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I don't know if this has been posted before, but some advice I'd like to give all the GMs out there is to consider using this alternative skill challenge system I found: Obsidian Skill Challenge System. I feel that it complements very well the existing skill challenge system - and the part I like best is that players don't feel obligated to use their best skills and instead just pass off to others. "Oh, but we have 2 failures already, so I shouldn't use diplomacy - I'll let Brian do it because he's got training in it. If I tried and failed we'd lose." There are other points in its favour, as the author explains in that thread, some more technical than others, but the greater inclusion my players felt while using it is number one with a bullet for me. I have not, however, replaced the existing skill challenge system - having the rogue make 4 straight successes after starting with 2 failures to disarm a trap while the rest of the party fought was intense and I wouldn't want to trade that away. Instead, I am using them side by side depending on what I feel fits best. Maybe you'll feel the same way I do, maybe not. Give it a look and see. Note: I have no relationship with the author and no stake in this system's success. If I came off sounding like an advertisement, I'm sorry. I simply mean it as a recommendation in good faith.
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| # ¿ Aug 24, 2009 03:06 |
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| # ¿ May 22, 2013 05:27 |
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projecthalaxy posted:4e again. Anyone ever run an all minion encounter? Would you just use a 4 pack per pc? Sorry to have so many questions, but I have no one else to bounce things off. Much later I ran an encounter for 4 level 7 PCs with 32 minions at their level, 1 elite at their level, and 11 standards a few levels below them. They won. They did have 4 allied monsters that they controlled (one elf archer each) who basically cancelled out XP-wise the 4 the goblin archers and helped them clear out the minions before being overwhelmed. It was REALLY long, though. But the minions were mostly dead rather quickly. With the way my players are set up, I'm pretty sure I could throw 100 melee minions at them and they'd win. If the minions were artillery, maybe not, since with that many dice rolling at you, a bunch are bound to hit, and the controller wouldn't scare them as much. (Written in fire caused a mass exodus from the right hand side of the field at one point.) I'd expect that as long as they have a controller or somebody with AoE/multitarget spells, 8 per PC would be a decent balance - it won't be a cakewalk, but also won't be overwhelming. I think that it's a good idea for a learning encounter because people wouldn't have to worry about rolling damage yet, so they could focus on getting the actions down and the rolling to hit a target defense, and it would be fairly short. I don't think the fact that the wizard will kill more than the rogue is a big concern, since there will be ample time later for the rogue to rack up huge damage on a dragon or something. If you've decided to go against the minions, I would say that while brutes might be good for learning the rules on, they are also likely to be boring. Just go with a brute, an artillery, and some minions - the defender can tank the brute, the striker can get the artillery (and if he doesn't, the leader can heal up the wounds), and the controller can waste the minions. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at Dec 17, 2009 around 05:06 |
| # ¿ Dec 17, 2009 05:03 |
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tendrilsfor20 posted:Monster HPs in the MM1 (and to a lesser extent, MM2) are all hosed up. Reduce Solos by 1/2 and Elites to 2/3 of their listed HP value.
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| # ¿ Jan 28, 2010 05:16 |
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For the town defense, if you want big, the hard boiled armies thing is a good suggestions, and if you're interested in some smaller encounters instead (or as well), there's a sequence of encounters in King of the Trollhaunt Warrens where trolls attack a town by lake and by land and the players are the defense. You could take from that as much or as little as you like. Since you're not interested in the whole adventure, you could probably get away with just reading the relevant pages a couple of times and/or making some notes, rather than buying the whole thing, assuming you can find somewhere to flip through it and write stuff down.
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| # ¿ May 5, 2010 02:37 |
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Mage Ham posted:Well, here's my problem: my players are too great. Let them do the cool things but try to come up with twists for it on the fly. Flying the bridge through magma tubes doesn't sound like the sort of thing that I could just saunter over and do. There would certainly be challenges in completing that successfully. Flying through magma tubes - they could be having to avoid having magma overwhelm the bridge's heat shields, using cocky piloting and/or having a techy character quickly rerouting power to where it's needed while shouting "She can't take another hit like that, cap'n! I can't hold 'er!" If they fail, you can have them crash right in front of the enemy and then they can do the intended battle. If they succeed, at least they'll have had to make difficult tests to do so. If they're doing cool cinematic poo poo to make the battles easier, either have the enemies get reinforcements or be more difficult, OR have the enemies do cool poo poo right back at them - see how they like fighting with a chandelier on their head.
