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Arrrthritis posted:player sets stuff on fire I have a player like this in my campaign, and he's an idiot. It's supposed to be a heroic campaign and he's constantly trying to burn down buildings and poo poo. loving annoying. This is the kind of player who is going to escalate into casually kill innocent bystanders and dare the guards to do something about it, btw.
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Jun 15, 2009 03:40
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h_double posted:No risk, no reward. If you ever said this at my table I would boot you so hard. It's grognard talk. Games are supposed to be fun and it's not fun to get crapped on if you miss a session. Real life happens and gently caress you if you punish someone for not appearing for A FUN GAME. Do you know what their punishment was? That they missed out on the fun of the session! Plus, they are off-balance at the next session ("what's going on? who is this person?") "No risk, no reward" is fine for a game with strangers or for a competitive game but RPGs are a co-op game and gently caress you for not realizing that. Edit: It's awesome to be the 3rd level character in a 5th level party. Lots of fun. You loving moron. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 26, 2009 19:03
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h_double posted:RPGs have a cooperative element but they are still a GAME, which ought to have challenges and rewards. You can have a cooperative party and still have an element of friendly competition. Look at how incredibly dumb you are. Literally nothing you said had anything to do with my assertion. You talk about rivalries at the table: who cares? You talk about loot and poo poo. Who cares? I don't care if RPGs come out of miniature games. That is 100 percent not pertinent to what we are discussing. We're talking about punishing people mechanically for missing sessions, you spazz. Try to keep your spastic mind on subject. You actually have bought into the MMORPG paradigm of "challenge and rewards are what make a game." What makes a game is fun, stupid. Reducing the options that a player has in your game because they missed a session is dumber than hell. A game is supposed to be fun, literally everything about the game is meant to facilitate that. It's not fun to be killed by monsters, but it's also not fun to steamroll them. It's not fun to have a static character that never does anything new, but it's also not fun to go from Hank the Rookie Paladin to Hank the Ruler of Men in three sessions. Do you see that? Do you see how the "challenge" and "risk" really only exists to facilitate player fun? These are all things that a good GM balances to keep the game fun. What a good GM does not do is mechanically punish a player for missing a session, because the reality is you are playing a co-operative social game and sometimes life happens.
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Jul 26, 2009 22:30
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ripped0ff posted:I think something needs to be said for the GM in all this. I'm sure all of you guys can appreciate the problem of having planned a large part of one session around someone's character hooks, only to have them not show up. By itself, that's not a problem. But when said person is only missing the session because you got a drunk email from them at 5 AM saying they were too wasted to make the session, it's a bit like having them take a poo poo down your throat. Sure, I'm not going to ask folks to forego partying and normal socializing for the sake of a game, but there does need to be actual incentive to attending the game as well as the just showing up to bullshit. The incentive is the fun. They missed the fun. If you have to "incentivize" the player with threatening to assign XP penalties, you might as well "incentivize" other players with free magic weapons and armor for attending. If someone takes a poo poo down your throat for an out of game reason you don't penalize them in the drat game. Be a loving adult. You talk to them like a person. You let them know it's disrespectful. You don't ever mess with their character like a goddamn child for petty revenge. I had three of my players miss my session for a bullshit reason once (a brother, his sister, and her boyfriend.) Something about having to work on a school paper for her community college classes, and the brother and boyfriend wouldn't attend without her. I politely told them that their excuse didn't fly, they were a large part of the game and if they didn't attend things were dead in the water, and that if I could work a 50+ hour a week job and still find time to run a game that they could certainly make the effort to do some basic time management and avoid procrastination so that they could attend it. A few weeks later, they pulled the same poo poo. At that point they got (politely) booted and replaced within 2 sessions. At no point did I feel the need to penalize their characters even though the players behaved quite badly, because I'm not a passive-aggressive twat.
