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Grayden (LL)
2011-01-14, 07:20 PM
Anyone feel like they need a spot for good old GM type chaps to sit together with a flagon of ale and share advice?
Something tells me if all goes well this won't be it.
(If there is a thread like this I apologize, though a map would be helpful)

Lurkmoar
2011-01-14, 07:35 PM
I wouldn't mind commiserating about how one of my players is complaining that he can't get someone to clone him, when I told him the only two wizards of a higher casting level then him didn't want anything to do with him.

He suffers from chronic back stabbing disorder and lately he's been robbing the fighter, cleric, paladin AND thief blind thanks to Permanent Illusions and Fool's Gold. The fact that they made him party treasurer was mildly humorous; the fact that the party wanted to build a orphanage/boarding school for the poor children of their home region makes me sad.

He also recently murdered his former master and was able to pin the blame on a local troll tribe, reigniting a war between the wood elves and trolls when the party already brokered a peace settlement just last month.

He also argued with me when I told him his alignment was now Chaotic Evil from Chaotic Neutral.

TheCountAlucard
2011-01-14, 07:52 PM
So I've been thinking of ideas for an Exalted game since late November, mostly to teach interested people the ropes. I told potential players that we could start a game in January, after everyone got ahold of their schedules. I was hoping to bring two new people into the fold after my Halloween game proved to be successful. I loaned out my books and encouraged the new guys to read them and make characters.

During the winter break, I texted them and attempted to help them out in the character-building process. I got the old hats to finish their characters and attempt to hammer out backstories for me to work with.

And then I came back to school Tuesday and found out that the two people I had tried to get to join won't be able to play this semester. :smallsigh:

While I certainly wouldn't mind gaming with the old hats, they weren't the reason I wanted to ST. :smallfrown:

Savannah
2011-01-14, 11:43 PM
<problem player>

Hit him over the head with the Player's Handbook a couple of times until he straightens up :smalltongue: Just in case the :P isn't clear enough, I'm kidding.
More seriously, this is why my only alignment restriction in games is "must be able to work well with the party". I don't particularly care if you're this sort of CE or the Miko sort of LG, I don't want you in my game if you're going to annoy the other players.

Pink
2011-01-15, 04:18 AM
This could be a cool idea. A sorta banter thread for either small specific problems or tossing around ideas. I know my plot hooks and such tend to be much improved after being tossed back and forth with a couple other minds.

Anyway, just finished up a meeting to start a new campaign in a couple weeks. It'll be running a game in the Ptolus setting, with Pathfinder rules. All seem fairly excited about it, I'm hoping that this group will be able to grasp the urban campaign feel of it better than the last group I tried to run the city setting with. The last group kinda didn't understand why they got arrested after being found in an alleyway with several brutally killed people.

I'm also contemplating whether or not I'll be stretching myself too thin in the upcoming few weeks or so. Apart from that starting up, I also have a regular dungeon crawl campaign I run once a week, and I'll be taking over as a temp DM for a 3-week one-shot module with the group I regularly play with. That being said, considering the one-shot and the module are, well, pre-written, I think it should be fine as long as I can find time to make maps and read over material a couple times.

An area I wouldn't mind some extra thought on is that, for the dungeon crawl campaign, in the small town that serves as the party's base there is a rich noble/merchant (also a member of town council) who is not fond of adventurers. While trying to sell off a valuable crystal statue, the merchant offered them a price that, while substantial, was still far below it's appraised value. The party turned him down, and him being the vengeful type, he's going to try and give them a rub in return if he can. The idea I was tossing around in my mind was that he pays a forger to create an article of ownership, basically a law of the land that has gone out of style that is sorta like theft insurance, it's a description of an item approved by the king that allows the listed owner to claim their property through courts (or something like that) and therefore get try to get the statue for free from the party. This is also a chance to get the party known (and for them likewise to learn) to the rest of the city council. Now, some council members are likely to cast votes with the party, but it should generally be up to the party to in some way, through roleplaying or showing that the article is a forgery, or making a forgery of equal or superior quality, in order to keep their loot. Anyway, thoughts on this, or if there could be a better course of action, or if I should have a few more interactions between merchant and party before any act is taken?

Kaww
2011-01-15, 05:03 AM
@ Pink:

Nice idea. If the party succeeds on an opposed roll they should know it's a forgery, that does not mean that the council will see it too. It may be a plus for them during the debate,(make sure you reward them) but still not good enough.

When using social skills I tell my players that if they make good arguments skill check is only a bonus/penalty. Same principle for bad arguments. You might use this since it prevents diplomancer cheese which may trivialize the whole plot.

Be sure your players won't just assassinate/mindrape the (LBEG?), since that's how I would solve it if I'm playing neutral or evil characters...

FelixG
2011-01-15, 06:00 AM
I wouldn't mind commiserating about how one of my players is complaining that he can't get someone to clone him, when I told him the only two wizards of a higher casting level then him didn't want anything to do with him.

He suffers from chronic back stabbing disorder and lately he's been robbing the fighter, cleric, paladin AND thief blind thanks to Permanent Illusions and Fool's Gold. The fact that they made him party treasurer was mildly humorous; the fact that the party wanted to build a orphanage/boarding school for the poor children of their home region makes me sad.

He also recently murdered his former master and was able to pin the blame on a local troll tribe, reigniting a war between the wood elves and trolls when the party already brokered a peace settlement just last month.

He also argued with me when I told him his alignment was now Chaotic Evil from Chaotic Neutral.

Really what the wizard should have done was encourage the goody players to build their orphanages then find a way to put the orphans to work!

Seriously this player shows a lack of forethought! :smallbiggrin:

king.com
2011-01-15, 06:00 AM
Sounds like a good thread idea, guess I'll use it to hunt for some advice with two questions.

First:
Now I'm currently running a Dark Heresy game with a bunch of players which have been going just over a year now. This was there first table top RPG and after that time they are starting to learn how to think a little more openly but usually need a little guidance every now and again if they hit points they aren't too certain about.

To try and wane them off of this I decided to go with the Bioware approach and have thier Interrogator provide them with a list of possible points of investigation which they can go about however they want (no direct routes of must go to planets but lines of investigation which give them different pieces of information on each).

Is this is right approach? Should I be doing something better to help them develop their mindset into a roleplayers mindset (horrible phrase but I hope you get the idea)?

Second:
As with the above, one of the planets they could potentially visit is basiclly whats left after the Inquistion decided that chucking an asteroid to take out the chaos was the best idea to deal with 2 birds, one apocolyptic event causing rock (asteroid had a station built into the side). This was two years prior to current events and so I figure its enough to devestate the planet but human beings with appropriate protective measures could run around there for a bit (I was thinking more planet wide volcanic eruption, ash everywhere, trees without leaves just husks of burnt wood etc etc)

Any tips on how I should expose them to the landscape? Anything which would be particularly interesting as a result of this event (other than the big crater of course :smallbiggrin:)?

The Big Dice
2011-01-15, 07:03 AM
Any tips on how I should expose them to the landscape? Anything which would be particularly interesting as a result of this event (other than the big crater of course :smallbiggrin:)?
Do you ever watch Bear Grylls? They drop him off in obscure and remote places and he usually has to pass through a few different terrain types before he gets to his pickup. I've thought one of those 'lunatic in the wilds eating gross stuf and sleeping under a rock' shows would be a good template for adventures set in wilderness areas.

As for the landscape, I'm thinking the kind of thing you see on dinosar shows crossed with LV426 from Aliens. Blacked and burned from the fireball, skies choked with dust and ash. Acid rain, dead animals everywhere. Towns and people that are barely hanging on in the aftermath. Naturally the survivors would be the gross chaos spiky bits type.

As for your idea with multiple possible lines of investigation, as long as you don't fall into the Jedi Academy trap of things just waiting until the players get round to them, I don't see why you shouldn't go for it. Give it a try, if people like it then do it again. If they don't or they don't get into the spirit of things, don't worry about it and let it go as an experiment that didn't quite come out as you hoped.

As long as you and your group are having a good time, that's all that really matters.

king.com
2011-01-15, 07:32 AM
Do you ever watch Bear Grylls? They drop him off in obscure and remote places and he usually has to pass through a few different terrain types before he gets to his pickup. I've thought one of those 'lunatic in the wilds eating gross stuf and sleeping under a rock' shows would be a good template for adventures set in wilderness areas.

