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Well I'm home and have pics now, so how about a little double-post. My upcoming game is small, just three of us. That's okay, makes it easier to manage and put a little extra effort into things. With that in mind:  For fun, my two players rolled random trinkets they had come across in days past. One: a small ceramic tile. The other, a strange metal orb. I decided to make it real, for fun, and use it as a potential adventure hook. I intend to mention none of what follows to the players, it will be up to them to discover that anything funny is going on at all. The tile came from Lowe's, to which I added some highlights and a few mysterious runes. Two are generally known to people of this world, perhaps by a few names. The others are effectively knowledge lost to time, and thus entirely unique within the context of the game. The sphere was kindly hand-crafted and donated by a kind stranger from these here very forums. Flipping the tile reveals an odd shiny, metallic golden surface. The sphere, with a little muscle applied in the right direction, twists and begins to separate...  Revealing a hidden compartment inside! Quality craftsmanship on that piece: two solid aluminum hemispheres, stainless steel male threads, and brass female threads, all machined down to perfection. Prior to opening, the seam really is almost invisible in person unless you look at it JUST right, and even then, if you don't know it's there, it wouldn't draw your attention at all. With a good snug tightening shut, it's easy to be completely unaware it's not totally solid.  But wait, there's something inside. What could it be?  A small rolled up scrap of paper, and five small metal balls.  Unrolling the paper, we find that it is, of course, a map, which has perhaps seen better days. On the map: four locations marked with the same mysterious and unique runes as the tile, in the same golden color as the underside of said tile. And a little blood? WHAT COULD IT MEAN  A clever individual would soon discover that the tile itself is not actually inert: in fact, there are magnets hidden within which guide the steel balls to a few specific locations. https://i.imgur.com/CtAMJTc.gifv Placing the map with its four locations between the tile and the balls, the fifth ball reveals a secret, previously un-marked location. One can only imagine what wonders might be found at the four rune-marked locations and, furthermore, what might be found at the secret fifth location!  In reality, I have no idea if they'll discover this stuff the very first day, or if it'll come up a month down the road, or a year. I'm hoping for at least a little while, for the wow-factor of a well played long term secret they had in hand the entire time. Also, I have no idea what it'll actually lead to. I'm thinking first off will be the quest to find this location, and then each of the four marked locations will lead to a quest to unlock whatever's at the fifth location? Something like that. We'll see how the game goes. e: Here's a direct link to the album if anyone wants to reference it directly or gimme an upvote or whatever: https://imgur.com/gallery/R2gcx Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 02:57
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Jesus God.
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Feb 16, 2018 03:27
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That's loving rad
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Feb 16, 2018 03:32
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I'm legitimately excited about it and a little nervous as to whether it'll work out at all. Game starts Saturday evening, wish me luck. 
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Feb 16, 2018 03:35
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I can't imagine how loving mindblowing that would be as a player. It's mindblowing as an uninvolved observer. As a player I would be making wild flailing gestures of excitement and pacing frantically around the room.
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Feb 16, 2018 04:40
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I think the dot pattern will also end up being related to constellations later on, seeing as it's a seafaring game and all.
Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 04:49
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Feb 16, 2018 06:05
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This is incredible.
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Feb 16, 2018 10:06
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 Let us know how it goes dude!
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Feb 16, 2018 10:23
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That's awesome
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Feb 16, 2018 12:20
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Bad Munki posted:loving kickass stuff  ... ... ...be my GM!!!
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Feb 16, 2018 13:20
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That's pretty goddamn sweet.
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Feb 16, 2018 13:54
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Bad Munki posted:Well I'm home and have pics now, so how about a little double-post. I am absurdly jealous of both your skill at making this, and also your players for getting to enjoy this.
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Feb 16, 2018 14:27
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Hey, I have a very broad question that has probably been answered a hundred times but I don't want to look through 300+ pages of posts and couldn't see it in the last few so here goes: I'm DMing a game of 5e with a bunch of friends. It started off with some stuff I wrote myself but I hit writers block and realize I suck at being very creative so I decided to lead the gang into a module. I found the official Depths of the Abyss thing which seemed pretty cool and tossed them into that. We're just getting past chapter one in that and I'm feeling overwhelmed. Like, there are npcs and stuff, lots of places to go, tons of maps and areas and when we play I just feel incredibly unprepared. So I guess my question is if you guys have a good advice on how to keep track of running a big rear end module and like what to read up on in advance and stuff. Jesus, I don't even know what I'm asking, I just know I should be more prepared but I don't even know where to start and just feel overwhelmed when I try to figure it out. The thing is so far we've played Lost mines of Phandallin and some other small straight forward stuff and we all enjoy it and don't want to stop but as soon as we get to more interesting stuff than walking between rooms and fighting goblins I just feel unprepared and kind of lost. I guess I could sum this hole post up as "how do I DM" and it's a very nonconstructive question, so sorry about that.