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Jul 26, 2009 23:40
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How do I deal with it? Hmm let's see. This is how I start every single one of these conversations, so far it's never let me down: "Hey X, here's the thing. I know that you like to party/stay up late in chat rooms/show up so stoned you can't roll straight/whatever, and I respect that decision. We are adults here. But let me give you the flip side. The reality is that I am working really hard on this campaign. I am really engaged in it, putting in hours outside the game to make this an exciting and fun time for you all. And when you deliberately choose to not give a crap, it hurts my feelings. I am working very hard for your entertainment and you are disrespecting that with your behavior." "All I am asking here is that you care enough to show up consistently and with a decent level of engagement. If you don't want to do that, that's fine. No hard feelings. But I would prefer to get someone else at the table who does. Otherwise I am just spinning my wheels." By doing this no XP thing, you are hurting yourself. You are making it so that your friends never have to look you in the eye and say, "I don't give a fuuuuuuuuck about your hard work, son." Again, in-game penalties for out-of-game actions are not only stupid, but they don't work. Fix the underlying problem: that these people aren't engaged enough with your campaign. Say to them: get engaged or get out. They don't have to be at every session, but they should want to be there. If they don't care, no amount of penalizing their character is going to help. In fact, they are going to make it worse. They are going to disengage further and further as they fall more and more behind. Edit: I have probably kicked dozens of players out of campaigns over the years. You don't keep people who are not engaged and don't really care about the game at the table. If the game is something that a particular player comes to because they have nothing better to do, you need to boot them or get their head on straight. That's the worst kind of player. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Jul 27, 2009 |
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Jul 27, 2009 00:01
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Mikan posted:Actually I usually just say something like "sorry you can't make the session dude, I know how much fun you have playing RPGs. I'll email you with a summary of the session and XP/treasure notes later this week" Yes, exactly. This is exactly what to do, and if they keep giving weak-rear end excuses or have chronic absenteeism you confront them about it in a nice way.
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Jul 27, 2009 00:08
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How old are you?
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Jul 27, 2009 00:09
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Well I thought you would be a lot younger. One last time: you don't need to "incentivize" players to attend your sessions, because the incentive is the fun they will have. What you need to have is players who are engaged with your campaign and want to be there and have fun WHEN they can be there. And there's no amount of mechanical punishment that will make this happen. As far as "evaluating excuses", there really isn't any evaluation required. Players that miss or half-rear end sessions for voluntary stuff that they have total control over (getting drunk, stoned, staying up too late, procrastinating, surfing the web during games, etc.) are not engaged and don't really care if they are there or not. Mechanical penalties don't work on these players because they are already distant from the game. Players who miss sessions for life stuff (work, finals, family) and who enjoy themselves during a session should not be penalized for things that they have no control over. Yes, I kick players from my game when they aren't engaged. This is something that is totally easy to spot and requires virtually no effort or critical thinking on the DM's part. Right now I have a player that misses every third session because he is a swim coach and goes to swim meets. But he is happy and engaged when he is there. Should I give him half XP for those missed sessions? Of course not. That would make me a huge rear end in a top hat. An "H_Double" as it were. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jul 27, 2009 |
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Jul 27, 2009 00:26
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I don't kick a ton of people out of my game. The reality is, every campaign has players that are not going to be engaged with the game at various times. When this happens, one of the first symptoms is absenteeism. Reason 1 of why people disengage from the game is because they aren't having fun. Reason 2 is usually player attitude; they consider RPG time to be "default" fun, which is to say the player has the following attitude: I will play if I can't find anything better to do. For reason type 1, you have to try to make the game more fun for them. Ways you can make the game more fun: cater more to their playstyle, let them start a different character, let them DM. Talk to them about what they expect to get out of the game. If you can ratchet up the fun for them they will become engaged. I want to stress again that this is by far the most common cause of "bullshit" absenteeism and is the easiest to fix. Reason type 2 is a poison and if you cannot correct it the offending player needs to be kicked out of the group. This player will miss sessions because they just don't give a gently caress, playing an RPG to them is like watching TV and your RPG is the equivalent of the "well, nothing else is on" channel. This is disrespectful to the other players and especially the GM. Now I did not talk about the third reason to miss a game, which is of course that the player wants to be there but can't because they have a commitment that prevents it. These are pretty much the only 3 reasons people miss games and if you can logically tell me how punishing the player mechanically helps any 3 of these situations then I'll listen. P.S. trick question, you can't. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Jul 27, 2009 |