As for the landscape, I'm thinking the kind of thing you see on dinosar shows crossed with LV426 from Aliens. Blacked and burned from the fireball, skies choked with dust and ash. Acid rain, dead animals everywhere. Towns and people that are barely hanging on in the aftermath. Naturally the survivors would be the gross chaos spiky bits type.

Honestly my only experience with him was that one youtube video showing one of his wildness adventures was actually 30 metres from a main road. They were taking out a Nurgle cult so its more a demonstration on just how much fire you need to kill these guys :smallwink:



As for your idea with multiple possible lines of investigation, as long as you don't fall into the Jedi Academy trap of things just waiting until the players get round to them, I don't see why you shouldn't go for it. Give it a try, if people like it then do it again. If they don't or they don't get into the spirit of things, don't worry about it and let it go as an experiment that didn't quite come out as you hoped.

Never played Jedi Academy, was it along the lines of the universe being static until the players interacted with it? If so, that is the LAST thing I would ever want to do, its more of "Bad guy has goals, I set an estimated time before he can achieve said goals, players trying to figure out what the goals are and how to stop them". Not exactly that simple but you get the gist of it.

Comet
2011-01-15, 07:54 AM
This thread is great. It's even greater because the title specifies 'GM' instead of 'DM'. Now that's a relatively rare thing on these board, I find. Thanks for including all of us, not just the ones who play D&D. :smallsmile:

I don't have much to contribute right now, but I just really wanted to come in and shout what a grand idea this is. Sorry everyone, I'll try to be more helpful next time.

Traveler
2011-01-15, 10:42 AM
I've got a few ideas that need bounced off of people.

The next time my group plays, I'm taking over from someone who wanted to try DMing (and did a good job) but would rather stick to being a player for now. So I'm revamping my Red Hand of Doom (since several players already played through it once) with an abberation theme with mind flayers as the main evil leaders.

So, now that that is out of the road, here are my main concerns that I would like feed back for.

Mindflayers and world hopping.
1. To start with, the last DM started in a setting (a personalized Greyhawk) that I am not familiar with enough to run this mod in. So I told that players that flat out and that I'm going to jump them into a different setting. This is a story device (as well as makes the job easier on me). For the story, I'm running off the idea that mind flayers come from a different dimention/world and they seek to control everything. So this part is along the idea of why would the mindflayers only try to rule one world if they could find a way to another (via portal the PCs stumble across). Introduce horde of abberations (thralls?). If the players get into this story, I have a hook so they jump to eberron after this mod chasing down fleeing mind flayers or go back to their own world safe and sound if not. Their (in game) choice.
In a nutshell. Story arc is mindflayers are trying find ways into other worlds, and the PCs jump into the heart of it. Possibly followed by a second arc with the same idea but in eberron and on a grander scale.

I don't believe in magic and HOW DID YOU DO THAT?
2. The other part of this is that in this hombrew setting is that there is no magic and it is a human only world. Now when I say no magic, I mean that the people look at it as a kind of myth, or something from stories. The PCs (and mind flayers) still retain their magic and that isn't going to change. The part I'm not sure what to do about is the people's reaction to the PCs using any magic. The two ways I look at it is A: Terrified until the PCs can earn the people's trust, probably by defending them against abberations. Or B: They are possessed by evil! Burn them! This one would be abit harsh and I can't help think that the PCs would develop a 'we don't care' attitude about the people. I think aftr typeing it out I may have come to my own conclusion about this and go with a but...
In a nutshell, the world the PCs entered has no magic of it's own. How do the people of the world react when the PC's use magic? Fear overcome by trust, or just fear and superstitious hate? I'm pretty sure after typing this I'm going with the former

You look funny
3. One other part. Since this will be a world with only humans... Well, the party has an elf and a drow. I keep kinda running up into a wall with this one. The elf could get away with something (like what Spock did in the Star Trek movie with the whales. the name of that one escapes me) but the drow... I could use a few ideas on how to handle it.
Nutshell, a human only world with non human PCs. How to handle it?

So any thoughts would be most welcome!

Lurkmoar
2011-01-15, 10:49 AM
I'll have to think more about number one, but for two and three:

2: Never underestimate people's weirdness censor. Unless something blows up or a skeleton starts prancing around, people will probably overlook most things. They would probably regard Rope Trick as an amazing bit of sleight of hand. There are stage magicians (the non-magical kind) who entertain the masses right? Or, when in doubt, use a combination of things. Some might find magic amazing, and wish to learn it. Others would fear it, some would seek to control it, etc.

3: I believe the movie you're thinking of was the Star Trek IV the Voyage Home, where Spock used a head band to cover up his ears. The drow can wrap himself in bandages and say he's a burn victim. Or he suffers from a rare but non-contagious skin disease.

moar to follow after I finish up typing about problem player

Jair Barik
2011-01-15, 10:58 AM
Sounds a good idea Traveler.
First off I assume you have LoM sourcebook as theres loads of great fluff/crunch for mindflayers there that you can use. Now as to your questions...
1. Depending on party alignment/roleplaying skills you should probably make it so the partys have a major incentive to defeat the mindflayers in able to return home. If planar travel back home is too easy they might decide the people aren't worth their time, hop home and prepare their own lands against the Illithid invasion. You should definitely avoid it being a case of 'Lord of the land will let you back home if you help defend' caue that would likely result in the party offing the king instead of fighting the mindflayers.
2. I'd be wary about this. On the one hand certain reactions would cause the players to limit their magic usage around the humans to limit upset but on the other hand the players may decide to rule over the silly mortals as gods or decide not to leave the world after fending off the illithids because they have superiority other the mortal populace here.
3. Worlds are big. The players can easily put elves down to being from somewhere far off and exotic, contracting a disease, born in a shadowland (okay that ones exalted...but something similar from D&D maybe), suffering from the effects of a run in with the undead maybe. regular elf could easily just wear a long hood to cover their ears if they want to avoid constant attention, drow could do the same and then just say their an albino (or whatever the opposite of that is....). People will be curious but given the similarity between elves and humans the party should have no problems. Same goes for dwarves, halflings, gnomes etc. but if they had more exotic races (kenku, dragonborn, goblinoid etc.) theyd be in trouble.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-15, 11:05 AM
Oh, don't forget this little detail: money. Will their coinage be accepted at face value? Is there a gold standard on their world they're heading to?

nedz
2011-01-15, 03:07 PM
@Traveler
1) You could have he Mind Flayers control the portal, but thats a bit obvious.
Alternatively they have a settlement right next door. This allows for a stealth route through, though with the ever present risk of an encounter with tenticles.

2) and 3)
Both of these are interesting, especially if the players try to avoid standing out, but could become old very quickly. There is the option of turning these into a recurring gag, if you can pull that off ?:smallbiggrin:

Grayden (LL)
2011-01-15, 04:33 PM
I wouldn't mind commiserating about how one of my players is complaining that he can't get someone to clone him, when I told him the only two wizards of a higher casting level then him didn't want anything to do with him.

He suffers from chronic back stabbing disorder and lately he's been robbing the fighter, cleric, paladin AND thief blind thanks to Permanent Illusions and Fool's Gold. The fact that they made him party treasurer was mildly humorous; the fact that the party wanted to build a orphanage/boarding school for the poor children of their home region makes me sad.

He also recently murdered his former master and was able to pin the blame on a local troll tribe, reigniting a war between the wood elves and trolls when the party already brokered a peace settlement just last month.

He also argued with me when I told him his alignment was now Chaotic Evil from Chaotic Neutral.

Wow. That sounds like every single player in an old group I used to play with. Except the GM more or less approved so alignments weren't really an issue. (oh, the memories. Scary, but good. Sort of.)
If you've only got one crazy consider yourself lucky. Though the crazy ones do make it fun, (and frustrating).

Three things: first, he is definitely chaotic evil. Unless your using alignment infractions in which case you'd have to count 'em up and decide for yourself of course.
Second, I pity the rest of the players being completely suckered.
Third, I tend to find that the longer a player tries to do these things and stay under the radar, especially around a bunch of other [goody-two shoes] players, the more likely he is to be caught. No matter what level or how powerful.

