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Captain Walker posted:Coming to 13th Age from 4e. I always had these grand ideas for stories in 4e that never got far because the mechanics were so weighted down by sacred cows etc. etc. What should I know before running Blood and Lightning for the first time for people new to the game, but not to D&D or the hobby? I have the digital book, a giant escalation die, and an iPad, but no minis or board. I wouldn't worry about the minis or board thing, 13th age is so rules light that it's really easy to get by without. Just bring a blank A4 pad or a ream of hexpaper or something if you need a quick room sketch to get something across visually.
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Dec 18, 2013 21:15
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What I did in my last 13th Age game to do the whole "how do you know each other" thing is this... We had Fighter Ranger Mage All three are working for a lord in a fair size castle/farming community of about 100-150 people, the way I figured this is that they will know of each other but not be best buddies. Turns out all 3 had something expensive stolen, the fighter 6 shiny new shortswords, the ranger a set of magical stay-clean swamp waders and the Mage a fist sized magical rock. I had the grumpy rear end lord call them all in to see him and proceed to give them a massive rant about taking care of poo poo better and how he's not a bottomless money pit and they had best find the stuff or bad things will happen. Queue the intro quest of "find who's stealing poo poo and why" (turns out creepy guy was building a harvest golem to divert the guards while he stole the magical maguffin) Seemed to work really well and as an addition to the normal 13th age background stuff I also had them write why they took employment with the lord and what they were doing just before. Edit: What was really funny was explaining the setup, calling them into the lords chamber. They were expecting the usual "you have been selected blah blah blah" and got a 5 minute, in character shouty rant about how much of a bunch of screwups they were. They actually looked ashamed out of character. It also broke the ice when they spent a good time in character bitching about how much of an rear end in a top hat the lord is. AceClown fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Feb 15, 2014 |
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Feb 15, 2014 03:38
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AreYouStillThere posted:I'm gearing up to start a new campaign, and I could really use some advice, or a friendly point in the right direction. The important question is are you playing the setting before or after the cleansing because a player slowly going mad while the other players don't know WTF sounds cool as hell.
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Mar 19, 2014 13:27
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I'd get them on a space ship and have something cool happen but they have to escape pod out and that pod happens to crash land on a planet that just so happens to be in a perfect fantasy setting. the pod is obliterated and with no way of recharging those blasters and lightsabers it's back to swords and sorcery! Or you could go with the whole "portal to another plane of existence that closes behind you" trope. How are the other players responding to the sci-fi switcheroo? It sounds to me that the last GM really wants to play starwars RPG and he's set it up so that's what he can do. Just throwing them back to swords and magic is probably gonna piss this guy off.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:14
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If that Fashion Paladin's mortal enemy isn't a guy in a fedora and jorts then you're doing it wrong
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Mar 24, 2014 19:57
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Whybird posted:Winning the tournament makes you Master of Ceremonies for the Harvest Feast. You can choose where everybody sits -- even down to the Lord of the Keep -- get first pick of the food, and can order toasts during the feast as you see fit. Loads of stuff you can do for this, I'd go with the prize being an evening of courting the king/lord/whatever's daughter, only it turns out she's psychotic and just wants to go be an adventurer, the players can either help her escape and fulfill her destiny and piss daddy off or deny her and have her constantly scheming to pay them back for the slight. (I love lose/lose situations in my games) I'd deffo make it a non monetary reward though, something like 3 boons from the lord of the keep or signed paper proclaiming him the lords champion and essentially giving a "get out of jail free" card. They really should have the local shady folk approach them and get them to throw the fight too, just to add some danger to them winning. I really need to get a fighting tournament in my 13th age game very soon...