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Jul 27, 2009 01:52
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The reason they give out perfect attendance awards is because school districts are paid by student attendance, and they want to encourage attendance as much as possible so they get paid. It's a dirty underhanded trick that school districts pull. And also, using consensual reality to prove a point against a fantasy game where the GM has complete control doesn't work. Furthermore,
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Jul 27, 2009 02:01
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I personally don't like this, because what it boils down to is you are rolling a hidden die to see if the players get ambushed. Edit: Let me clarify. What I mean to say is that if your party sees the spy, they will 99.9% pursue and kill him/win the skill challenge. So what it comes down to is a roll of the dice to see if they notice the spy...or if they get ambushed. I just personally don't like one-die roll stuff like this. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jul 29, 2009 |
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Jul 29, 2009 18:40
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If they are getting ambushed anyway, then they should see the spy without a perception check. I just don't like branch points in adventures that are determined by die-rolling and not the PCs. You aren't railroading them but you are turning over the adventure structure to the dice a little.
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Jul 29, 2009 21:12
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Maybe I am just saying it because it's new. But "The Day After Ragnarok" is pretty incredible.
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Jul 31, 2009 05:07
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The problem I see with this idea is that the players are going to trade their weapons in for something better pretty early in the campaign unless you somehow "level up" their weapons for them. Even then, they sill might get rid of them. You never know.
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Jul 31, 2009 23:35
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CDOR Gemini posted:My players are distracted by phones...it seems like the easiest way to get them to pay attention to the game, but am I being a passive aggressive rear end in a top hat? Yes. Don't punish people in-game for OOC actions. What you need to do with the dude who is playing with his iPhone: give a complex description of an area and then ask the player to repeat it back to you. When he can't, tell him to put down his iPhone. If he can, then you don't really have a problem...unless it's distracting other players. In which case he's gotta stow it. Now the guy who left your game for the bar is a different case. He's the kind that will play your game until something better comes along, and then bail. Your activity is his "default fun". You have a couple of options. I've tried sitting down with these players and telling them that it's tremendously disrespectful to me to waste hours of my time setting up and preparing quests and adventures, only to bail. They usually don't care. So give it the old college try, and then kick 'em when he still doesn't give a crap. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Aug 25, 2009 |
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Aug 25, 2009 18:20
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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. This is going to be a really easy encounter. The official rule is 4 minions = one real monster, but that isn't actually true in my opinion. It's more like 4 minions = one real monster if there's a real monster on the field to take advantage of the minions clogging up the battlefield, or enhancing them in some way.
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Dec 16, 2009 20:45
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I don't recommend this, because you aren't acclumating to powers where breathing on the guys cause them to die, and their terrible to-hit only really threatens low-AC classes. It's going to allow some players (controllers, anybody with burst/blast abilities) to feel like monumental badasses, and make the rest of the party feel terrible as they slowly. kill. one. wimp. a. round. Here's what you can do: take a monster, half their hitpoints, when they are killed they "burst" into 4 minions. Regular monster experience for getting rid of all the minions. This way the players get to mow some guys down without having the Wizzo and the Dragonborn guy just crush on everyone. There's also a bit of a tactical puzzle to it. Plus, witha ton of minions, they are going to get in each other's way, bunch up, etc. etc. Then it's bye-bye minions when the Wizard uses her encounter to take them out. edit: if this is your first combat, just make it a tank and spank using Brutes. They are great target dummies. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 16, 2009 |
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Dec 16, 2009 20:56
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Yarrbossa posted:I think I'm going to have the king wearing one of these. I've tried the gorget before, but they all decided to slide their swords in holes in varying places in the plate armor to make the kill. Poor paladin Sounds like a great campaign and a great bunch of players you've got there.