That's completely up to you of course. For now it just seems funny. Unless he's screwing up your game. Then, through mysterious, otherworldy, extenuating circumstances, he WILL go down a notch. Have you read the oots tale of belkars hallucination yet?

Grayden (LL)
2011-01-15, 04:36 PM
Glad to see the thread's going so well. Anyone have any ideas on what to do if it gets too full? open up a new one (Gm's Corner 2), or no?

:durkon:

Savannah
2011-01-15, 04:42 PM
You don't have to open another one until this one hits 50 pages. So no worries about that right now :smallwink: (Also, in the future, you might want to edit your post instead of double posting.)

Lurkmoar
2011-01-15, 06:15 PM
Long post follows:

Savannah


Hit him over the head with the Player's Handbook a couple of times until he straightens up :smalltongue:

Well, maybe if he starts peeing on the carpet...


More seriously, this is why my only alignment restriction in games is "must be able to work well with the party". I don't particularly care if you're this sort of CE or the Miko sort of LG, I don't want you in my game if you're going to annoy the other players.

Thing is, none of them know how badly he's screwing them over. I've tried to toss out subtle hints (the local economy is tanking, some merchants have gone bankrupt because of either raising costs or the player in question just straight out plundered their store houses for components and magical research). The players are completely oblivious to this. The only thing they've done is complain that it's harder to buy supplies, and then just use the cleric and the two party wizards to handle mundane needs with magic.

I might have outsmarted myself too... I've been enforcing reputation. Once the players hit level 11, people from all over have been bugging them for favors and odd jobs that only they can handle. At first they rolled with it, but after one particular 'side quest' which involved helping a local baker make all the pies for a local festival, the paladin got fed up. Now they triage things; if it's a diease, the paladin heals them pro bono. If it's local matter, they let the town guard handle it (paladin pointed out that's what they're supposed to be paid for) or the fighter sends out a unit from his army of followers. Unless it's an emergency, they use the explorers guild they're apart of to screen people.

FelixG


Really what the wizard should have done was encourage the goody players to build their orphanages then find a way to put the orphans to work!

Seriously this player shows a lack of forethought! :smallbiggrin:

The fighter, cleric and paladin want to build the orphanage to churn out clerics, paladins and fighters in that order. If they don't have the chops, a trade skill of some kind (carpentry, blacksmith, etc).

*note to self, FelixG has no bones about child labor. File away and seek to exploit said knowledge in some manner in the future.

The mage in question bemoans the fact that he rolled out a Transmuter and he doesn't feel more 'powerful' then the other party mage. Using insane troll logic, he started destroying scrolls from Abjuration and Necromancy to keep the other mage from having tricks he couldn't access. A real petty move in my humble opinion. The fighter caught him last session using erase on a scroll. The mage said it was cursed, but the fighter wasn't buying it.

Grayden (LL)


Wow. That sounds like every single player in an old group I used to play with. Except the GM more or less approved so alignments weren't really an issue. (oh, the memories. Scary, but good. Sort of.)
If you've only got one crazy consider yourself lucky. Though the crazy ones do make it fun, (and frustrating).

I haven't even mentioned half of the things he's done... I'll post it after I finish going over all my notes.


Three things: first, he is definitely chaotic evil. Unless your using alignment infractions in which case you'd have to count 'em up and decide for yourself of course.

I generally go by pattern behavior. When he tried to defend himself as still being Chaotic Neutral, I whiped out the two pages of notes detailing the various evil actions he caused. One of the more humorous ones was when he used Forget on some poor schmuck that paid him an advance fee for casting a spell. Should have seen that coming.

He eventually relented... and started casting Undetectable Alignment every morning. The paladin has been scanning him for evil every day, but he doesn't come up evil...


Second, I pity the rest of the players being completely suckered.
Third, I tend to find that the longer a player tries to do these things and stay under the radar, especially around a bunch of other [goody-two shoes] players, the more likely he is to be caught. No matter what level or how powerful.

I think I should mention that the other party mage hasn't returned to his private home in over eight in game months. His pet bird (gift given to him by a noble woman the party saved) starved to death. Raccoons are nesting on his bed and rats ate everything that he kept in his pantry. That's what he gets for being too cheap to hire some help.

The cleric in particular knows he's being tested, his deity told to beware the 'green-haired monster'. However, he can't just attack him, he needs some knowledge of an evil deed. The omniscient morality license applies only to gods after all.


That's completely up to you of course. For now it just seems funny. Unless he's screwing up your game. Then, through mysterious, otherworldy, extenuating circumstances, he WILL go down a notch. Have you read the oots tale of belkars hallucination yet?

Yeah, the paladin and cleric have both been getting dreams from their deities... meanwhile the problem mage has been getting offers from various devils. He's turned them down so far, they haven't offered him anything he wants.

As for the Order of the Stick, it's where I got the idea that every group in the explorers guild has to be 'the x of the y'. My players went with 'the Lights of North'. They're more Northwest, but they thought that didn't sound as cool. So yeah, I read the hallucination bit, and thought it was pretty rocking.

Savannah
2011-01-15, 06:27 PM
Thing is, none of them know how badly he's screwing them over. I've tried to toss out subtle hints (the local economy is tanking, some merchants have gone bankrupt because of either raising costs or the player in question just straight out plundered their store houses for components and magical research). The players are completely oblivious to this. The only thing they've done is complain that it's harder to buy supplies, and then just use the cleric and the two party wizards to handle mundane needs with magic.

Hmm....better start making those hints less subtle....Although you mentioned later that the paladin's been scanning him for evil daily and the cleric has been warned by his deity (assuming I'm reading it right). In that case, it seems like they know that he's up to no good, although they don't know the extent of it, and just need the evidence to nail him. Is there anywhere at all in his actions that he might have slipped up? Someone who might know more than they realize and who just needs a little push to tip off the other PCs? On the other hand, I have to say he's playing evil right, if the rest of the party has no reason to go after him. He'll have to screw up sometime.


one particular 'side quest' which involved helping a local baker make all the pies for a local festival

I am SO stealing that! 11th level PCs stuck making pies :smallamused: I love it! *takes notes*

MightyTim
2011-01-15, 06:55 PM
So I've got a question for my fellow DMs. How do you guys usually accommodate it when your PCs change characters? My group is very casual and we more or less usually go with the "You look trustworthy. Join us." gag clearly stolen from The Gamers to hand wave away the problem of introducing new characters (because who actually wants to, you know, role play?). I've been trying to get them to be a bit more serious and I plan to pull out all the stops in this campaign I've just started. One of my players, probably the one who is most into the actual role playing aspect, didn't like his initial character and wanted to roll up a new one. How do my fellow playgrounders usually handle this kind of thing

Pink
2011-01-15, 07:19 PM
So I've got a question for my fellow DMs. How do you guys usually accommodate it when your PCs change characters? My group is very casual and we more or less usually go with the "You look trustworthy. Join us." gag clearly stolen from The Gamers to hand wave away the problem of introducing new characters (because who actually wants to, you know, role play?). I've been trying to get them to be a bit more serious and I plan to pull out all the stops in this campaign I've just started. One of my players, probably the one who is most into the actual role playing aspect, didn't like his initial character and wanted to roll up a new one. How do my fellow playgrounders usually handle this kind of thing

This is a good topic to bat around a little.

I'm not a fan of new characters, but it happens. Sometimes a character has died such a hero's death that rezzing them feels cheap, this is kinda the best reason for a character to reroll instead of getting their character raised IMO. I suppose there's also a new player joining into a campaign as well though.

Unfortunately, sometimes the reason is they don't want to go around with a lower level than the rest of the party, or simply put they aren't having fun with their current character and need to switch out.

Now, it depends how heavy the roleplay in your game is. If it's like, a dungeon crawl were roleplaying happens, instead of being the focus of a game, doing the hand-wave thing is reasonable, because you just want to get on with it. If you're in a more serious game, then you should get together with the player who's rolling a new character up, and talk about where that character is and what sort've trouble they could be in. Now, while this could be difficult if say, the party is already in the middle of something, if you can toss a side-quest in that can be used as an vehicle of introduction, that can show off the new character in a way that should make the party trust them and actually want to include this stranger in future adventures, things can work out to be fun and memorable.

