The GM Advice thread: Killing your players quickly

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The GM Advice thread: Killing your players quickly

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Kwyndig posted:

Lifepaths are a character generation mechanic for backgrounds that may or may not have mechanical weight.

Essentially, they're a series of charts that you work through either randomly or by picking from the list that helps you decide your character's life experiences up to the point that play begins. Depending on the game they start with childhood and work their way up to potentially middle age. In some systems lifepaths determine your starting skills/attributes, while in others they're just for flavor.

Burning Wheel uses lifepaths, some editions of Battletech/Mechwarrior use lifepaths, pretty much every edition of Traveller uses some variant of lifepaths (first edition Traveller had lethal lifepaths, death was a possible outcome of chargen!). You usually only see lifepath systems in games with strong, deeply thought out settings, although Mekton Zeta used a more generic lifepath system you could adapt to any custom setting.

Maid

Actually, a lot of JTRPGS have roll your background options, now that I think about it.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2017 07:27

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 00:03

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

I played a few sessions of Broken World and had a very good time, but it's pretty setting-locked as well.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2017 21:04

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

I'd humbly suggest showing your GM the spell description, and if he doesn't stop the problem player's bullshit, THEN beat him with a cosh.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2017 21:40

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Turtlicious posted:

print the rules out and tape it to a cosh then beat him to death.

now that's the spirit of compromise I like to see

you're hired

# ¿ Aug 10, 2017 21:48

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

hangedman1984 posted:

I use Tolkien's elvish a lot (that is when I don't just string together random syllables until it sounds decent).

Hymmnos is my go-to for conlangs.

If you're looking to create your own language, or want something you can easily crib off, I highly recommend Vulgar, which is free to play with.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 04:05

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Gumball Gumption posted:

Any suggestions for getting music into an online game? The in person game I'm in uses a pretty extensive amount of music, each player made their own playlist, most locations and NPCs have their own themes. I want to take this into the online game I'm going to GM but I'm having a bitch of a time figuring out how to play music for everyone without it being an impossible pain or sounding terrible. We're using discord and fantasy grounds to play. I was hoping for a discord/spotify bot but it doesn't look like that exists.

There are discord bots that play music from Youtube, I know. There's also sites like cytube and rabb.it for group viewing of media content, if you don't mind having another window open.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2017 17:08

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

BlackHattingMachine posted:

Anybody have any advice, ideas, or inspirations for GMing a game about the PC in the role of a fairy godmother, guardian angel, or otherwise (probably) unseen facilitator?

This is for a single player, and during character creation they took quite an unexpected turn and I haven't been able to come up with much. The one idea that seems fun and quirky enough is to retell classic fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, The Three Little Pigs, etc.) with more of a Terry Pratchett style of humour and setting versus traditional Brothers Grimm style of the same. Or maybe go grimdark as hard as possible. That would be fun, too.

Any suggestions appreciated!

Take a look at Ryuutama, which has a DMPC in the form of a dragon that literally exists to make sure the party creates interesting stories.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2017 06:24

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Apropos of nothing, your game seems really cool and it's great that your players are so invested.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2017 16:12

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Sanford posted:

Okay thanks. I don�t really mind him doing it. Maybe just make him hit the teammate on a critical fail?

That means 5% of the time, y'know.

Don't do it; there's no reason to make the one guy objectively worse (by saying that he's going to attack and injure a teammate 5% of the time) and put the melee guy in danger because 5% of the time he's going to get shot in the loving back regardless of ranged guy's skill and experience.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2017 22:21

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

A good rule of thumb I've seen is to have every puzzle have at least one brain solution and at least one smashy solution - and for both of them to be more-or-less valid.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2018 16:15

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

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.

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.

This is something I wish more GMs kept in mind, thank you.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2018 20:21

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Counterpoint: That, but it's a mariachi band instead.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2018 23:53

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Angrymog posted:

What is the X-card?

http://tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg

I've heard mixed reviews about how useful it is.

# ¿ May 16, 2018 17:25

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Two gentlewomen are having a spat and they're trying to solve it by each having the catering done for this party be absolutely to their specifications and not the other lady's.

future idea:

Bridal reception feat. Actual Bridezilla.