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May 6, 2014 13:00
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Quick one pals, I'm running a 13th age game and it'll be the second session this weekend, the first one was mainly char gen and a quick scenario to figure out what's what. I've got a Fighter, Ranger and a Mage in the party and I realised they have absolutely no healing between the 3 of them and this might be a problem. The 2 ideas I have are: 1) Grant them a healing wand or something similar, it would have a good quirk to it like "whenever it's used "something" somewhere takes damage equal to the heal, and they are getting increasingly annoyed by this" 2) Young child with gifted healing powers is sent with the party as a "favour" from "Someone" I like them both, my leaning is towards the DMPC healer, by making it a child it means there's no combat help other than the odd heal and it opens up a lot of plot hooks and ways to move things forwards. It also means they have some kind of responsibility to this kid to make sure she stays safe or they get boned. The wand also seems good and would be pretty fun to have them use it not knowing the quirk then have something turn up pretty pissed off and wanting to put the hurt on them. What do you guys think?
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Jul 21, 2014 10:20
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I suppose I could whip up the DMPC character and the stats for the wand and just give my guys the outright choice I guess. At least when the kid grabs the maguffin and teleports out with a resounding "see ya later shitlords" I can always say "welp, I gave you a choice..." :v
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Jul 21, 2014 10:47
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chitoryu12 posted:I agree with the people who hate kids, but I'm not necessarily 100% against a DMPC or otherwise important NPC. The problem only arises with bad DMPCs, the ones who take control of the party and are used to force the players onto a particular path or become the defining factor in solving encounters. Good points, it's really only out of necessity that I was considering it as I don't want to have to make someone re-roll a healing character, I thought about the child aspect so I can make it plausible that the kid could be gifted in healing from birth, have that kid quality of being able to not draw attention towards themselves in a fight and if they do gain aggro it might motivate the players to have the secondary objective in a fight of looking after the little fucker. In no way is the DMPC going to be some kind of bullshit all powerful self insert that the team have to rely on for everything, just a basic healbot with a bit of flavour. They're also planned as a child cleric agent of the Priestess who will totally double cross them at some point and spy on them the whole time.
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Jul 21, 2014 14:33
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HatfulOfHollow posted:One of my least favorite campaigns ever started with us nearly dying and subsequently losing all of our equipment. The rest of the campaign was basically us being walked through the adventure by a series of powerful DMPCs. One of them even had an intelligent sword. At one point I said something to the DM to the effect of "Did you write this campaign for us or for your NPCs?" Which was admittedly a little passive aggressive, but it did the trick and the NPC who was holding our hands decided to go off on his own adventure at the beginning of the next session. Yeah, that's definitely not what I had in mind, knowing that they won't be too boned by not having an actual healer I think I'm going to go ahead and gift them the wand. Plus I really want to play the hook that the wand can only heal people by causing damage to something somewhere else bound to the wand. I can even let it run a few levels so the stronger they get and the more healing power comes out of the wand the more the other entity gets damaged and that ups the urgency of the bound entity to get this poo poo sorted.
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Jul 21, 2014 18:34
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I'm guessing these opposing armies are going to have mages/wizards/warlocks on the payroll, I'd have one of them summon a demon during the chase then take an arrow to the face at the right time to leave a very loving angry unbound hellspawn right near the players.