Maybe all the party gets arrested/kidnapped/detained in some way by the same organization as the new PC. The new PC has been there long enough that he's learned some flaw in the security, but he needs the PCs aid to get away with it. He'll tell them if they help him out. This leads to a bonding jail break, filled with opportunities for the new guy to know the lay of the land and need to be trusted by the rest of the party, and therefore be rewarded when the trust proves out correct.

Or the new PC could be the next plot hook, with some treasure map or adventure that he's trying to find a group to help him with and willing to give equal shares. This is a whole adventure where a friendship could be built so that afterwards, when it's done, they decide to stick together.

Saint GoH
2011-01-15, 09:14 PM
So I've got a question for my fellow DMs. How do you guys usually accommodate it when your PCs change characters? My group is very casual and we more or less usually go with the "You look trustworthy. Join us." gag clearly stolen from The Gamers to hand wave away the problem of introducing new characters (because who actually wants to, you know, role play?). I've been trying to get them to be a bit more serious and I plan to pull out all the stops in this campaign I've just started. One of my players, probably the one who is most into the actual role playing aspect, didn't like his initial character and wanted to roll up a new one. How do my fellow playgrounders usually handle this kind of thing

I actually had to deal with this as a PC first, then as GM. As a PC, I didn't really have an option. We were in the middle of a dungeon crawl and I ran into a silly situation with a Carrion Crawler involving rolling 1's on fortitude saves and then the resistance to Coup de Grace. Doubles 1's! Unbelievable. But at the time, there was no option for Raise Dead so I simply rerolled as the plot-hook for the next sequence of adventures.

I find the hand waving to be Okay, depending on the situation. But it sounds as if you would really like to make your PC's roleplay. When I had to introduce a player remaking a character, I'd literally force them to roleplay. As in, "You see an elf in the common room of the tavern, he is the only one" Then I get up and start making myself a sammich. Eventually they get the idea :smallbiggrin:

Traveler
2011-01-15, 09:37 PM
Thanks for the feedback. It was much needed.

For MightyTim: I personally dislike when players create a character, play a session or two, then want to play a different one. So, should this come about, I do let them do it because at the end of the day (early in the morning) it is for fun. But I have a few conditions.
The new character starts one or two levels below the party average.
The new character must run any magic items they can afford by me.
And, the new character must roleplay their way into the group. If you don't want to roleplay that, the new character isn't worth it. Though once that took 4 long, painful hours involving a bard.
But this is just my two cents.

Kaww
2011-01-16, 05:06 AM
So I've got a question for my fellow DMs. How do you guys usually accommodate it when your PCs change characters? My group is very casual and we more or less usually go with the "You look trustworthy. Join us." gag clearly stolen from The Gamers to hand wave away the problem of introducing new characters (because who actually wants to, you know, role play?). I've been trying to get them to be a bit more serious and I plan to pull out all the stops in this campaign I've just started. One of my players, probably the one who is most into the actual role playing aspect, didn't like his initial character and wanted to roll up a new one. How do my fellow playgrounders usually handle this kind of thing

I plan for events in campaign that let the players change their characters for ones "equally" powerful (same xp, same stat array). If people die they have access to raise dead and resurrection...

king.com
2011-01-16, 05:39 AM
I plan for events in campaign that let the players change their characters for ones "equally" powerful (same xp, same stat array). If people die they have access to raise dead and resurrection...

Personally I go a different route. If a player really wants change character, they drop to the lowest xp total in the party (if they are already lowest they lose a bit more). This way they dont fall behind the party but it prevents players simply changing for powers sake.

Kaww
2011-01-16, 06:00 AM
We have gentleman's rules and we play by them. This I find very important, since if people want to be munchkins I ether have to kick them out of the group or hit them with DMG for (non)lethal DMG. Nether is pleasant for me so I avoid getting into such situations in the first place.

As a player I won't make a new character because previous one was weak.

jguy
2011-01-16, 03:26 PM
I am GMing a D&D game as of late and we're 7 sessions into the game. It takes place in Eberron and they are currently invading a former giant stronghold that is populated by Drow.

I find myself feeling bad sometimes because I feel like I am robbing my players of loot. The enemies fight intelligently and if they are about to die or fighting a losing battle they will retreat rather then fight to the death. It is mostly the casters that do this, having a scroll or spell prepared to retreat, or the warlock with Flee the Scene.

They have been able to kill all the Fighters that have shown up and looted them but as of late only 1 full caster and 1 warlock have been successfully slain as of late and they've encountered about 4 of each of them. They get full XP but I've had to come up with other ways of them finding wealth so as to not fall behind the enemies in terms of power.

Am I wrong for having enemies fight intelligently, seemingly "robbing" my players of much needed wealth or do they just need to learn new tactics?

Kaww
2011-01-16, 03:30 PM
You are NOT doing anything wrong. The NPCs are there to fight, flee and fight another day. If you think your PCs need more cash have it in cashes which the players will find when searching rooms abandoned hastily by the opposing force...

Savannah
2011-01-16, 03:36 PM
Having enemies fight intelligently is not wrong. In fact, it's a very good thing. Now, since you're having trouble with the PCs not getting enough loot, you could put in extra loot in other places to make up for what they aren't getting off of NPC bodies.

jguy
2011-01-16, 03:52 PM
That is what I've done so far. Sold a dinosaur egg for a good deal of gold, found some Siberys crystals in a cave and such. I've added slightly more loot to random encounters of local beasties and such. I usually customize it all so that it just doesn't go to the vendors.


Also, I am curious as to what you all think on potions on enemies. Drow have are notorious for low HP due to the hit to con, so most of them have a Potion of Bears Endurance on hand. It makes fights go longer because my players tend to announce their presence and give the enemy a round or two to buff. The meat shields also have Potions of Shield of Faith (+2) which boosts their AC pretty high.

Kaww
2011-01-16, 03:59 PM
Tucker's (http://www.tuckerskobolds.com/) is something every GM should read. If you organize the NPCs and play them as if they use their brain hp and similar things don't matter. Kobolds are special tho, they will risk everything for the community...

Savannah
2011-01-16, 04:00 PM
I do tend to give enemies potions if they're likely to use them, but no more than one or two per enemy, so it's not a substantial portion of their loot. Are your players aware that their enemies are buffing due to them not being stealthy? Maybe if they see that they'd be a bit more cautious (assuming you want them to be more cautious).

Edit: if we're talking about things every GM should read, I'm going to nominate the SilverClawShift Campaign Archives (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116836). I tend to prefer reading the original threads (linked in that thread) rather than the archive format, since there are some additional comments on how the DM and players are doing things.

Edit edit: Remember not to play all enemies intelligently. Some dumb ones make the smart ones more noticeable.

jguy
2011-01-16, 04:06 PM
I give enemies between 1 or 2 potions. Low level ones that are only worth between 50-250 gold, which isn't that much at this level (level 10). I do mark down on paper their boosts and tell my players they hear "a sound like breaking glass" as they drop the bottles. Its exacerbated since most of the time there is one or two caster per group, like a cleric, who will start buffing and such. I've recommended a Wand of Invisibility for them as a group item to help with the stealth.

*Edit: Appropriately enough, the "smart enemies" are the once with High Int/High Wisdom. The casters. The dead ones are the fighter types with low int comparatively. Should I have a few play stupid in a gimme for them? I hesitate on this because when they finally did kill a Warlock and Caster they felt so damn proud of themselves. There was cheering and High-fives all around. If I suddenly have them play dumb, it'll cheapen it.

Kaww
2011-01-16, 04:23 PM
*Edit: Appropriately enough, the "smart enemies" are the once with High Int/High Wisdom. The casters. The dead ones are the fighter types with low int comparatively. Should I have a few play stupid in a gimme for them? I hesitate on this because when they finally did kill a Warlock and Caster they felt so damn proud of themselves. There was cheering and High-fives all around. If I suddenly have them play dumb, it'll cheapen it.

I think that an average drow soldier is by no means stupid. They are brighter than average human. They most likely have higher int than at least one of the PCs. Are the PCs suicidal? Don't answer this please...