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| # ¿ May 7, 2010 23:52 |
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Burning Wheel can probably do what you're looking for if you want crunchy. Mouse Guard is basically Burning Wheel's less crunchy little brother and could be reflavoured if you want less crunch. I'm sure reflavouring Mouse Guard would work, and I or others could tell you about that, but I'd rather tell you about Burning Wheel right now. Reasons why Burning Wheel would work: Has crunchy bits that work well (it's not broken like 4e skill challenges) for things other than combat. Should work well for large overarching plots and plans and handle non-combat situations just as well as combat ones - much better than D&D in this respect. There is plenty of character development - it's skill based, i.e. players develop skills and stats by using them. Moreover, the characters' beliefs will change as they accomplish goals, and this will further develop their characters. PVP combat should work fine if it comes down to that - certainly better than D&D. Improvisation is easy! I know that this is less of a concern in PbP than in live games, but you can stat out an NPC in seconds once you know what you're doing - give him a few traits, some beliefs, make up some stats and/or skills only if you need them - This guy's an old grampa with a bum knee so he'll get speed 2. The books have lots of good DMing advice and a lot of the things built in to the system are very useful for ANY system, so you should read it anyways. There are rules described in the book like "Say yes or roll" and "Let it Ride" which are really more rules of good DMing than rules of the game. All of the crunchy parts are OPTIONAL, so you don't need to get bogged down with a slow combat or duel of wits if you want things to be fast. The book is divided into the hub and the spokes (the mandatory bits) and the rim, including more detailed systems for resources, relationships/circles, combat, duel of wits, sorcery, and more. I'd love to play in it, or even to help you run it. So there, if you use Burning Wheel, you've already got a player or helper who knows the rules at least. Problems I can think of right now: Finding people who know how to play will be more difficult than for something like D&D. Related to this, there is a system mastery issue as there always is with crunchy games. Newbies will not necessarily pick up on what's important until they've had a session or two under their belt, so you will end up with people wanting to fix mistakes they made at character creation. I'm not sure how well the combat would work in PbP. I know it's been done, and if you like I could find you examples. Combat would have the same issue that you already pointed out about 4e - when one side is in a fight, the other side might be progressing through hours or even days of in-game time while the other is dealing with mere seconds of combat. However, if you want to remove the crunch of combat you can simply reduce it down to a much simpler way involving just a few rolls at the expense of having dynamic and detailed combats. This simplification is built-in to the system.
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| # ¿ May 15, 2010 04:49 |
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Arrrthritis posted:I did look up Burning Wheel- could you go more in-depth on how it works? It seems to have a system not unlike New World of Darkness/Exalted. How do Beliefs come into play? Do they work like PDQ#'s Foibles? How many popular/known is Burning Wheel, and would my characters need books to be able to play it? Beliefs come into play as the main way players earn Artha, which they can spend to get benefits on some of their rolls. They will want to get Artha, so they will want to come up with beliefs that involve other characters and involve their immediate goals so that they can be sure to act on those beliefs and earn themselves the Artha. Good beliefs should tell the GM what the players want to see/do and how they want to be rewarded. As a GM you are encouraged to challenge them on those beliefs and even to play their beliefs against one another, leading to personal or intercharacter conflict. So they are somewhat like PDQ#'s Foibles, but they are distinct from them. They need not be character deficiencies, but they should be something that will generate or drive conflict. Burning Wheel also has Traits, which are maybe more like Foibles superficially, except again they need not be negative. The way skill development works is that beyond a certain point, in order to progress further you will need to log "challenging" tests, and that means attempting tests that are impossible: the objective will be higher than the number of dice. So you can take the failure but advance your skills, OR you can spend some Artha to make the test possible by giving you extra dice, rerolling failures, etc. and still advance your skills. This part of the system really pushes players to get away from the defensive mindset and push their characters to take on tasks where they might fail. If you're only taking tests where you've got a high chance of success, you'll never get any better. In the same vein, it encourages DMs to make things difficult for their players - it's the only way the characters will improve. Since you're talking about maxing out fortes in PDQ, I'll talk a bit about skills and character creation. In terms of skill development in Burning Wheel, the sky is the limit, but you can control how powerful players are when they start off during character creation. Character creation uses "Lifepaths" which are selected and which simultaneously give stat points, skill points, trait points, and a bit of backstory. Limiting your characters to 3 lifepaths will start them off fairly young and not very powerful, while giving them 5 will make them quite powerful indeed. Of course, the books have more detailed advice on this. Will the players need books? If you don't want to get into the optional systems on "the rim" then they should be able to play without books just fine with just a bit of teaching. The base of the system is not at all difficult to learn or keep track of. However, character creation would be very difficult without books. If you run it without the optional crunchy bits and if you are prepared to basically collaborate with every bookless player on their character creation, then you could do it. The more optional systems you want to include, the more mandatory the books become. Especially combat. If you want to use the full combat rules, you'll need everyone involved to have access to the books. The two core books come together for $25, which is quite a good price for the amount of content. They contain everything you need as a player or GM. How popular/well-known is it? I'm not really sure. I heard about it on these forums and went to their forums to learn more about it. It's had good reviews on rpg sites, and it's been around for about 7 years. I would say it's pretty well-known among people who are interested in indie rpgs, not well-known among those who don't. I have no idea how many people on this forum know how to play.
