48
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Iunnrais posted:Also, Second question: I'm DMing 4e for the first time. According to the encounter builder I'm using (masterplan), I can sic two lvl3 elites plus a skill challenge on a first level party and have it be a "Hard" encounter. Specifically, my plan is two wyrmling dragons (grey and brown) plus an adult red that exists not as a combat opponent, but a skill challenge (the red isn't really focused on killing them, but destroying the boat they're on). Be careful. It isn't you that might be the problem, but 4e relies pretty heavily on teamwork. If they've gotten the idea down - defender keeps em busy, controller holds em back, strikers kill em dead, leaders buff everyone, they'll probably be okay. If not you can tumble down TPKville pretty easily. Also if you don't have a balanced party (one of every role) targeting the weakness can be pretty brutal. You can end up with a TPK without meaning to say by throwing a bunch of skirmishers at a party without defenders/controllers, or Brutes at a party without Strikers. Been there, done that. Be careful of adding too many Brutes or Soldiers, especially MM1 soldiers. It'll make the game drag like all the 4e haters like to complain. And if you haven't, a DDI subscription is the best thing a 4e GM could possibly buy, if only for the compendium.
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Oct 12, 2011 05:44
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