The point of the game is to have fun. If PCs find out that you were deliberately decreasing the difficulty of the encounters they might post here and whine about it.

Example is an obvious dice roll fudge. :smallwink:

Savannah
2011-01-16, 04:30 PM
*Edit: Appropriately enough, the "smart enemies" are the once with High Int/High Wisdom. The casters. The dead ones are the fighter types with low int comparatively. Should I have a few play stupid in a gimme for them? I hesitate on this because when they finally did kill a Warlock and Caster they felt so damn proud of themselves. There was cheering and High-fives all around. If I suddenly have them play dumb, it'll cheapen it.

Ah, no, that's not what I was saying. I mean, only play the intelligent enemies intelligently. No using advanced tactics with zombies, for example, since that makes the genuinely intelligent ones seem like nothing special. What you're doing is perfect.

nedz
2011-01-16, 07:07 PM
jguy
You are not making mistakes, the players are.
This is fine: they will learn; or perhaps they are just playing stoopid characters?
In which case they are roleplaying, which is better still.

What you are creating are naturally recurring villians, which is good DMing IMHO.
Far better that using Deus Ex Machina for that effect.

dromer
2011-01-16, 09:26 PM
Working on my first campaign, but I'm concerned about making everything balanced. The campaign starts with four 1st level PCs, so any suggestions?

true_shinken
2011-01-16, 09:49 PM
Yesterday I DMed for fourteen straight hours. I felt so drained when I got home that I slept through the whole day.
The game was all shades of awesome, though.

Savannah
2011-01-16, 10:12 PM
Working on my first campaign, but I'm concerned about making everything balanced. The campaign starts with four 1st level PCs, so any suggestions?

What do you mean by "balanced"? In terms of having different types of encounters? In terms of CR? Something else?


Yesterday I DMed for fourteen straight hours. I felt so drained when I got home that I slept through the whole day.
The game was all shades of awesome, though.

You are insane :smalleek: Well done!

Swordguy
2011-01-16, 10:30 PM
Yesterday I DMed for fourteen straight hours. I felt so drained when I got home that I slept through the whole day.
The game was all shades of awesome, though.

I'd imagine the first thing o your mind after DMing for 14 straight hours wouldn't be "I'm so tired", but rather, "where's the nearest bathroom?"

...

And if this is the sheltered corner of the Playground where GMs are allowed to complain without hurting player's feelings...

So, life's been pretty decent lately. Most of my gaming hasn't been involved with running things per se; I've been playing instead of GMing the Cincinnati BattleTech campaign for the first time in 3 years, I've been doing a whole LOT of playtesting for Leviathans (http://monstersinthesky.com/) (a game of flying WW1 battleships) and a new product for Catalyst, as well as getting tapped to basically rewrite the rules for a major GenCon event that Catalyst runs every year (the Trial of Bloodright, if you know your BattleTech). But even with all that, I've still kept in a bit while running a Shadowrun 4e game. It's set in the 2050's and tries to keep a lot more of the older-edition atmosphere instead of the shiny, Ghost in the Shell-esque feel that's more common now, and the game's been enough of a success that I've actually got a waiting list (7 people now) to get in the game.

Therein is my problem.

See, there's a pretty good possibility that we're going to need to switch nights. And if we do so, a spot's going to open up. The guy who would then get to fill that spot isn't a "That Guy"...but he's married. His spouse MUST game with him, and she's "That Girl". Which is just like "That Guy", only with different plumbing. She's one of those people who just makes you hate gaming. From obsessively reading the CharOp forums and making (if not Pun-Pun), then at least a Batman Wizard Out To WIN The Game (in a deliberately low-op setting), to telling me that if I was a creative (and therefor good) GM, I'd be able to make a game that wasn't derivative of anybody else's work...and thus could run a game without having ANYTHING that has a page devoted to it on TV Tropes.

They come as a set - if I offer a spot to the guy (who is Cool and Awesome in all aspects of gaming), then I'm obligated to let her play too. And I owe the guy a favor...

Blarg.

AshDesert
2011-01-16, 10:34 PM
He eventually relented... and started casting Undetectable Alignment every morning. The paladin has been scanning him for evil every day, but he doesn't come up evil...

If I were the paladin I'd scan him while he's preparing his spells, or sleeping, or late at night after the spell has worn off. Just because he's trying to protect himself doesn't mean he's completely impervious.

true_shinken
2011-01-16, 10:50 PM
I'd imagine the first thing o your mind after DMing for 14 straight hours wouldn't be "I'm so tired", but rather, "where's the nearest bathroom?"
Of course, we have bathroom breaks in out games. ^^
We somehow had less cola than usual (only 4 bottles) during this long session. Why I don't know.



They come as a set - if I offer a spot to the guy (who is Cool and Awesome in all aspects of gaming), then I'm obligated to let her play too. And I owe the guy a favor...
This is a bad situation. In your place, I'd skip to the last person in the list and buy the guy a beer.

jguy
2011-01-17, 02:00 AM
Okay, just had a game today. Lasted quite awhile, 7 hours. This one went rather well. My players have started to figure out better tactics though I gave them a 25 charge and of Invisibility for a 9 days worth of work so not every fight starts with a clog at the door. 5 charges are already down.

First real fight was a good use of the wand, it allowed them to get in position before the guys buffed up with potions. The fight consisted of 2 rogues, 1 whirlwind attack based fighter and a sorcerer. I feel like my rogues are not as effective anymore now. They are two-weapon fighting based but my players AC is incredibly high comparatively, from 24-31. Also they don't get sneak attacks off as often anymore due to spells and abilities. I am thinking of replacing them with War Mages when it comes to damage dealers in a party or is that too much?

Next fight was all around awesome but I discovered how utterly devastating a Sleet Storm spell can be on my players. Thankfully the martial characters use ToB so they have Balance as a trained skill.

My front line fighters don't seem to be doing as well anymore. My shield-tanks are very well off now with a few feats changes and a ruling on spike armor+bullrushes. It is the guy I wanted to use as hit-and-run kinda guy, Deurgar's actually, who are regularly large with a reach weapon. Problem is once again their armor class and the fact it's damn near impossible to trip my martial characters. One is a dwarf and another has powerful build and they both now have steadfast boots.

Does anyone know of a good straightforward fighter build for NPCs? Should I give them levels in Barbarian for the rage? Should I give them NPC warrior class but just more levels of that? Oh, and how do NPC classes count towards CR by the way? Is it half-cr per level?

I was impressed when they dimension locked the warlock first thing though. Smart play there.

king.com
2011-01-17, 02:28 AM
Edit: if we're talking about things every GM should read, I'm going to nominate the SilverClawShift Campaign Archives (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116836). I tend to prefer reading the original threads (linked in that thread) rather than the archive format, since there are some additional comments on how the DM and players are doing things.


Wow. That was absolutely amazing to read, thankyou so much for the linkage.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-17, 07:35 AM
If I were the paladin I'd scan him while he's preparing his spells, or sleeping, or late at night after the spell has worn off. Just because he's trying to protect himself doesn't mean he's completely impervious.

She scans him every so often. It's become a bit of a joke that whenever she raises her credit card at the table, that means she's scanning the suspect player with Detect Evil. The guy doesn't realize it yet... I think being spied on is a bit of a berserk button for him. When his master told him that he was keeping tabs on him with his crystal ball, it got ugly. Chunky salsa ugly.

Kaww
2011-01-17, 07:48 AM
Does anyone know of a good straightforward fighter build for NPCs? Should I give them levels in Barbarian for the rage? Should I give them NPC warrior class but just more levels of that? Oh, and how do NPC classes count towards CR by the way? Is it half-cr per level?

I was impressed when they dimension locked the warlock first thing though. Smart play there.

I'd suggest Duergar dungeon crasher with elite stat array. Take feats and equip that improve his bull rush. They don't care about AC.

EDIT: Rage won't hurt ether.

_Zoot_
2011-01-17, 08:13 AM
I'll be DMing for my local gaming shop on Wednesday, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips? I have done DMing before, and am in fact my groups longest running DM, but I'm not really sure if running a group at the Local friendly Gaming Shop (is that the correct line for the acronym?) will be much like that...