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Dec 17, 2009 23:46
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Baronjutter posted:The entire local world is being simulated all the times with tons of things going on behind the scenes and it's all complex enough that even I know don't know what's going to happen all the time. There's tons of factions, organizations, countries, and powerful NPC's with their own agendas trying to accomplish things. Their fav npc just happened to be at a location where another faction created this event that killed him, and it was the players that got the ball rolling for that event to happen so it does link back to their actions. You're not smart enough to simulate anything with a degree of accuracy. For reference: we have a real world here with real observable events and economists and social scientists still have trouble determining what is going to happen, even with their thousands upon thousands of man-years of work attempting to use a computer or mathematics to simulate the world. Add a dragon or owlbear or some other creature that has never existed and never will and trying to guess it's effects to the simulation and it would diverge even more from what would "really" happen. So at this point you're not simulating anything, you're making up random poo poo. So knock this stupid poo poo off and stop thinking you're smart enough to model all these forces and just make a narrative that is the most satisfying for the players (or allow them to forge their own). To me you just sound like a smug rear end in a top hat and a terrible DM. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Aug 11, 2011 |
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Aug 11, 2011 16:50
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fosborb posted:I do think there's a marked difference between random rolls for broad forces currently outside of the players control, and a "welp dice say rocks killed your favorite npc while you were sleeping. thems the breaks." This is what I was talking about. That's terrible DMing. Kakermix posted:Sorry if our dynamic world system is too advanced for you, but with you playing 4th ed I'm sure anything beyond WoW's amazing realism would be too much. I doubt you could appreciate the groundbreaking systems we've developed. Oh good! The players are terrible too. You all deserve each other.
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Aug 11, 2011 18:52
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Honestly I'm just trying to figure out Baronjutter. At first I thought he was a terrible circa-1979 Bad DM, but then I find out he considers FATE to be too rules-heavy. I mean what the heck? Barronjutter, you're a pretty rare bird; I think you're kinda out there carving your own path and there's not a lot of help we can give you. Just Do It. Edit: The reason I don't get what's going on here is because Baronjutter's approach to gaming seems so bizzaro. He has all these made-up rules for nations and charts and crap for what they are doing, but wants the bare minimum of definition for the PCs (which are the people that the actual game is based around) so as...not to railroad them I guess? I dunno. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Aug 12, 2011 |
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Aug 12, 2011 23:26
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Sometimes players have their ideas and expectations molded by previous experiences. Talk to them. Ask them why they were afraid to fight the tiny dog men for a juicy reward. One of them might have participated in a hyper-lethal campaign. Another might not understand that combat heavily favors the PCs at lower levels. Talk to them, and you can get a mutually agreeable game.
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Nov 2, 2011 23:32
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Worlds Smuggest posted:This game has been fun for all concerned until recently, where most challenges for them have been extreme in either direction, too easy or kill everyone in the party if the fighters die. The main problem I'm thinking is they are just entirely too powerful, so anything of their appropriate challenge rating just can't compete. I don't think there's anything you can do to save that campaign, bud. Pathfinder is notorious for power imbalances and being hyper-swingy. It sounds like you're using a bunch of different splatbooks for characters too, which is going to throw things even further out of wack. Wrap it up and find a different system that can handle a kitchen sink party in both a narratively and mechanically satisfying way. I think the Dresden Files RPG might be right up your alley.
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Nov 9, 2011 19:27
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csammis posted:Does the pact boon in general count as a single source for temporary hit points or does each enemy count as a different source? In other words if a level three warlock kills three minions does he get 9 THP or a maximum of 3? He gets 3 temporary hitpoints 3 times, and they don't stack as per the rules. So he has 3 hitpoints.