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| # ¿ May 15, 2010 14:28 |
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MrMortimer posted:Perhaps I am just thick, but let me try to explain where I get stuck up, because I'd really like to get better at this. Lets say I let my party loose in a town and they end up getting into trouble and getting in trouble with the guards and it escalated to a fight, how would I come up with the stats on the spot for the guards? Just fudge it as best as I can or is there any place in the books I could look?
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| # ¿ May 17, 2010 15:48 |
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One cool idea I saw for a heist-type scene in an RPG was to simulate the "intense planning and recon" aspect of it by placing obstacles in their way and allowing them to retroactively use their skills to avoid them. For example (not a DND example, but just to give you the idea), there's a security camera that can't be bypassed in the hallway right outside the vault. The hacker could roll whatever hacking skill and describe how he disabled the camera and replaced its feed with yesterday's video of the empty hallway. You'd then set a difficulty for the roll and say that if he succeeds, it worked, but if he fails then maybe his hacking was detected or maybe the camera is reporting that it's broken and there's a repairman coming along the hallway just as the party are breaking open the vault! The idea of using skill checks to retcon events had never occurred to me before I read this idea, but I think that it works very well. You can just imagine the movie scene with the guards talking to each other and then the flashback to some clever thing one of the thieves did earlier to foil the guards.
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| # ¿ Sep 14, 2010 19:41 |
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Heti posted:I've been using any and all monster stats and attacks as general guidelines rather than actual set numbers
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| # ¿ Dec 1, 2010 14:40 |
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Operation Juicebox posted:At the moment I have just started GMing a campaign using the BESM 2nd Edition rules. Okay, well I know basically nothing about BESM, but it seems pretty true to the show that in an up-close and personal fight, a non-bender has basically no chance against a bender unless he's an amazing swordsman or unless it's Sokka fighting a few nameless mooks. It takes a dozen or more bowmen out of bending range to threaten a team of benders. So I'd suggest rolling with it and upping the opposition - a squadron of archers atop a high wall with crenelations to hide behind. Other benders. Non-benders with other cool powers of their own. Or make the benders fight at a disadvantage - they get ambushed and have to struggle to free themselves from nets while the enemies get a few free hits in. Since I don't know BESM, I don't know how to represent these things, but if the system is at all robust it should be able to handle that. If it doesn't work, I'd change systems - maybe something more abstract and narrative-based. I know some people have successfully used Burning Wheel to play Avatar-themed games.
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| # ¿ Dec 20, 2010 18:53 |
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You should consider having every player know every character's secrets but only having one other character know. As long as your players are cool about that sort of thing - that makes it a bit easier to bring them into play.
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| # ¿ Dec 22, 2010 20:13 |
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JesustheDarkLord posted:I'm putting together a 4E game with a bunch of friends who have either never played an RPG or haven't played since 2E (I also have not played since 2E). For ease, I premade all the characters with input from the players so that we don't have to spend a long time going over character building before we start.
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| # ¿ Apr 9, 2011 13:45 |
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If you want to make the players scared, you'll need to take them out of their comfort zone. A couple of ways you might do this: give the greencloaks encounter powers that are way above level in terms of damage - that makes them a strong threat to take out a PC without making it a sure TPK. Give them powers that do something when a character is reduced to 0 - that PC is teleported to a cell in their dungeon or is sucked into the greencloak's amulet. Speaking of poisons, give them poisons that will give the players a challenge after the combat is over - they won, but now the dwarf is looking a little green. gently caress with the mechanics sometimes - by paragon the players have seen it all, so change it up and occasionally have enemies that break one specific mechanic in a big way.