Obviously I won't know the people there as well, so that will be different, and there is precious little 'plot' involved in these sessions but aside from that, are there other things I should look out for? I don't know the rules that well, but I know them well enough (I hope) and can improvise/look up/ ask someone else about anything I don't know, so I don't think that will be an issue. But what else should I look out for, or what have you found to be different when you have been DM at your LFGS?

Jay R
2011-01-17, 10:19 AM
I don't believe in magic and HOW DID YOU DO THAT?
2. The other part of this is that in this hombrew setting is that there is no magic and it is a human only world. Now when I say no magic, I mean that the people look at it as a kind of myth, or something from stories. The PCs (and mind flayers) still retain their magic and that isn't going to change. The part I'm not sure what to do about is the people's reaction to the PCs using any magic. The two ways I look at it is A: Terrified until the PCs can earn the people's trust, probably by defending them against abberations. Or B: They are possessed by evil! Burn them! This one would be abit harsh and I can't help think that the PCs would develop a 'we don't care' attitude about the people. I think aftr typeing it out I may have come to my own conclusion about this and go with a but...
In a nutshell, the world the PCs entered has no magic of it's own. How do the people of the world react when the PC's use magic? Fear overcome by trust, or just fear and superstitious hate? I'm pretty sure after typing this I'm going with the former

You have decisions to make about the world before you can address that. Is there a church or churches? Do the priests have priestly abilities? Are there gods? What are the gods like? Are there demons or devils?

If there is a church of priests with priestly spells, then they do know about non-physical powers, and the PC magic is anti-priestly. Priests would probably consider it heretical and possibly suspect demonic origin.

If there are priests of real gods with no priestly powers, then the priests really don't like PC magic. Envy is a powerful force.

If there are no gods or demons, and no priestly spells, then the PCs are like European explorers visiting a primitive culture -- looked at with awe and possibly fear (but almost always, in our history, enough fear). They might be considered gods or demons themselves, and it probably matters a great deal whether they are first seen casting a fireball or a healing spell.

Also, have you considered how a PC priest gets his spells? If the gods can give them to him, they can give them to other priests, too.

Finally, put legends in that world's background that lead people to react the way you want them to.

Jay R
2011-01-17, 10:38 AM
I'll be DMing for my local gaming shop on Wednesday, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips? I have done DMing before, and am in fact my groups longest running DM, but I'm not really sure if running a group at the Local friendly Gaming Shop (is that the correct line for the acronym?) will be much like that...

Obviously I won't know the people there as well, so that will be different, and there is precious little 'plot' involved in these sessions but aside from that, are there other things I should look out for? I don't know the rules that well, but I know them well enough (I hope) and can improvise/look up/ ask someone else about anything I don't know, so I don't think that will be an issue. But what else should I look out for, or what have you found to be different when you have been DM at your LFGS?

1. Tell them up front that there are always disagreements about the rules, and that you will make the final decision.

2. If you have any homebrew rules, tell them in advance.

3. Have a scenario that can be finished in one session.

4. Short puzzles to solve are good. Long puzzles to solve are bad.

5. You create the characters, so that nobody can bring in a game-warping item or feat.

6. Have all encounters, treasures and anything else you can rolled up in advance. Time is crucial; use all of it you can.

7. I favor a short, fairly easy melee at the immediate start, to pull them in and give some immediate excitement. Ideally, this melee should introduce the plot.

8. Have a specific plot point aimed at each character. In a campaign, it's all right (but not ideal) for one character to be unnecessary for a single session, but each player must feel involved in a one-shot.

9. Show up early, get all your materials, including all miniatures, laid out and ready.

10. Have one or two miniatures laid out that you have no intention of using, so they can't get any clues from seeing what's there. (I favor mixing three trolls in with the orcs, or a Red Dragon right after the ogres, just to keep them on their toes.)

11. HAVE FUN! Your attitude is infectious.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 10:51 AM
This is a bad situation. In your place, I'd skip to the last person in the list and buy the guy a beer.
+1 to this.

It's a bad situation (and I'm sure Swordguy knows it) but for such a popular game I can see no reason to ruin it in order to include one guy.

I'm sure Swordguy is pretty full up with DMing but if he really wants to game with this guy he should set up one-shots that don't require a lot of prep time. That way, he can get his gaming-exposure to The Dude while limiting the fallout The Wife produces.

Of course, if he just likes The Dude as a person - stop gaming with him, and hang out with him in other social venues! I have friends I like to hang out with that I'd never allow into one of my games; sometimes it's just a bad fit.

Amphetryon
2011-01-17, 11:01 AM
I'll be DMing for my local gaming shop on Wednesday, and I was wondering if anyone had any tips? I have done DMing before, and am in fact my groups longest running DM, but I'm not really sure if running a group at the Local friendly Gaming Shop (is that the correct line for the acronym?) will be much like that...

Obviously I won't know the people there as well, so that will be different, and there is precious little 'plot' involved in these sessions but aside from that, are there other things I should look out for? I don't know the rules that well, but I know them well enough (I hope) and can improvise/look up/ ask someone else about anything I don't know, so I don't think that will be an issue. But what else should I look out for, or what have you found to be different when you have been DM at your LFGS?
Major difference: new players and their characters will appear virtually every week; if the FLGS is anything like the ones I've DMed at in the past or like my current library DMing duties, the owners will probably mandate that you let newcomers play without vetting them first. This means continuity and involved plots become exceedingly difficult and unsatisfying. It also means the party's effective level could swing wildly from week to week. Through trial and error, I've found it best to avoid single monster fights, as they'll either die to the action economy or just crush one or more PCs before dying. Gobs of mooks are almost certainly a better fit in that environment. Also, make sure the party has at least one way of dealing with healing in and out of combat every session, just in case the party's band-aid doesn't show up in a given week. An eternal wand of Vigor and another of Lesser Restoration in a communal swag bag work well for this in my experience.

DaedalusMkV
2011-01-17, 12:22 PM
They come as a set - if I offer a spot to the guy (who is Cool and Awesome in all aspects of gaming), then I'm obligated to let her play too. And I owe the guy a favor...

Blarg.

Talk to The Guy. Tell him what's going on and your opinions on the matter. Tell him you aren't a fan of the attitude his wife brings to the table, and that you really aren't interested in GMing for her. Be polite and be honest, and get his input. While it might result in some degree of hurt feelings, I guarantee you'll both get over it, and going behind The Guy's back or actually allowing a player you find that disruptive to join your game are both unacceptable options, from my point of view.

---

I'm starting a new phase of my Eberron campaign (the module Whisper of the Vampire's Blade, for anyone familiar with it), and I'm foreseeing some minor problems at points for my particular party. The issue is that I've got a couple of characters who simply do not fit in to cultured society at all, and very much do not believe in subtlety. The module requires that players deal a little bit with espionage, and has a major encounter in a high-society Ball at an embassy which requires players to steal or forge invitations and wear costumes. The characters I'm worried about are an Elan Warlock with VoP who believes that everyone should give up the trappings of material wealth and would be completely unwilling to wear the gaudy, elaborate costume required for entry to the Ball, as well as a prototype Warforged Fighter/Barbarian built quite a bit bigger and more primal than normal Warforged. The other two characters are in good shape, but I'm not sure how to keep these two involved in a major set-piece encounter that will last most of a session. Anyone have some advice?

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 12:58 PM
Talk to The Guy. Tell him what's going on and your opinions on the matter. Tell him you aren't a fan of the attitude his wife brings to the table, and that you really aren't interested in GMing for her. Be polite and be honest, and get his input. While it might result in some degree of hurt feelings, I guarantee you'll both get over it, and going behind The Guy's back or actually allowing a player you find that disruptive to join your game are both unacceptable options, from my point of view.
As I've said in an earlier thread: criticizing a Player's S.O. is Bad News
There's pretty much no good way to say "hey, I don't like how your S.O. is acting" without causing major damage to your relationship with the individual you're speaking to.

If the Player knows their S.O. is being a Problem, then why hasn't he done anything about it? At best, you find out your friend doesn't think it's a Big Deal and he might try to fix it - resulting in problems within their relationship. At worst, the Player agrees and you're going to be rubbing salt into an existing wound within the relationship.