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Nov 10, 2011 16:33
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Regarding arm breaking: generally you shouldn't allow this unless it's as a narrative convenience. Breaking an arm is really cool when Tony Jaa does it in a movie but in a mechanical sense it's either going to be too difficult (so no one does it) or too easy (so they are always doing it). Also, expect lots of "fun" player suggestions after an NPC's arm actually gets broken. "Oh he should get a -2 to attack rolls, he's in a lot of pain because his arm is broken. Oh he should get -3 damage, he can't counterbalance the swing with his broken arm properly. Oh he should tell us whatever he knows, or I punch him in the broken arm."
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Nov 10, 2011 17:35
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Affi posted:In my Eberron campaign my players are probably going to hook up with an airship crew consisting of re-skinned Star Trek characters. The Warforged must be the Spock analogue, and Kirk must be a half-elf Bard.
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Feb 1, 2012 23:50
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One of the best villains I ever made was a Vizier who had an amulet that would teleport anyone he wanted to a random location 200 miles a way with a thought. So it would basically get rid of anyone who threatened him without him actually knowing what happened to them. The players attacked him, were teleported into a desert (that the ranger was familiar with, so it didn't feel like a complete screw-over) and they regrouped, trekked back, and tried to figure out how to get the amulet away. The entire campaign turned into an elaborate heist to get that amulet. I couldn't use the same plot device again with those same players, obviously, but it worked very well as a way to make the villain powerful without being overpowered.
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Jun 1, 2012 21:28
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Andre Banzai posted:How did they take the amulet, if I may ask?? And what did they do with it later? I mean, it's one hell of a magical item! The Vizier played off the amulet's powers as favor from the Gods in a very religious kingdom (not a magic-fearing kingdom, just one where clergy was greatly respected). When the amulet worked, it produced a loud clap and a bang, which the Vizier told the King was the Gods "removing anyone who didn't have the kingdom's best interest at heart from the kingdom, in the way that a surgeon draws out infection from a wound", which the King was totally in the tank on as the effect of the Amulet didn't register as Arcane magic. Little did the King know that the Vizier was selling him out to a rival Evil Kingdom - and the party did know, but obviously trying to get an audience with the King wasn't going to work. You were just going to end up somewhere outside the kingdom once you started leveling accusations at the Vizier. So the party has to get in and get the amulet from the Vizier to actually see the King. Well actually first they had to figure out that it was the Amulet that was causing the effect. This was one series of adventures: discover the source of the power. Then, they had to find drawings and pictures of it to make a copy (more on this later). Lastly, they had to get the amulet away from the Vizier. The party posed as traveling performance troupe, infiltrated the castle, donned disguises and costumes, performed various feats of acrobatics, magic, archery, and strength to wow the castle guards while the party thief slipped away and filled the cistern that the Vizier drew his bath from with sleeping agent. Later that evening, the party waited until the Vizier slept, crept through the castle, stole the amulet, replaced it with a forgery, returned to the castle as themselves, and again sought audience with the King. Vizier moves to intercept and send them away again, but it doesn't work and this time the King is actually summoned. The party then reveals the real amulet, teleports away the Ranger as an example, and points out that the whole thing was a sham while the Vizier comically and continually tries to teleport them away with his fake amulet. The Vizier is thrown in the dungeon for the blasphemy of trying to pass off a magical item as divine providence, and the Ranger marches back into town from the forest in 5 days having enjoyed a refereshing walk through the countryside. Party destroys the amulet (another short quest) after learning that it is the fabled Black Amulet of King Auld, a failed experiment in dimensional travel that derived it's power from the DIVINE energy of 1000 souls trapped inside the amulet and denied true rest. Party becomes advisers, works against a secret organization called The Clergy that's responsible for religion becoming a free ticket to do whatever you want, campaign sort of fizzles out before we got any further. Worked out pretty good, I think. Edit: Sorry about the campaign fiction diversion there but you did ask. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 23:12