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| # ¿ Apr 22, 2011 14:50 |
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TheTatteredKing posted:I've been asked to make tonight's session a horror one shot because of the date. I've never ran a legitimately horror game before. What do I need to know other than YouTube spooky ambient music with a laptop at the table?
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| # ¿ May 13, 2011 16:37 |
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Check out Apocalypse World. If you still want to use shadowrun after that, fine, but you really should take a look because it's really cool.
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2011 10:47 |
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Epi Lepi posted:I'm hesitant to use a different system since we have a lot of stuff statted up already for Shadowrun
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| # ¿ Jun 26, 2011 17:28 |
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Lord Twisted posted:E: Often a good way to do it is just to say "Look guys. I have to spend probably 3-4 hours preparing this stuff, and the mental strain of keeping the entire world in my head and making it all plausible. You play, which lets not kid ourselves is easier. You could at least listen to what I'm saying." If you're resenting all the prep work then you have lots of options. You can play D&D with much lower prep than you've been doing. It's possible - I do it. You can get it down to about 1 hour per session. The key is to stop planning the plot in all its detail, go along with what your players do and improvise. The prep you still need to do is round up a word document or whatever with a bunch of cool level-appropriate monsters you want to use and maybe some traps. If your players contribute more to the world creation they're more likely to remember things. Names may always be hard, though, especially if you use fantasy names instead of real ones. Or you can play any of the many games that don't need so much prep. Also that whole "I'm doing all this extra work so you guys owe me. Sort of. But I do like it. But it's still more work..." situation that groups get into is really socially difficult because in general if I play games with you, I don't want to feel like I owe you something for that privilege. But at the same time, one player is in fact putting in a lot more effort than the others. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at Jul 17, 2011 around 16:38 |
| # ¿ Jul 17, 2011 16:35 |
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Lord Twisted posted:I don't try to make it into blackmail, I just point out that at the end of the day I do enjoy DMing but it takes away from my personal enjoyment of the session if noone is listening to me after the work I have put in, and that detracts from everyone's experience. Yeah, totally. I absolutely know where you're coming from. I just personally got to the point where I started to resent the amount of prep I was doing, so I just decided not to do so much. Now I do much less prep and feel much better about it. So I was just pointing out that if you want to do less, it's possible.
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| # ¿ Jul 18, 2011 05:21 |
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Doc Hawkins posted:Thought of two more: Canon Puncture is still ongoing, and Sons of Kryos is an old one that I used to love.
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| # ¿ Jul 19, 2011 14:09 |
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Another podcast I didn't see mentioned yet: Narrative Control.
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| # ¿ Jul 21, 2011 03:25 |
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The assassin has been hired to kill Teardrop, the fearsome pitfighter. Teardrop's erstwhile mistress wants to get even and hires the assassin. Now the player has a choice - he can try to enter the tournament and kill Teardrop 100% above-board, or he can try kill him outside the tourney and risk consequences from the law if he's caught. Either way he'll probably want to be in the vicinity during the tournament.
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| # ¿ Aug 14, 2011 21:12 |
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I Am The Scum posted:However, years later, the PCs realize that the people they were escorting through Baator are starting to die mysteriously. They realize the pit fiend is exacting his revenge. He said he would kill them, but he did not say how or when.
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| # ¿ Aug 24, 2011 14:54 |
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TheLostSkeleton posted:Should I offer my group I different game? Longer Answer: It depends - it could just be learning curve if they aren't familiar with 4e. If you've played just one session then if your friends are willing then you could try one or two more and see if things improve. If you've played a few sessions with no improvement or if your friends don't want to bother, then absolutely you should play something you'll all enjoy. If your players are used to SotC, I can see how gamma world combats could seem boring. D&D isn't the only game that causes brain damage - if you're used to playing things a certain way, and then you try something new but keep playing the same old way, it can be very hard to see what the new system does better or why you'd want to keep playing it.
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| # ¿ Sep 15, 2011 03:07 |
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Darksaber posted:I suppose this is about as catch-all of a thread as any, so has anyone taken a look at The One Ring from Cubicle 7? I picked up a copy and it seems pretty nice to me, nice enough that I'm considering running the starter adventure on here to see how it goes. I'd like to get some opinions from more experienced eyes that might have looked it over, though, to see if there are some horrible ideas in it that I'm just overlooking. Now although my comments were mainly negative, pay attention to what I said in my last post there - I have big problems with two things in the game, neither of which are necessarily gameplay issues. They are issues with how the book is written, more or less, which affects the way the game is played but does not determine it. So while they are big issues for me, I can certainly see how there would be many people who really aren't fussed about those things, and for those people there's a lot of good material in the game.