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Feb 16, 2018 14:44
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Man with Hat posted:Hey, I have a very broad question that has probably been answered a hundred times but I don't want to look through 300+ pages of posts and couldn't see it in the last few so here goes: I think there's a mountain of replies you could get for this, it's a good question actually and one I had a problem with for a long time until it "clicks" First, you don't need to run the module like it's holy scripture. Our very own Sanford posted a few pages back about his game where he went off script from a module and his players loved it once he stopped trying to get them back on track I personally think there can be quite a lot of stress in a larger module for newer GMs, since most people have this determination to stick on script, only answer with what's in the book, only choose the paths available... Where usually the best stories are the ones not written on the paper, otherwise you'd just read a book The real thing about GMing is having a reasonable answer to the player's input, and being able to a. fill the gaps when they don't know what to do and b. moderate the game if it stops being fun To go back to the module thing, if you forget that Farmer Johnson was meant to show up along the road and tell them about the War Bear which he's seen about, and the players get to town then you go "oh poo poo! I forgot to have Farmer Johnson tell them about the War Bear! How am I going to explain the bear mauled corpses riddling the streets now?!"... The players don't know any better, put the bear in the next town, have Farmer Rick show up and tell them instead, lose the bear entirely and have a pub brawl, have it show up during the night, have a vampire instead... All these things are still fun and once you realise that you'll take a huge weight off your shoulders of trying to get it right I worried for years that I was GMing wrong, I'd miss poo poo out, forget stuff, reply to a question then immediately realise I'd given them too much information, broken character or got something totally incorrect... But one day I realised that the players liked talking to the NPCs in character, they liked hearing me describe what they saw and heard, they liked playing the game... Just cos I hosed up some stuff or gave them a boring answer when a far more interesting one came to mind 30 seconds later didn't take away from their experience. And realising that gives confidence to wing it and have fun yourself Also remember that they don't need to see and do everything. If they go to PLOT TOWN A but miss PLOT TOWN B and instead go to BAD GUY LAIR D missing out on the epic speech from the Mayor of PLOT TOWN B and the potential reward from the bar maid to save her husband from BAD GUY LAIR D... They won't know unless you tell them. And as long as they have fun in BAD GUY LAIR D, then who cares? Job done, put PLOT TOWN B in a Google Doc and use it later Sorry if this is a big ranty, but it's defiantly one of those "oh right" moments which makes GMing such a delight I hope you stick at it! Sounds like you are going in the right direction
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Feb 16, 2018 15:08
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kaffo posted:I think there's a mountain of replies you could get for this, it's a good question actually and one I had a problem with for a long time until it "clicks" Thank you for this! It all makes so much sense so I'll try to make myself think more along those lines. It has been a LOT of fun DMing when it's been going well. I did a one off in a village and a murder investigation and it was amazing. I made that myself with very minimal prep and just improvised the rest and it made things so much easier, but I don't know how to do the same in a bigger campaign. Man with Hat fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 16:19
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It might also help to see if the players will be okay with taking a break to play a more rules-light game for a session, especially a "GM-less" one. Fiasco or the Quiet Year or whatever. Running D&D is hard, between having to be the rule referee, dealing with the monsters, actually improving together a narrative, and roleplaying a whole bunch of random NPCs. It's totally understandable to feel overwhelmed. I've mentioned before that all these things are skills, and like any skill get better with practice. The great thing about table top is these days is that with so many focused indie games, you can probably find a game that lets you hone in on whatever specific element you want to work on. In this case, just getting over the hump and realizing you really can just wing this and have it work. Even better, those "GM-less" games get the other players thinking about some of the same things a GM does; when you go back to your regular game, they'll probably take some of that with them and will be more inclined to do things that support your efforts. EDIT: In fact, the Quiet Year or the Microscope family of games may be perfect for you. They're one-shot style games, so you can wrap in a single session, but they're also for telling stories about what happens over months, years, even centuries or more. That might help organizing your thoughts on how to run longer plots. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 16:44
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Yeah, like, once I stopped over-preparing, I feel like I've gotten way better. It's tempting as an idea to prepare for "what if this happens, or that or if this happens then..." but then the reality is, that's really not needed. No GM notes survive contact with that tricky, absurd, mindset that is A Player (unless you're being very railroad-y and everyone is okay with that. Like, say, playing most prepubs in the first place). Sly Flourish has a fantastic PDF/book available about being a Lazy DM which is fantastic and I highly recommend giving it a read.