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Andre Banzai posted:That was REALLY cool, dude. My players would NEVER devise something like that, I think. Oh I made it very clear that trying to fight their way in was going to get them teleported away. And probably have a division of the King's hit squad after them for good measure, as they were now a repeated threat. I gave a bunch of events going on at the castle and let them pick the one they wanted. Some stuff: 1) Sneak in through the sewers. 2) A Masquerade ball! 3) The King Loves Perfomers (this is what they went with), possibly combined with #2 at the Masquerade ball (this was discussed but ultimately discarded) 4) A Tournament of Champions! 5) Religious Conference Then they asked questions about each event, I made up answers, they made up a plan. They actually came up with the fake amulet idea in order to "show that this guy is just a total dick" (one player's words) If you take violence off the table you'll get great results. Just don't do it a lot. Edit: fixed formatting Edit 2: if your player's response is to walk away when they can't solve a problem with violence, they are missing out on a large part of the fun of RPGs. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jun 1, 2012 |
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Jun 1, 2012 23:47
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GMPCs are poison. Get rid of the character immediately. Co-GMs are very, very, very tricky and I don't recommend it. Sit down and talk with your players. Tell them what you just told us. If you can't make progress - if they still insist on treating everything as Party Combat Hour - find a new group of players for Strands of Fate. It's not harmful to say, as the GM, "You know guys, I really didn't see a violent solution to this scenario when I designed it. You're free to do what you want, of course - just saying that you don't have to feel like you have to beat these people up if you don't want to."
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Aug 1, 2012 15:57
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If you're going to be playing an investigative game, I've got the system for you: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3453937 Let's put it this way: you spend points from a pool to be effective at fighting, and your pool doesn't refresh until the GM says so (usually between cases), so repeatedly fighting everything quickly becomes less and less viable as the case goes on. If investigation is going to be a big part of your campaign, I highly recommend the Gumshoe system.
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Aug 1, 2012 16:44
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Perestroika posted:Does anybody have some pointers for good/fun investigative gaming? Here's a thread I made about investigative gaming. It has some good advice, I think: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3453937
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Sep 4, 2012 16:45
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So I've been roped in to helping my friend run the finale of his 7 year 2nd edition D&D campaign. And by "helping" I'll be co-dming a stupidly massive "8 Pit Field + 2 neutral magic users vs. the party" grand melee. And one of my duties is to design a level 24 magic user that may or may not help the party based on vague motivations that I don't understand. And I don't have access to a 2nd edition Player's Guide. Heeeeeeeelp
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Dec 17, 2014 18:04
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AlphaDog posted:Speaking as someone who DMed 2nd ed for 12 years, that encounter sounds like it's going to be a goddamned nightmare to run. I have DM'd 2nd edition for about 8 years but haven't touched it since the late 90s, before 3rd edition. I've also never DM'd past 14th level (where the system really starts to break down IMO) I did play in this guy's game 7 years ago when it first started but it was a positively dreadful "old school" DM game with pixel bitching, railroading, all that bad stuff that I'm just not interested in dealing with anymore. So I bailed, but he and his mid-40s friends kept playing it. Now he's called me back because I'm the best DM he knows and he realizes that he's basically hosed himself (this "best DM" thing is not a brag, compared to his group I work hard on prioritizing player fun and engagement and narrative instead of "real fantasy worldz with real consequences power trip" horseshit that he's familiar with, so compared to him I am one long party that people love, comparatively) I'm not an RPG newbie, been doing this for almost 30 years, I currently know Fate, D&D 4e, Gumshoe well enough to run them off the cuff but I certainly don't know 2e very well anymore and I don't know high level play beyond theory. I don't even know where to begin generating a 24th level magic user. Don't know the spell slots, don't know the hit dice, don't know what items I should use (obviously some haste stuff and some contingency spells but I don't want to make a character that snaps her fingers and trivializes the encounter). This is basically a GM Mary Sue btw, so if you're getting the vibe that this is a horrible loving situation that I'm trying to salvage you're absolutely right. The goal would be an interesting character, not a super-powerful one (but how to do that at 24th level? Fuuuuuuuuck.) I'll find out about the splat books. I know there's also house rules. Any help that anyone could give me, no matter how small, would be appreciated. I promise a long and detailed trip report of this fiasco afterwards, for entertainment value.