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| # ¿ Oct 12, 2011 04:58 |
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Baronjutter posted:I got so sick of crunchy cumbersome D&D style combat that could take an hour to resolve at times. Even a good fight would end up slightly boring and just seem to take too long. So we've gone to a more narrative based system. How do you calculate skill scores, and what does your list of skills look like? I'm curious because D&D skill ratings tend to assume you're adding a d20 - rolling a d6 instead doesn't give enough variance to account for the difference between skill ratings. If you just took an arbitrary 4e character for instance, half his skills would be so low that even rolling a 6 wouldn't put the result over his higher skills (so against any given enemy the player would know that either his better skills will be auto-wins or his lower skills will be auto-fails.) So what sort of system are you using in the background? How does character advancement work? I'm curious because the system sounds cool, but if you haven't put thought into those parts then I know it's not going to work for me - and if you have put thought into them, then I'd like to hear more.
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| # ¿ Nov 11, 2011 05:55 |
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Am I supposed to spoiler my reply? Whatever. The main idea is to have them help in ways that aren't just beating up poo poo. What else are they good at? The Ogre is more of an issue than the God. An Ogre can lift heavy things, break down walls and buildings, or any other feats of strength that might be necessary in the plan. He can also kill anyone who gets in his way, but the key is to give him something important enough to do that it doesn't make sense for him to come along with the PCs and overshadow them in combat. A God, on the other hand, would tend to act in more subtle ways - giving the players a bonus to their actions while in the forest (maybe give them an extra d6 to represent the God's assistance - that way they'll mostly get by on their own talents but when they roll badly on their usual dice the "god die" can back them up), obstructing enemies who find that when trying to fight the PCs they keep tripping over tree roots and getting caught on branches, guiding the PCs a secret location in the forest that will help them in some way.
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| # ¿ Nov 11, 2011 15:40 |
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Reiterating that 4e doesn't sound like the best choice here. The poster above me suggested doing it "freeform-ish", and that's a good idea if your players are into that. However, if your players are the kind who like having rules and systems to interact with as well as roleplaying, I can't recommend Burning Wheel hard enough. You want political intrigue - the Duel of Wits system in BW brings tactical depth and cool outcomes to arguments that D&D would resolve with a skill check (or maybe a skill challenge). Oh, and clerics and sorcerers in Burning Wheel are absolutely awesome. You can check out the base rules as a free preview here (it's a zip file containing the pdfs), but if you want the Duel of Wits, Faith, and Sorcery rules you'll need to buy the book. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at Nov 17, 2011 around 06:25 |
| # ¿ Nov 17, 2011 06:20 |
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You could also just let him spend his money on being a good person instead of on being a good fighter. In 5 more levels the amount he spent will be just a drop in the bucket anyway.
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| # ¿ Jan 11, 2012 19:47 |
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Faerie Fortune posted:That would be cool as hell to do but the group as a whole (it's a very small group, just me as DM, my girlfriend and two of our friends) is very passive. Two of them have never really played any TTRPG before and are a little shy on matters and while my girlfriend has plenty of ideas she wants to bring to the table, she's hesitant to come out with a lot of them because she doesn't want to feel like she's overshadowing everyone else and making the campaign world all about her and what she wants; which is a valid concern if she's the only one contributing anything meaningful. Play Shock! Then your girlfriend can put out her ideas without overshadowing others and the others will learn to be more assertive about putting out their ideas. You can do it for them, but take it from a shy person that letting other people do the talking doesn't make one's shyness get better.
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| # ¿ Jan 17, 2012 18:21 |
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illie posted:Thanks, that's exactly the sort of info I was looking for. I don't really know of a place that gives good reviews on how a game actually plays, rather than how it operates in theory. Along the same lines, is anyone all that familiar with the Dragon Age game? From what I've seen, it has a few oddly archaic rules and features considering how recently it came out. The podcast Canon Puncture does a series called "game advocates" where they bring on a guest to talk about a game they like. One of these episodes (episode 112) is about the Dragon Age RPG. The whole premise is that it's not in any way an unbiased opinion; the guest is there to tell people why he likes the game. But check it out anyway if you have time to listen.