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Feb 16, 2018 16:55
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To riff off Dragonatrix a bit, it also sounds a bit like you're falling into the trap a lot of GMs (myself included) get stuck in. Namely, feeling like we have to narrate the connective bits of travel and have all the story show up "on screen" for the PCs. IME, pacing in tabletop RPGs works best when it works like TV. There's no reason you can't smash cut directly from rescuing the prince from the dragon, to standing before the queen's throne as she announces her gratitude and hands out rewards... and a new mission. Even long-narrative shows like Game of Thrones skip past a lot of travel time, etc., with little more than an aside or bit of narration, or even just a chyron. If the town the PCs arrived in doesn't have anything interesting in it, just narrate past it to the next bit of interesting things. This even works with NPC interactions - if a PC wants to hit up the blacksmith and you can't think of any interesting interaction, you don't have to RP it out. You can cover it in one line, or even throw it to the PC to describe if they're comfortable with that. The trick there is that recognizing when the player has something interesting for that encounter and letting them take the lead to bring it out. But if it's just going to be small talk, bounce right by it. You may also want to consider switching to a more episodic story. Rather than try to have one giant narrative through line for the whole campaign when you start, just have the PCs be the recurring characters in a series of adventures. Over time recurring NPCs will appear organically, and you may find a season-long plot thread to pull on. Or not, and that's fine too.
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Feb 16, 2018 17:06
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Man with Hat posted:Thank you for this! It all makes so much sense so I'll try to make myself think more along those lines. It has been a LOT of fun DMing when it's been going well. I did a one off in a village and a murder investigation and it was amazing. I made that myself with very minimal prep and just improvised the rest and it made things so much easier, but I don't know how to do the same in a bigger campaign. Some more good advice above. As for your specific question about prepping a bigger campaign, there are a mountain of methods ranging from "don't do prep, it's evil" to "RAILROAD THEM HARDER THAN THE ORIENT EXPRESS" Finding what works for you is a little bit of trail and error. I thought I wanted highly prepped games with all the options mapped out so handle every situation, but turns out I am way too lazy for that In my games these days (at least my PbtA games like Dungeon World) I just don't do any prep beyond thinking to myself "man, it'd be cool if they fought a dragon, but inside a castle" and maybe making a couple custom moves Of course, the negative to that is it's much harder to make a coherent plot, and I use quite a lot of brain power trying to tie up loose ends and make the "plot" tie together. But we all have a great time and the end result is a linear story in an interesting world that the players had quite a lot of input to On the other hand you could railroad the crap out of them and take them on your wonderful adventure you wrote in your nerd cave. That's totally fine if both you and your players like it/know that's what the game is If I wasn't so lazy, my perfect mix would be having a overall plot happening that I'd come up with, thrown at the players and got their characters involved with, then a series of "keyframes" which I'd designed (save Barrow Villiage, kill John McHenchman in Spearhead Valley, find the Ring of BBEG Death after fighting the Balrog...) and what comes between them is ad-lib with player input. Then those keyframes can be juggled, removed, added as you go. Who knows if this would work for you or not! Remember you can name things then fill them out later. You might draw a map with 6 towns and 2 cities on it, name them all, but only actually flesh out one of the cities. In session 1 the players express interest in town #3, sure now you can go away and flesh it out yourself between sessions. Or maybe you wing it and tell them it's famous for it's wine in session 1, so much so that the King himself visits every year! And it's happening next week! Then go flesh it out between sessions. Easy Have a think about it, you also don't want to end up spending hours every week between sessions designing stuff which might never get used
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Feb 16, 2018 17:37
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Comrade Gorbash posted:To riff off Dragonatrix a bit, it also sounds a bit like you're falling into the trap a lot of GMs (myself included) get stuck in. Namely, feeling like we have to narrate the connective bits of travel and have all the story show up "on screen" for the PCs. I pretty much have a barebones outline of a half dozen places my current big campaign could possibly go, and have a handful of NPCs dedicated to giving them useful information, as well as a sheet of paper with a printout of 10 random NPCs and the bullets the team needs to get. So they can go off the rails and I sitll have things ready to go. Don't worry too much about staying on the rails and let players go where they will. I pretty much have a standing rule at the table that if anyone wants to do something, don't ask me, just roll. If it is that ridiculous or stupid, the DC is just going to be set higher and pretty much require a natural 20. They may have burned down the building I had stuff planned for during the next session, but it wasn't hard to move that stuff and they're still talking about it months later.