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Dec 8, 2014 14:15
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Pththya-lyi posted:I am thinking about running a Monsterhearts scenario about orphans who get adopted by an eccentric billionaire and are taken to live in his mansion. My concept is basically Gossip Girls meets supernatural novels - angsty teenagers have money and privilege dropped in their laps, but still have to deal with the baggage that comes with growing up in foster care AND struggling with your insatiable lust for blood/carnage/revenge/magical fuckery/whatever. But there's one thing I need to figure out: why would an eccentric billionaire want to adopt a bunch of angsty monster teens? I can always change the billionaire's motivations around, but it will be easier if I have something to build towards at the outset. The only reason I can think of is that he's Professor X assembling a team of mutant superheroes, but that's a little on-the-nose, don't you think? Billionaires wife has decided she wants to run a fostering house because she's bored and husband billionaire gives no fucks because he's a billionaire. Don't need to explain the whims of the rich dude. They do what they want because they can. Edit: Id play it that he's bought the old mansion and they're the last group of care kids in there, as part of the amazing good deal he got for the house he has to let them say out their time there or the contract to buy is null and void. Of course, this means that if things are trying to kill the players he's hardly going to want to help them, and might actually consider advancing the murder somewhat... AceClown fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 13:01
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Some of the best advice I've ever heard (think it came from here) is simply as a GM the only thing you need to really know in game is what other people in the game world are doing. From if the snooty aristocrat in the mansion your about to rob is in the bath or down in the dining hall having supper to who the king is meeting with tomorrow to hash out a peace treaty. It sounds like a massive bunch of stuff to keep track of but it's really not, as long as you have a rough idea about what the people in your world are doing anything your players do you can figure out who it affects and act accordingly. Question: I'm running a 13th age game and one of my players is playing a ranger who loves the poo poo out of ranged combat. Now I really hate tracking equipment in game and my players are on board with me having a houserule that says "as long as you don't take the piss, if you can justify having something in your inventory chances are you have that item" which is working out fine but I'm torn on arrows. The way I'm running it is with the escalation dice, the rule is "after every round of combat roll a D12, if the result is equal to or less than the escalation die then you're out of arrows and it's either melee time or a full turn to scavenge some up" not sure if this seems a bit unfair or if it's reasonable, what you think?
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May 9, 2015 21:36
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CHaKKaWaKka posted:Does anyone here have any experience doing a big fast-forward/time skip in a game? Specifically, I am running a Vampire: The Requiem(Second Edition) game and the game started with the characters' embrace, but now everyone's interested in moving forward X years to a point in time where they won't be the newest vampires in town. I was thinking of coming up with a series of events that might happen during the fast forward and having the players decide if/how they want to get involved, as well as giving them time to execute their own long term plans. Open ended questions are your best friend here, instead of telling the players "OK this happened..." go round the group a couple of times and ask questions like "something happened that turned you against <vampire brood>, what was it?" or "you made a mistake that nearly cost you your sanity, how did that happen?" this not only gives you a gently caress ton of plot hooks but also gives you and idea of what kind of things that player is looking for in the game and what challenges will engage them.
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May 10, 2015 01:51
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My Lovely Horse posted:Been a while (and thanks for the tips), and I think I have an idea on how to deal with group B's antics to an extent: whenever someone points out the dire consequences of a plan, I can make it clear that "yes, that's what could happen if you gently caress it up, but you can always try and find a way to do this where the chance of loving up is low." Maybe that at least will get them to try something slightly risky occasionally. For stuff like that I like to just ask the players what happened, I'll usually pick one or two of the quieter players and say something like "So something strange happened on day two, what was it and how did you react?" you'd be amazed at what people can come up with!
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Aug 22, 2015 15:30
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I was thinking I'll prompt them for some obstacles as well and draw from a hat. They'll probably tell me stuff they already thought of a solution for, which will save planning time.
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Turtlicious posted:
Fin's voice has been magically stolen and is being used to sing the song that is letting the evil in
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Feb 23, 2016 19:52
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Gildiss posted:So I am going to use this to send my players to the fantasy DMV when they try and collect a bounty and a bookkeeper notices their license is expired. I'd have them need at least 3 references from people they have done work with before...