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| # ¿ Feb 26, 2012 01:50 |
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There's no reason you need to resolve every action of every day. They've only been there a day and they've made themselves a nice little pocket of safety for some downtime. So give them the downtime, but gloss over it, do a montage, whatever. Downtime ends when something happens - somebody shows up, the boss calls, whatever. You say that they don't want to do anything but it's too soon for them to get word from their boss. So just say "The next two weeks pass uneventfully. You get to know the others on the station better in that time and even begin to make some friends. If there are any side-projects or anything your characters were working on in the meantime, let me know. Anyway, at the end of the two weeks you receive word from your employer. He says..."
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| # ¿ Mar 8, 2012 04:48 |
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I'd say don't roll and lie about it. If you think it's cool enough that the beholder should just die, say that. Here's the thing: if I said that, my players would tell me no, the beholder has to have a chance to save. They wouldn't appreciate the idea that I'm giving them a break. Saving the warlock from petrification with a creative use is about as far as they are willing to go in terms of getting off easy.
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| # ¿ Mar 26, 2012 16:02 |
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MustangCharlie posted:I've finally managed to wrangle together a group of five people for a semi regular game of D&D 4e and everything is going great except for the game length. I'm following the prescribed encounter building methods in the DMG, and I even cut about 25-50% HP off of many monsters just to keep the game moving. With some monsters having ludicrously high HP, one battle with 3 or 4 enemies may take up to an hour. I have a feeling though, that my players know what I'm doing and feel like they're playing on easy mode. I understand this is a common complaint in 4e, and it's supposed to be addressed in the next version, but I wanted to ask if anyone has any tips and tricks for speeding up combat. Finding other games that are "similar" to 4e is tough. The tactical nature of 4e combat is one of the things that makes encounters go on so long - I don't know of any game with the tactical depth of 4e that has fast encounters. So what parts of 4e do you want to keep? Similar in setting and tone? Similar in rules structure?
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| # ¿ Apr 8, 2012 21:23 |
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What if you want to play a halfling hunter? No, the real answer is to introduce one houserule: being a small character does not limit what weapon you can use. Then she can take a superior crossbow and if she wants to do that other optimization stuff she can.
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| # ¿ Apr 9, 2012 03:38 |
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Seconding the Assassin IS the king. Everyone thinks they're different people but they are one and the same. They've never been seen together, have they?
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| # ¿ May 15, 2012 15:05 |
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Fuzz posted:Tried that already, they never replied. It's possible that they don't care if you share it, but didn't reply because they don't want to officially authorize it in case they ever go back to revisit it. But that's just speculation.
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| # ¿ Jun 4, 2012 17:46 |
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Bad advice: Make all your enemies have a +24 to hit vs. AC. when your other players complain that the enemies never miss, blame the tough guy and say that when his AC comes down you'll lower their to-hit again.
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| # ¿ Jun 11, 2012 14:35 |
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Okay, so we've got 1) Put in a fight they can't win. 2) Trick them into killing somebody good I like the first better than the second, but what I really like is: 3) Put them up against a villain where if they go in guns blazing they lose. Not because they lose the fight, but because the villain expects it and uses that time to complete her cunning plan. They will miss clues because they kill the people who have the information they need. Don't sit there frustrating them - just say "You've run out of leads. You keep investigating and chasing down dead ends for a day until [BAD THING X] happens." The players bash down the door to her castle, fight through all the guards, traps and monsters only to find out she's not there. She's off crying about how violent and awful the PCs are and manipulating the authorities against the PCs and at the same time she's completing her goals. Now she wins, the authorities are mighty pissed at the PCs, but the PCs win their fights and you don't have to trick them. Now the stage is set for things to get really epic as the PCs are out for revenge. Rinse and repeat until they try something other than violence - the only way for them to kill this villain is to out-think her. In my opinion, you really really don't want to be tricking them. Give them opportunities to do things other than fight. If they take those opportunities, they're proving themselves to be something other than murderhobos. If they don't take them, you can gently point out that things could have gone differently. Be sure to emphasize that it isn't "Well if you'd read my mind you could have found the solution" but rather "If you'd tried literally anything it would have gotten you somewhere."
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| # ¿ Aug 2, 2012 03:19 |
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| # ¿ May 22, 2013 05:27 |
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A 12 year old girl is perhaps a cliche, but you could also think of it as the sort of trope that fits your game and that your players will know what to do with it.
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| # ¿ Sep 24, 2012 18:02 |
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