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Feb 16, 2018 17:56
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Comrade Gorbash posted:To riff off Dragonatrix a bit, it also sounds a bit like you're falling into the trap a lot of GMs (myself included) get stuck in. Namely, feeling like we have to narrate the connective bits of travel and have all the story show up "on screen" for the PCs. I want to reinforce the above. A very useful but underemphasized skill for any game master is to learn to separate the things that will be interesting from the things that are boring, and then skip the boring poo poo. I ran an Exalted 1e game for years, and one of the parts of the game that my players still mention, like ten years later, was the time they fought a Tyrant Lizard (read: T-Rex). They were hunting one for its teeth to make magic items, IIRC; at any rate, the lead-up to that fight went like this. "Guys, I could spend hours and hours talking about your trek through the jungle and the humidity and the uncomfortableness and the danger of it all, and make you roll to track it and see if you found anything else and blah blah blah. But you didn't come here for that; you came here to fight a dinosaur. So, 'stomp stomp stomp RAWR,' look, it's a Tyrant Lizard. Roll initiative." If you're having trouble distinguishing when to describe travel and when to just skip it, just ask your players "Okay, so you're heading out to (location). Are you making any special preparation for the travel?" If they spend a bunch of time thinking about possible scenarios and difficulties they might face (i.e. "we'll hire some caravan guards in case we get ambushed by bandits, and then make sure we bring extra water supplies because we'll be passing through desert territory"), then they're telling you that travel is important and they would like some attention paid to it; reward them with that attention. If they're not doing any of that (i.e. "nah, not really"), they're telling you that they don't give a drat about travel and want to get to the next location so they can start doing the poo poo they do give a drat about, so feel free to just skip past the travel. As a rule, if you focus more attention on the things the players actually care about and then skip the stuff they don't, you'll do just fine.
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Feb 16, 2018 19:38
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:If you're having trouble distinguishing when to describe travel and when to just skip it, just ask your players "Okay, so you're heading out to (location). Are you making any special preparation for the travel?" If they spend a bunch of time thinking about possible scenarios and difficulties they might face (i.e. "we'll hire some caravan guards in case we get ambushed by bandits, and then make sure we bring extra water supplies because we'll be passing through desert territory"), then they're telling you that travel is important and they would like some attention paid to it; reward them with that attention. If they're not doing any of that (i.e. "nah, not really"), they're telling you that they don't give a drat about travel and want to get to the next location so they can start doing the poo poo they do give a drat about, so feel free to just skip past the travel. Holy poo poo, this is a brilliant idea. I love this! 100% stealing this dude, nice one
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Feb 16, 2018 19:44
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I want to reinforce the above. A very useful but underemphasized skill for any game master is to learn to separate the things that will be interesting from the things that are boring, and then skip the boring poo poo. This is something I wish more GMs kept in mind, thank you.
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Feb 16, 2018 20:21
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What if my group is unreasonably paranoid and thinks that "do you make any special preparations for the trip" means "if you don't guess how im going to kill you and create a counter to said killing without any hints from me, I'm going to kill you with no second chances"? Not my fault, my players just read roleplaying horror stories and assume they're the norm.
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Feb 16, 2018 20:33
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sirtommygunn posted:What if my group is unreasonably paranoid and thinks that "do you make any special preparations for the trip" means "if you don't guess how im going to kill you and create a counter to said killing without any hints from me, I'm going to kill you with no second chances"? Not my fault, my players just read roleplaying horror stories and assume they're the norm. A lot of weird player behavior is learned, well, trauma and there's no in game way to solve that.
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Feb 16, 2018 20:35
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sirtommygunn posted:What if my group is unreasonably paranoid and thinks that "do you make any special preparations for the trip" means "if you don't guess how im going to kill you and create a counter to said killing without any hints from me, I'm going to kill you with no second chances"? Not my fault, my players just read roleplaying horror stories and assume they're the norm. A fair question, and I wish I had a better answer than "build trust between you and your players by not being that guy." You might also try sitting down with your players either before or after the game session and just explaining that you're not that guy; something along the lines of "guys, I notice you seem to be expecting me to crush you with some evil poo poo you've had no time to prep for, and I'm trying not to run my game that way. Let's have a talk about expectations" can work wonders. A shocking number of GM Problems can be solved with the simple maxim of "talk to your group like adults," and this seems like one of 'em. Do that, and then continue to not be that guy and let them get used to it, and you'll be fine.