# ¿ May 17, 2018 15:54

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Basically Tenra Bansho Zero is the best RPG.

# ¿ May 20, 2018 23:23

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

lofi posted:

For the slower kids in class, how does TBZ handle death?

Short version: Death is only a possibility if the player decides the fight is important enough to risk putting their life on the line.

Long version: TBZ does a sort of hybrid vitality/wound box system where you can divvy up the damage you take between them as you choose. When you hit 0 vitality, you're out of the fight - you're knocked out, exhausted, whatever. As you check wound boxes, which represent actual lasting damage, you get stronger (in true anime fashion) - a check in heavy wounds, for example, gives you +1 dice, while a check in critical wounds gives you +2 but makes you lose vitality every round as you bleed out.

The dead box can be checked off at any point. When you do, and your character hits 0 vitality, they die.

What do you get in exchange? A significant +3 boost to all your die rolls for the entire combat, with no downside (save the chance that your character will actually, literally die).

Once you check off that box, though, it's going to be a long time before you recover - is that an acceptable risk? Is this fight one that your character's literally willing to risk it all to win?

e: also tbz's rules are cool and good because they're aren't a loving death spiral where getting hit once means you're probably dead, hi l5r

Leraika fucked around with this message at 00:25 on May 21, 2018

# ¿ May 21, 2018 00:19

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

I feel like groups can come into conflict with each other without being racist.

# ¿ May 21, 2018 17:51

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Uhh, these tritons?

Unless I'm missing something, they aren't soulless and your player's lying to you.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2018 23:30

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Fishes_Swim posted:

Yea those are the ones. I guess I should have checked, although I think my player was just creating some lore behind the race. I wanted to give the group control over the culture and history of their respective races, so I decided to not push against this player doing something that was along those lines. It's why I'd like to take the decision and give it consequences within the story in some way.

And thanks for the suggestions to talk to the player directly about my concerns. I know that's always the obvious advice, but it helps to be told it directly.

I feel like something as big as 'hey my race is soulless' needs both a really loving good story behind it and to be cleared with the GM first. Good on you for rolling with it, I guess, but definitely be careful, especially if he tries to weasel more mechanical benefits out of it (off the top of my head: immunity to charm spells, immunity to fear).

My Lovely Horse posted:

I'm gonna put it like this: it takes some serious roleplaying chops to pull that off without grating on your fellow players as well. A lot of people are gonna see that kind of official background as a free pass to be a dickhead. In fact, it's gonna be what attracts them to the race. It's like that Douglas Adams quote about governing: anyone who wants to play a Triton probably shouldn't.

I mean, they seem to basically be noblesse oblige elves underwater, which is less disruptive fluff than a lot of races I can think of.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2018 08:00

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

L5R also has fire linked to intelligence/passion/creation, if that helps.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2018 02:20

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

The clockwork trilobite is adorable and I want four. :3:

# ¿ Jun 18, 2018 16:54

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Railing Kill posted:

Due to a job with a second shift schedule, I haven't had reliable time with anyone in my regular group for about a year. I just got a new job, though, so I'm getting back on the horse with a new game. Still, a bunch of my players have little kids, long commutes home from work, or live far away, so I'm running the game online. I've had success running Pathfinder, D&D5e, and Edge of the Empire on Roll20, but I'm thinking something different this time. Because I'm going to be running something much less tactical than D&D, I figured Roll20 might be overkill. I was thinking of running the game just over Google Hangouts, but I want to think aloud here to see if that's a good idea. 7th Sea, the game I'm running, is more narrative than tactical, so I won't need a top-down grid 99% of the time. I'm just thinking about other stuff that Roll20 brings to the table, and if it's worth using for this game:

Pro: I'm able to "whisper" to individual players in Roll20's chat, if I need to hand out secret info to one player. GH can't do this, but I can do the same thing using regular text messages. Doing that is only slightly more annoying than using Roll20.

Pro: Roll20 has built-in die rollers and other tools. I trust all of these players to roll on their own at home and accurately report results, so I don't need a die roller app, but it is still kind of handy.