If the Player does not think their S.O. is a problem, he is likely to take any criticism of her personally. No matter how polite you are, nobody reacts well to hearing their Loved One being criticized - particularly when the criticism is "unjust."

If you are fortunate enough that your Player respects the GM sufficiently to accept his criticism of the Player's S.O. without emotion, you are still stuck with the problem of your problem with a game becoming a problem with their relationship. Nobody likes it when someone else injects a problem into a relationship - there will always be some blowback.

jguy
2011-01-17, 04:21 PM
I am curious what, if any, other feats or items that improve bullrush besides Improved Bullrush.

Do any other DM's here get annoyed by the five minute work day as much as I do? It was interfering with the game in that the guys will fight 1 or 2 fights then have to teleport back to home base to rest up. I've made up a whole castle and after the 3rd fight in the kitchens they've finally progressed to the dining hall....then rested! They had to commission a CL9 wand of rope trick just so they didn't have to teleport home to rest.

What do you all do about this kind of thing? Punish it? Accept it as part of the game? What?

Lurkmoar
2011-01-17, 04:28 PM
I am curious what, if any, other feats or items that improve bullrush besides Improved Bullrush.

Do any other DM's here get annoyed by the five minute work day as much as I do? It was interfering with the game in that the guys will fight 1 or 2 fights then have to teleport back to home base to rest up. I've made up a whole castle and after the 3rd fight in the kitchens they've finally progressed to the dining hall....then rested! They had to commission a CL9 wand of rope trick just so they didn't have to teleport home to rest.

What do you all do about this kind of thing? Punish it? Accept it as part of the game? What?

Empty the dungeon when they return. Nothing annoys players more then hearing "Sorry, but the princess is in another castle!"

jguy
2011-01-17, 04:31 PM
Problem is the castle cannot be emptied so easily, especially in 8 hours. I was thinking of an ambush but then again the point of rope trick is you cannot see the entrance to it, nor find it really. How do I curb this attitude without just imposing harsh penalties and being a jerk?

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 04:36 PM
What do you all do about this kind of thing? Punish it? Accept it as part of the game? What?
As with anything that your Players do that annoys/confuses you:
(1) Ask them why they are doing it.

(2) If they are doing it due to a misunderstanding, correct their perception

(3) If they are doing it for reasons you don't understand, talk with them until you do.

(4) If they are doing it for reasons you don't approve of but understand, explain why you don't approve of it. Discuss until you reach an agreement going forward.

(5) If all else fails, and the Players are having fun playing that way, roll with it. If you can't run a game where this happens, tell your Players and shut down the game.
In particular, if a system is prone to a type of gameplay you don't like, you should either houserule from the outset to prevent that type of gameplay OR play a different system which encourages a more agreeable playstyle.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-17, 04:36 PM
Problem is the castle cannot be emptied so easily, especially in 8 hours. I was thinking of an ambush but then again the point of rope trick is you cannot see the entrance to it, nor find it really. How do I curb this attitude without just imposing harsh penalties and being a jerk?

What is the objective in the castle? What resources does the person commanding the castle have? If they're looking for a single item or person, it shouldn't be too hard to have it moved.

Or, impose a time limit. Free such and such in x amount of time, or they're dragon bait/sacrificed to a demon/bride to a vampire/ect.

Raum
2011-01-17, 04:57 PM
Do any other DM's here get annoyed by the five minute work day as much as I do? It was interfering with the game in that the guys will fight 1 or 2 fights then have to teleport back to home base to rest up. I've made up a whole castle and after the 3rd fight in the kitchens they've finally progressed to the dining hall....then rested! They had to commission a CL9 wand of rope trick just so they didn't have to teleport home to rest.

What do you all do about this kind of thing? Punish it? Accept it as part of the game? What?Use it. Seriously.

What are the NPCs doing during those 8+ hours of party resting? They should be preparing - and taking on prepared opponents should be much more difficult than taking out those with little time to prepare. In something like a castle, they'd be likely to meet every opponent left in one ambush...

jguy
2011-01-17, 05:00 PM
Okay, here is the objective they are currently working towards. Spoilered so that my players won't be tempted to look since I know at least 1 reads this forum.


The group consists of a dragonborn cleric, a warlock/cleric/eldritch theurge kobold, a dwarf crusader, a warforged warblade, and a thri-kreen witch. They have traveled to Xen'drix and are invading this castle for a multitude of reasons.

Dwarf has been hired by his House to clear out the castle as a base of operations for them in Xen'drix and has been promised a hefty sum of gold.

The two clerics are following the Dragon prophecy and know that something called "The God Machine" lies inside the castle and must recover it.

The Warforged was created from before they were considered people, was sent out on a mission to find a rumor of the forges the Cannith war forges were based off of, inside the castle. He failed at first but was reactivated by the rest of the party and has decided to continue his quest.

The thri-kreen has bound a spirit (not ghost) of a storm giant from the time of when the giants were all powerful. The spirit has promised him untold power if he can get to his castle. Both are evil.

The castle is now inhabited by the former Drow slaves and Deurgar that the drow have taken in as brothers.

The main over-arching plot of this is that there is an original forge inside of the castle. This forge can mold flesh from anything and create a soul inside of it to inhabit the body. It is a God Machine. Thankfully it is in disrepair but the Docent inside knows how to make another one. They will have to recover this. The second part is that the Storm giant had been banished from Xen'drix by powerful magic and could not return unless brought to it, like by the Witch. The longer he is in his seat of power, the stronger he gets until he can manifest. If he gains control of the forge he will make himself a new body that he will use to bring about the second age of giants and destroy all the dragons of the world.

So that is the reason the castle can not just be emptied and left behind.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 05:11 PM
Okay, here is the objective they are currently working towards. Spoilered so that my players won't be tempted to look since I know at least 1 reads this forum.
Wait, this is 4E?
How are they teleporting out so easily? Any available TP Circles should either be in hostile territory or so far from the Castle that traveling to and from the Castle will be dangerous

nedz
2011-01-17, 05:13 PM
I take it its too late to have had a Forbiddance within the castle ?
A very legitimate defence upon such a location.

Its not too late for some NPC to cast Forbiddance however.
Do the NPCs know that they are there ?

Up to you whether that would trap them in their bubble, or simply end the spell early. AFAIK RAW is silent on that. It would certainly nix the teleport also.

Ed: I assumed that this was 3.5 - oh well, perhaps 4 has something similar ?
Ed2: Just realised from your comments that I ought to spoiler this.

jguy
2011-01-17, 05:24 PM
This is 3.5 just for your information


They are using the Teleport spell to get in and out but they have no Arcane Caster, just a cleric with the travel domain. I don't mind this as much since traveling through the jungles of Xen'drix is dangerous and -very- time consuming and I don't want to keep them from buying/selling and fall behind on wealth too much.

I was thinking of using Forbiddence but I was torn on it since its already been established that they can teleport in and out but I want them to feel the sense that they are in enemy territory and everything.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-17, 05:29 PM
This is 3.5 just for your information


They are using the Teleport spell to get in and out but they have no Arcane Caster, just a cleric with the travel domain. I don't mind this as much since traveling through the jungles of Xen'drix is dangerous and -very- time consuming and I don't want to keep them from buying/selling and fall behind on wealth too much.

I was thinking of using Forbiddence but I was torn on it since its already been established that they can teleport in and out but I want them to feel the sense that they are in enemy territory and everything.



Ah. I didn't know there were Dragonborn in 3.5 :smallredface:

But yeah, this is just a problem in 3.X. As per usual, use Magic to fix it somehow :smalltongue:
Perhaps someone in the Castle notices the Players TPing in and out and sets up a Divert Teleportation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/divertTeleport.htm) effect that either a resident of the Castle uses or someone else interested in the Castle uses.

Pink
2011-01-17, 05:33 PM
If the players are predictably resuming attack one room at a time every eight hours?

The next time they head into a new room they should receive a hail of poisoned crossbow bolts as the troops have had time to prepare. That one room that you looked into last night and thought was an ordinary laundry room? It's now a room of trapped death.