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Feb 16, 2018 20:45
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:You might also try sitting down with your players either before or after the game session and just explaining that you're not that guy. This has never failed to work for me. Sometimes it takes a little while for them to understand that you weren't bullshitting them, so persevere with not being that guy and they'll get it eventually.
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Feb 16, 2018 21:01
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Yeah my ground floor rule for any new player is "if you try something interesting or entertaining you won't be punished and will probably be rewarded" and I stick to it. Never had any problem. I also give out bennies at the beginning of every game and they allow the player to call a vote for doing something that I don't quite agree with, I become just another player at the table for these and majority rules. Surprisingly they get downvoted about 1/3rd of the time (rough estimate).
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Feb 16, 2018 23:17
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Incidentally, one trick that I've seen work in groups where Adult Discussion was tricky to set up (because they were pickup groups at a gaming store full of people who may not have even met before sitting down at the table) was for a GM to simply meet every player expectation. That is to say, if the players said "there might be hordes of undead on this trip, let's make sure we hire some clerics to come with us," then sure enough, there were hordes of undead, but what do you know, those clerics really turned the tide. If the players said "I think I heard something about orcish warbands in the area, so let's go back to that dungeon where we killed a poo poo ton of orcs, cut off their heads, and put them on pikes so the orcs will see we're not to be hosed with," then sure enough, there were orcish warbands but they saw all those heads and freaked out and ran off. After a few sessions of this, the group had gotten the idea that A. being clever works, B. seeing your plan succeed feels awesome, and C. the GM probably isn't gonna screw us, and by then the GM and group had generally established enough of a rapport that they could have that discussion about expectations without any problems - and he could back it up by saying "guys, if I was one of those adversarial Killer GMs you hear about, I would have sent the orcs after you on the trip where you had the clerics and the undead would've come after you set up the orc heads. I didn't do that, so maybe we can all chill, 'kay?"
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Feb 17, 2018 03:36
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I didn't like the layout and art of the map I originally made for my puzzle. So, I remade the tile with a new layout (and stronger magnets), and made a new map. Much larger, and better art. Based on an antique map of mauritius. Old map: New map, at least twice as big in each direction:   I like it a lot more, and the 5th secret location isn't anywhere near the "X marks the spot" location from the four visible marks.
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Feb 17, 2018 06:13
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loving Christ your players are gonna fuckin love that.
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Feb 17, 2018 15:18
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Bad Munki posted:I didn't like the layout and art of the map I originally made for my puzzle. So, I remade the tile with a new layout (and stronger magnets), and made a new map. Much larger, and better art. Based on an antique map of mauritius. How the hell did you get that map to look so authentic?
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Feb 17, 2018 15:53
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kaffo posted:How the hell did you get that map to look so authentic? Seriously, it's professional.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:03
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Well, the easy part was finding an old pirate cave with a skeleton in a captain’s hat clutching an old piece of parchment. The hard part was making it out alive once all the traps were triggered by grabbing the map to the secret treasure... If y’all want, I’ll happily do a little write up later on. I mean, it’d make a perfectly great handout on its own, and really it didn’t take all that long.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:16
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At a guess weak tea, singing the edges and a fountain pen? Def explain, I love that stuff. Another nice trick is crumpling and unfolding it a few dozen times, the paper gets a neat parchmenty texture.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:25
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sebmojo posted:Another nice trick is crumpling and unfolding it a few dozen times, the paper gets a neat parchmenty texture. Do that before the tea treatment, some paper gets brittle and crumbly after you soak it. A slightly more messy way is to very lightly butter (or margarine) the paper (like you're using butter to grease a cake tin), and then bake it on a low heat until it looks right. It should eventually go a kind of brown colour and become slightly translucent. Don't get the butter exactly even and the final colour and texture will be different in places. If you crumpled and uncrumpled it a bit first, that texture will be highlighted by the heat marks. You can get a similar result with an olive oil spray instead of butter/marge, but it's easy to get way too much on. Be careful singeing the edges afterwards. Ideally, that'll happen naturally in the oven anyway. you can encourage it by not buttering right up to the edge. e: Some inks lift off significantly with oil/butter/whatever, so test first. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Feb 17, 2018 |
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Feb 17, 2018 21:40
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Oh man, I like that idea, that may well work better than what I did. I’ll have to give that a try.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:42
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Bad Munki posted:Oh man, I like that idea, that may well work better than what I did. I’ll have to give that a try. Yours honestly looks better than anything I've made.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:45
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munki how did you do that
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Feb 17, 2018 22:39
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