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Apr 19, 2016 10:09
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Do not forget the head of the healers..... Knight Nurse
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Oct 23, 2016 11:13
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So I had an idea, the players get given a scroll of paper that has strange glyphs on it and are told that if they present it to someone what ever they say is made truth on the paper (one time use). Lets say they need to get in a keep and they go "we are emissaries to the prince, this paper is our official identification" the scroll changes to a permission slip and no rolls needed. However, unbeknown to the players what this scroll actually does is not change the minds of the people reading it or convince them of anything (that would be boring) but actually alters reality and makes whatever they say, and what ever is on the parchment actually true. The example would lead to the prince sending guards after his missing emissaries and demanding weekly reports and just being a pain in the rear end in general. Just struggling to think of ways I can nudge the players in to claiming something ludicrous and not just going "this says we can do what we want"
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Mar 11, 2017 00:46
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Whybird posted:If you have gambling as a plot point, it's often more fun in my experience if the gambling is scenery rather than a plot point. Think to every time there's a high-stakes gambling game in a film: the result is never as simple as "James Bond wins because he is a better gambler, next scene". Who else is at the game? What else is on offer? What do you have to pay to get in (and can the players even afford the entrance fee?) Is the dealer crooked? Are the other players crooked? Are the other players more important than they're letting on? "WARNING! There are approximately 50 totally harmless spiders nearby" Edit: The wood one should be a ring of monster identification, however it's in Sir David Attenborough's voice and never quite gets to the point. "The craterhoof is a curious creature in that it is the most agressive of it's species, it likes to feed on most small anima.." "OK OK BUT IS IT WEAK TO FIRE I NEED TO KNOW PRETTY FUCKIN QUICK" "The interesting thing about the craterhoof and fire is that many scholars believe..." AceClown fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Mar 22, 2017 |
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Mar 22, 2017 10:25
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Imaginary Friend posted:Hey folks; I'm trying to hack together a call of cthulhu-inspired one-shot/scenario for some friends based on the FATE-version of Acthung Cthulhu! We're all newbs when it comes to roleplaying so I'd love some feedback, advice and general tips how to do this. Here's the backstory: Quick reply but it all looks good however you need a contingency plan in case your players throw you a curve-ball (and they will). The lead up looks good, my main thing would be "why do the players want to keep the black hell box?" dude shows up, goes "that's mine" and I can't see a reason why they don't just go "Oh OK, here you go". What's the urgency? What do the players want to do/know? Why should the players care about any of this? If you're going for total amnesia then that's a start, maybe the players want to get their memories back, maybe the box contains them but they can't open it, again just quick thinking off the cuff here but fleshing out character motivations seems like it'd help here.
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Mar 22, 2017 16:40
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Mister Bates posted:Cool Star Wars stuff For me it'd be the choice of save the prisoners/slaves or get to the temple and stop the imperials getting the powerful Jedi artefact. Make it so it's hinted that the artefact could be a powerful weapon so you're in a "sacrifice the few to save the many" situation. If I were being particularly evil I'd make it some someone they care about is either a prisoner or there is someone there they've been tasked to save. It could also be a good arc for the force sensitive character as he's going to be torn about what to do and what is the appropriate "light side" choice.
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Jul 20, 2017 23:30
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DM should take the party on an extended trip to the land of the stone golems. Good luck water bending those, bitch
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Aug 11, 2017 12:23
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Fishes_Swim posted:During play though, I've gotten the sense that they don't like being put on the spot to spontaneously contribute something about the world. The best example of this I can think of is when I asked one player what his mother looked like, and he literally couldn't come up with anything and said he wasn't expecting to have to answer that question. That said, I think I do need to encourage them to do more with moves like spout lore, which I think has been invoked once over 6 sessions or so. Just be a little mindful of your questions really, if someone said to me "what does your own mother look like?" the best I could do at short notice is "Short with bobed hair" if you said "in a few words describe your mother" I'd be able to say "Warm and kind with a wickedly quick mind and a sharp wit". This conveys so much more than a physical desription ever could and gives a great foundation to make the character seem real. Fishes_Swim posted:The ultimate goals for the players will be to prevent the cult from summoning their deity and preventing one of the corporations from placing the city in the dimensional-time bubble that it's currently in. Just be a little careful of this, it's going to smash your plans to bits when they decide the only way to stop the mega-corp is to let the cultists summon a demon to throw the city in to chaos wile they use the distraction to
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Aug 31, 2017 10:57
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None of my players have ever played Magic: The Gathering. I steal so many names and place names from there if I ever get busted it'll be embarrassing.