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Dec 17, 2014 20:12
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Lynx Winters posted:It seems like this is something you don't want to do, and the GM is looking for a way to shift blame when the big ending is a train wreck. No, he's an older guy who is smart enough to realize he's hosed himself. It's a 9 player party to boot so this is just pure loving insanity. He flew in one of the players from across the country on his own dime. So this is a really big deal for him and he definitely realizes he's bitten off way way way too much. The players, and the DM, are too grognardy for suggestions along the line of "gently caress it, switch to <a different simpler rule system that could handle this better>" so if anyone has any ideas about designing a level 24 magic user under 2e rules I would really appreciate it. I realize that it's a bad situation but I'm this guy's friend and I'm not walking away from it, I am going to do my best to try to help him salvage this. Edit: Also, let's say that this is a nefarious plan to shift blame: I don't care, I never see these other people and a bunch of 45 year old grognards being mad at me because their precious poo poo system fell apart at the finale is actually really funny and cool. Perfectly happy to be a scapegoat in that case. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 22:14
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Well good news, he's agreed that abstraction is necessary and that he doesn't want a total party wipe. I've sent him over some ideas - Rexides your idea got the ball rolling, so thank you.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:55
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I agree, good advice. I've already convinced him that running a five hour combat is not epic, it's exhausting. This is going to be bad, but not "throw yourself off a cliff" bad.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:04
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Update on the "8 Pit Fiends + 2 level 20+ magic users + party of 9 PCs battle royale under 2nd edition rules" situation I was telling you guys about: finally got my buddy to send me the party's character sheets, and lo and behold the party is made up of 10th - 12th level characters. I just assumed we were dealing with epic characters with this kind of encounter composition but nope, it's a big dumb meat grinder and we're going to have a 2+ hour conference call tonight to completely rework this poo poo. LOL this is hilarious to me.
Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 16:44
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No we're still going to be doing Pit Fiends (he's obsessed with them) but I'll probably be quartering their hitpoints, plus giving them a weak point or w/e and not starting with all of them in play. And the 24th level ME is obviously going to be scrapped or reworked. It's pretty obvious that he was going to make this NPC Story Time where the players got to be Robin to a bunch of NPC Batmen but he's coming around to my way of thinking instead of running Bad DM's Fantasy Campfire Tales. I just wish I could have seen the original clusterfuck get run on his poor players. This guy introduced a Deck of Many Things to his campaign and it didn't self-destruct, though, so maybe he's just living a charmed life and the party would have rolled perfectly and won in a couple of rounds.
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Dec 19, 2014 17:29
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| # ¿ Apr 18, 2024 08:57 |
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I'm going to reiterate that I don't care if I get blamed. TBH I didn't realize how bad this finale was, but you know: it's the guy's birthday and he spent hundreds of dollars on Pit Fiend miniatures and one of those Forge World sets and flew a player across the country on his own dime and he also realized that his idea was unworkable so I felt bad for him when he came to me for help. He's a very enthusiastic, focused dude who just happens to be a horrible bad DM and has found a bunch of co-dependent dumbos to put up with his bad poo poo for years on end, so nobody worry about me or about blame or any of that stupid stuff. As long as I show up and try to help he'll appreciate it and I don't care what the grognard players think, from what I've heard they've put up with a lot of bad poo poo on a regular basis (although I think a TPK at the finale would be a new low, frankly). So either sit back and wait my inevitable trip report or make good jokes or toss me suggestions/cool stuff that I could add to this fight to make it fun. Deadline is..let's say tonight, 7pm. That's when I call him. Thanks guys. 
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Dec 19, 2014 17:56
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