Pro: Roll20 does have map support, if I decide I need it. I can easily draw and share static maps on Google's screen share, but tactical stuff will be much easier on Roll20. 7th Sea doesn't care much about that kind of stuff, though, as much as it cares about flavor and back-end decisions you make with dice and abilities. Specifically where you are on a battlefield matters less than it does in a game of D&D.

Con: A couple of my players have been having a hard time using Roll20. One of them doesn't have a proper computer and uses his phone to pipe in. Another has a netbook which apparently hates Roll20. They're willing to slog through it, but I think using GH might be a lot easier on them.

Con: Roll20 would be one more thing to have running during game, since their voice chat is terrible and we'd have to use GH alongside it anyway.

I may be missing some pros and cons, so if there's anything I should be considering let me know. Otherwise, my choice is about dealing with the nuisance of Roll20 for the sake of some of its bells and whistles, or just trimming the fat and running the game using GH for voice and screen sharing. Thoughts?

Discord, maybe? It's got screen sharing with sound now and you can import a dice roller. Probably your best choice if you don't need a grid 100% of the time.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2018 14:53

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Have a Gordon Ramsay undead show up in disguise, only to cast off whatever disguise and start screaming at the chefs at the least opportune moment.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2018 18:50

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

That tote bag is amazing.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2018 22:44

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

I dig lifepath-type stuff (my favorite is , uh, Star Light Brigade? where you roll to see just how much of a gundam protagonist you are, it's great), but that's just ridiculous.

On the other hand, it seems 100% certain that you're going to die in chargen with how random everything is, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2018 17:29

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

I think TBZ's 'you choose when a fight is important enough for your character to risk it all' mechanics are great and I wish more games looked at death like that.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2018 02:56

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Polo-Rican posted:

i'm trying to google this and can't find anything. Can someone link to a page that talks about these mechanics, or provide a summary?

Sure thing!

here you go

E: it's already been explained pretty well except for the fact that checking the dead box (and you can check it at any time you take injury, not just when you're on your last legs; TBZ lets you choose how you distribute wounds and splits player health between an HP score and wound boxes, where hitting 0 hp just knocks you out) gives you significant dice bonuses to everything you do - so it's not something you're just doing to stay in the fight longer, it's a deliberate choice that you want the BBEG or whatever to go down so hard that you're willing to put your life on the line to make sure it happens.

Leraika fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 1, 2018

# ¿ Dec 1, 2018 02:26

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Sanford posted:

I�ve got another really stupid question but I just can�t get my head round it. For spells that demand a saving throw, does the caster still need to roll to cast it? The specific spell was Faerie Fire, it�s a dex save to avoid it. Does the Druid need to roll? What if it�s a spell that does damage, and half damage on a save? Does that hit automatically?

Unless a spell specifies that it makes an attack, you don't need to roll to use it. Compare Ray of Frost and Acid Splash, for example.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2018 22:38

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Offer them a chance to get exotic pets/mounts.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2019 21:58

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

What you think of as inconsequential isn't what the players think of as inconsequential; if they didn't think it mattered, they wouldn't ask to roll.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2019 15:12

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

YOUR UNCOOL NIECE posted:

Super curious about Lancer. Any impressions of it?

Not them, but played a few-shot with the system.

It's really good! Things feel well supported both in and out of your giant robot, which is always a good sign, and it's fun to build mechs.

The downsides: some mechs are very self-contained, so when you get to pilot level 4 you're kind of struggling for what to take next, I played a ranged attacker and had a hard time finding talents that felt worth taking (because most of them are pretty crit-focused*).

*I was playing Pegasus, though, and their guns are wa-wa-wacky and don't play as nice with talents as other mechs' do.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2019 23:34

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

an AI posing as one of those really off-beat DJs.