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Sep 3, 2017 13:20
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I always thought that David Eddings had a pretty cool idea about sorcerers (never expanded on and a throwaway line somewhere). The gist of it is that the one of the few rules for magic is that you cannot unmake something, to do so pisses off the natural order of the universe and it rebounds and obliterates you due to the forces involved. So someone who's never been taught this gets mad and without thinking shouts "be gone" or something at the thing that's been pissing them off and boom, one latent sorcerer has been reduced to base atoms. I always thought it was a neat gem in a generic "farmboy done good" fantasy novel and it's kinda stuck with me.
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Sep 30, 2017 01:50
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Ilor posted:If you're going to make untamed wilderness a theme, treat that wilderness as a character. Give it a goal and tools and let it loose. Take some cues from nature itself, carnivorous plants for the most part don't attack, they lure...
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Nov 13, 2017 23:31
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Sanford posted:There's too much! They want to get into everything. Last session they spent thirty minutes interrogating a goblin to "see what he knows". He knows nothing! I'm making it up as we go along! They still think I'm reading it out of the book and it is 99% random poo poo I am making up on the spot because they keep getting interested in the wrong things. Echoing here that your players aren't getting interested in the "wrong things" they're just getting interested in things that interest them. You need to tie it together, that goblin who knows nothing, if your players are that invested in getting info out of him then BOOM he suddenly knows something! Even better he was hired by that bandit camp you've been trying to get your players to investigate for the last 2 sessions without success! Let your players guide the game but tie it all in and guide the players to the stuff you've prepared in an organic way.
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Nov 29, 2017 13:24
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Pleads posted:Same but actually it's the players going "oh poo poo does that mean X was doing Y all along?" from some old thread I forgot about but suddenly I look like a mastermind. Do you guys ever run with the real world comparison where people who are being tortured will literally confess to anything in order to get it to stop?
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Nov 29, 2017 17:56
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My Lovely Horse posted:I'm running a 4E one-shot for folks new to D&D. As such, it's more of a demonstration/tutorial than any kind of complex story, so I made up a super simple little plot about a remote inn that is besieged by kobolds who have their lair in a nearby ruin and turn out to be minions of a young white dragon. It wrote itself and it's a tight little package and I found a way to move things forward from every obvious thing the party might do and I'm pretty happy with my simple little intro adventure. You know when kobolds die they leave behind a skeleton right?... Just throw in a kobold necromancer that keeps re-animating the kobolds that the non-cleric PC's kill.
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Feb 19, 2018 23:11
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Feb 20, 2018 00:01
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Questions I would ask if I were a player: - Where are the rest of the family? Specifically the brother who accidentally killed his brother? - How long has dad been in stasis and what's the time frame for the alien rescue party? - What's the nature of the dad's madness? I'm guessing either he's going to pissed they locked him up or pissed the players let him out. For me, the best way to get the cure would be for them to show the dad that the natives aren't a terrible sub species and gain acceptance from the alien race. Maybe have the dad join them on a couple of adventures, if he's stripped of his tech somehow he's not going to be a godlike DMPC (maybe without his tech he's weak as gently caress and the party have to protect him). Have the party encounter things that test concepts such as compassion, humility, justice, tolerance and all those other things that are important in a civilised society. Lets be honest though, 90% of players are just going to pop the cryo casket and waterboard the gently caress out of dad until he gives up the cure anyway...
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Feb 23, 2018 09:59
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If you were an archmage what's the first thing you'd make golems for? That's right, make more golems! So the first part is a production line staffed by golems making more golems, but they're missing one key material. Life force, and the players just so happen to be living beings. I'd also throw in test chambers that the players get stuck in ala portal. I'd possibly even have a master golem that many years ago was given the ability to learn and improve, however that's all it knows so everything it does is to further it's knowledge and make better golems.