Have it get weirder and weirder as time goes on and see how long it takes them to start asking questions.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2019 02:50

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Aww, just let the AIs be good and friends and not evil and monstrous :smith:

# ¿ Aug 29, 2019 18:17

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Elderbean posted:

What are some neat cures for a disease in a fantasy world with renaissance era tech? Dealing with an outbreak of a disease in my game that basically makes good ol' fashioned zombies but it only seems to target sailors. It's low-fantasy, so the disease is a little magical in nature. One of my players is an apothecary so I want to make sure he has some stuff to do.

Could make it Magic Scurvy, I guess, and make the cure some sort of vitamin c potion.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2019 01:42

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

It seems like Bill would be a great choice for your scientist, given his fondness for gene-splicing.

Have you read the Pokemon Adventures manga? I remember there was an Eevee there that could swap forms that might make a good macguffin/inspiration.

(also if you're thinking of using Pokerole, you might want to take a close look at action economy in combat, since from what I recall it's pretty trivial for someone to command multiple pokemon a round, and for those pokemon to take multiple actions... in a system where every character is actually 2-7 characters.)

# ¿ Oct 10, 2019 20:19

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

kaffo posted:

Good shout on Bill. I've not read the manga, but I'll see if I can hunt this story down, seems interesting!

The Eevee's story starts in chapter 19 of the Pokemon Adventures/Special manga. Honestly, PokeSpe is a great place to start if you need to mine ideas for a tabletop game.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2019 14:19

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

This is why Tenra Bansho Zero continues to have the best death mechanics in tabletopdom; you choose when death's on the table and nothing's going to kill you until you make that choice (and making that choice gives you hefty bonuses, so it's literally 'do I want to risk going out in a blaze of glory to see X done?').

More games should consider using death as a mechanic in that way; even if just because it'd eliminate rusty dagger shanktown.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2019 16:51

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

There's a system explicitly for playing Pokemon in the works that I'd be glad to pm you. Some of this stuff, though... Why wouldn't you tell your players to make characters that have a reason to stick together?

e: when I say explicitly for playing Pokemon, I mean just a Pokemon, no trainers

# ¿ Jan 1, 2020 16:27

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

My general view on running games about colonialism directly ripped from real life situations is 'please don't run colonialism simulator 2020, reenacting the atrocities of colonialism isn't a great thing to do', so maybe think about ways you could have your setting and not be colonialism simulator 2020?

# ¿ Jan 29, 2020 00:03

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 00:03

Leraika: Jun 14, 2015; Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.

Morpheus posted:

In a bit of a creative pickle. So, last time my group ended their adventure (World of Darkness), they were trying to get into the warded basement of a house that was haunted by the wife of a wizard who lived there. They know her pendant's been stolen (which is why she's being all haunting and poo poo), and most of them want to leave and try to find it, while one person is adamant about breaking through the wall into the basement stairwell, bypassing a door that did severe damage to her when she touched it. She already tried breaking through the wall, and it hurt her quite a bit. Apparently she's going to keep trying while people run out to search for clues.

Now, I don't want to kill her outright, and I'd rather not just have her keep trying until she either dies or breaks through, since that's not very interesting. Unfortunately I really hosed up by realizing that I didn't include enough clues for them to follow for the pendant's theft (I kept assuming they'd know to use a locator spell, but it was pretty dumb of me not to give more options for this). I think the people that are leaving did mention going to a local mage for this purpose though, so I may not be completely out of luck. But as for maybe another clue, or what to do with the person trying to break down the wall, I'm not sure.

One option is, well, having her break through after taking some severe damage. Bypasses a character I want to introduce, but I'm sure I can find some other way to have him show up. Also makes it so that the people actually out looking for stuff get a little shafted by saying 'well your efforts don't really amount to much because she breaks through the wall'. Or she gets frustrated trying because the wall is too tough, which also isn't very fun. I improvised myself into a corner here.

Just have her break through, but not to where she expected.

Fuckin' wizards, man.

e: and I don't mean like 'oh you ended up in the bathroom when you meant to end up in the living room', I mean like 'you meant to break into this house but when you busted through the wall you're at the local megamart/nearest old growth forest/on a train'.

e^2: and then you can use wherever the character ends up to say something about either the wizard or the wife, I guess. twofer!!!!

Leraika fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Mar 5, 2020

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 15:53

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