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Mar 5, 2018 23:19
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Zodack posted:One of them asks me to go look for magic items in the town, to which I reply that at 3rd level and in a low-magic town they likely don't have the finances to find anything worthwhile. Just adding my two cents but things like this can be used very effectively. What this character has just said is "I care about magic items" so instead of just stonewalling it tie it in to the narrative: After asking around for a while you get wind of a not so legitimate dealer in arcane weapons and curiosities, you go to see him and while surrounded by hired thugs he he explains that while he might know of a man, who knows a man who has some things for sale he's heard that there is a small garrison of Imperials headed this way and he's not doing business with anyone until they're not nosing around the place..." This gives the players a fair few options, do they shake him down for the location of his stash and use it to get around the imperials some way? Do they off the Imperials quick and then open trade relations with him? Do they try something else entirely? In a Mos' Eisley type port a lot of people are going to be rattled about the approaching imperial inquisition squad and are going to want the problem to go away ASAP. The population is going to be on the super defensive and may even decide that if the PCs are no longer there then the threat will be gone. Can I just ask, how much combat was there in the session? From the write up it does sound like there wasn't much at all but I don't want to make assumptions.
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Mar 19, 2018 22:35
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Paramemetic posted:And rather than roleplaying this scene while everyone else is sitting around, you could even streamline it with "make a Gather Information check" - "Okay you find a guy who ..." Yeah exactly, that way it also gives the player the option of going back to the group and saying "hey, I think I know where we can get some cool poo poo, what do we do..."
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Mar 19, 2018 22:41
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Phi230 posted:I took up a lot of advice from this thread and folks the session went really well. I radically changed my DMing up based on what I was reading and I guess I was giving players too much information, and stringing them along rather than allowing them to engage with the world. Also we were over relying on props and went overboard in tabletop sim, I just went back to a simple board to draw on and things worked out real well. Yeah that duke is going to put a price on their heads that is going to follow them everywhere until they decide to do something about it.
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Mar 19, 2018 23:31
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Mendrian posted:Please consider: I see you've met my ex girlfriend
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Apr 20, 2018 12:05
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If the reason they're taking the job is because their reputation is in the shitter then I'd do it the following way. Let them know that there is a really prestigious cooking competition coming up in a few months but make it clear that at the moment they've got no chance to even place unless they can "somehow" blow everyone away. The reward for pleasing the undead guests would be either a long forgotten recipe that everyone remembers or a small stash of now extinct herbs and spices, which would probably be enough to place them well in the competition.
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Jul 1, 2018 20:54
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6x4 note cards with the spell written on there in bold and a description of the spell. Have this in front of the spell caster during every combat, could even get like a scrabble tile holder to stand them up or something. I've seen this problem before and when it's come up it's been mainly due to stuff like being utterly overwhelmed and just going "erm erm, I'll attack the nearest thing!!". I'd even go as far as to say it would be good for each character to have a card with a "During combat you can use these skills/abilities/spells:" and a list of them. Think about it like a turn based RPG on the PC, if you had to go through about 6 menus, past inventory then read a full paragraph about the action every time you wanted to use it you pretty quickly just start mashing the "attack" button.
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Jul 9, 2018 23:03
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Pollyanna posted:Is there ever a case where an NPC that is truly out of the party's league ala Overlord is interesting and worthwhile? I imagine that scenarios where an NPC shrugs off their strongest attacks and magic and wildly outclasses them qualify as bad gaming in the common sense. Or am I assuming too much? There always has to be a payoff for the players or it's just not worthwhile IMO. I'd also say that the players need to know that going up against this NPC is pretty much going to result in them getting rekt so if they do decide to confront the NPC it's not a generic JRPG intro fight where nothing you do matters.
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Sep 10, 2018 00:22
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