How much care is the group taking that they're alone when rope trick is cast? Stat up a decent rogue like opponent that was sent to keep an eye out for the intruders (ring of invisibility on it would work well). Allow the invisible opponent to watch them and make reports (give the players the occasional listen check), maybe allow other troops to move in from the rooms they've cleared prior to have a pincer attack ("They always seem to rest for exactly 9 hours"). Or, have the invisible person try to run off with the wand.

These are all, of course, tactics that players may hate you for, because, while reasonable if a group is being that predictable, they mess with the player's own strategy (and player's can be very proud of their strategies even if those strategies are as simple as "Hide and rest when hurt."). I highly recommend considering Oracle_Hunter's suggestion on this about talking to them if this is a point of difficulty for you. If it's just annoyance and the player's are having fun, it's okay to let them have fun too.

That being said, Rope trick, a level 2 spell, should be fairly well know, and any observation of it by a grunt who can report back, or even after a few more instances of it, should possibly tip off any other arcane spellcaster.

Which brings us to a topic which I wouldn't mind some knowledge on, of, how to thwart rope trick? Obviously a tactic to use sparingly so PCs don't feel helpless, but for the intelligent villain, how does one go about winning this game of hide and seek?

My personal thoughts on it would be, if the roof is low enough, to have a sizeable troop of guards accompany an Ogre or other large-sized creature. The Ogre carefully sticks a hand up to touch the ceiling (will only work on rope tricks roughly 15 feet high or lower), until he sticks his hand into the rope trick. Step 3 ???, Step 4 Profit.

nedz
2011-01-17, 06:09 PM
But yeah, this is just a problem in 3.X. As per usual, use Magic to fix it somehow :smalltongue:

8 hours is plenty of time to change your spell selection, and something like this would make them pause.



The next time they head into a new room they should receive a hail of poisoned crossbow bolts as the troops have had time to prepare. That one room that you looked into last night and thought was an ordinary laundry room? It's now a room of trapped death.

No: roll out the Castle's Kobald Trapsmiths :smallbiggrin:
All the traps need to do is delay them, and set off an alarm.
Send in the reinforcements and pretty soon the PC's will want to rest up again.



Which brings us to a topic which I wouldn't mind some knowledge on, of, how to thwart rope trick? Obviously a tactic to use sparingly so PCs don't feel helpless, but for the intelligent villain, how does one go about winning this game of hide and seek?


There was a thread on this a little while ago. There are loads of options, here are a few.


1) The Rope trick can be found by various means (eg scent) and simply dispelled.
2) If the general area is known, then an Alarm spell can bring help quite easily when they emerge.
3) The Seal Portal spell can trap them outside of the multiverse (This ones quite nasty)
...

Tarinaky
2011-01-17, 06:11 PM
If the PCs fail to rescue the damsel in distress by the equinox festivel she gets killed and the PCs don't receive Quest XP when they find the remains of the wickerman and the baddies long gone.

The only way to stop the PCs taking their time is to create a sense of urgency in the campaign. This is normally pretty easy simply by going over your notes on the BBEG and keeping in the front of your mind what they're trying to accomplish. Why is this castle here? What purpose does it serve in their designs?

If it's simply a residence and of no consequence to his plans then I suggest that the next time they teleport in they find that it's been abandoned and all portable treasure taken as the big bad has retired to another address and I guarentee they won't take so damn long when they try again.

Edit: I just read your spoiler like I should have done before I made a stupid comment...

If the PCs take too long the NPCs 'win' the battle and the war becomes so much harder. The players realise they've just screwed themselves and are forced to conceed ground to the bad guys.

The upside of this is letting your villans win once in a while increases the sense of threat they pose which makes your life a little easier in other ways too. The downside is you'll probably need to throw away some of your material or re-write it. This should be a lesson you only need to teach once though.

jguy
2011-01-17, 08:14 PM
Ok, good advice from you all and I thank you all. A couple issue though.

Say their rope trick is found and there is an ambush all set up for them and they somehow survive, what then? From previous experiences they'll just teleport back home and hide out for another week. If there is a Forbiddence up suddenly, not only will the players themselves be extremely irritated but this'll cause them to either just run and hide and rope trick again or get themselves killed real soon.

How can I show them their actions aren't the best without just straight out kill them?

ninja_penguin
2011-01-17, 08:24 PM
I'd say that sense of urgency is the best way to go about it. If the players are trying to always go in fully prepared, it'll work against them, and doesn't seem as much of a DM fiat of 'your rope trick now opens up into a pit trap'.

So yeah, rescue the lady within X days. Beat somebody else to the prize, etc. Make a specific time limit, and enforce it. Gap out your story so that X time takes place for travel and the like, but resting after every encounter is what will really kill them. Feel free to make a timeline on top of your DM screen and move it across as time passes.

Savannah
2011-01-17, 08:36 PM
How can I show them their actions aren't the best without just straight out kill them?

Have you tried talking to them? An OOC chat may be just what they need. Explain why what they're doing is bothering you and listen to why they're doing it. Depending on how that goes, a request to change may be all they need, or you may be able to reassure them about whatever's making them retreat so frequently. If you're planning to use some of the ideas here, you might want to point out that, while the players are welcome to use whatever tactics they want, the enemies will react intelligently so it doesn't come as a surprise to the players.

Pink
2011-01-17, 08:38 PM
Edit: An overall +1 to Savannah's post. Especially concerning that enemies will react accordingly. Player's sometimes can be surprised when enemies show signs of intelligence, and fore-warning is a good implement to have them move before the enemy can.

Well, If the PCs survive, then it's clear to the enemies that they're under attack by a very capable threat. The best option is to move the god machine and the entire operation. The PCs have a time limit to wipe them out, otherwise the enemy gets away with it.

Insert new adventure to find out where it's been moved too, with bigger baddies and strange new creatures that have been developed by the machine to scourge the land, ending with a confrontation with a power mad enemy, in a fortress that's a little more difficult to break with rope tricks and teleport, etc etc.

The trick is pulling this off and making it an interesting story instead of making it look like petty DM tactics. Again, simply put, if they're having fun, and I'm talking a decent level of fun here, with the hit and run tactics, I would be hesitant to change things just because they're playing easy mode. But if things are just "Ho-hum, let's do it this way because there's less risk and such", mix it up a bit.

jguy
2011-01-17, 09:21 PM
Question for you all. When you are making NPC enemies for a game, how do you go about it? Keep it simple? Go for complex? How optimized do you go?

For martial characters do you just go fighter 10, or do you go Barb 2/fighter 2/warblade 6? Do you go Rogue 10, or do you go rogue 3/ swashbuckler 3/swordsage 4?

Do you put prestige classes on or do you prefer Warrior/Adept classes?

Amphetryon
2011-01-17, 09:28 PM
Question for you all. When you are making NPC enemies for a game, how do you go about it? Keep it simple? Go for complex? How optimized do you go?

For martial characters do you just go fighter 10, or do you go Barb 2/fighter 2/warblade 6? Do you go Rogue 10, or do you go rogue 3/ swashbuckler 3/swordsage 4?

Do you put prestige classes on or do you prefer Warrior/Adept classes?

My motto: Don't make the party's builds look bad, and don't make the party's builds look too bada$$. Work within their general optimization parameters. If you want the NPCs a little tougher, add a level or a template, or pick slightly higher on the Tier list/optimization scale. Want the NPC to showcase a particular player's build? Make sure you've included that weakness.

RndmNumGen
2011-01-18, 12:23 AM
As a new DM, I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with good plot hooks. My players, who are also new, are perfectly happy to have me point in a direction and say "go here", but they're also more than willing to investigate leads on their own, which is why I feel that just handing out adventures is inadequate. I have a fairly good story surrounding different locations, factions and such, but what I can't do is figure out how to get my players involved in the first place.

For example, right now I have several possible adventures outlined for next session. A swarm of giant caterpillars are devouring local crops, necromancers have holed up in an abandoned crypt, a group of cultists are ambushing travelers and there is a rare plant that is known to grow in the southern swamps that is invaluable to alchemists. However, I'm not really sure how the players should learn about these things. I've considered having a farmer in the inn sobbing into a mug of ale, and an eager alchemist looking for adventurers to retrieve the plant, but aside from that... Drawing blanks.

Tarinaky
2011-01-18, 12:39 AM
Players don't normally need much encouragement to bite a lead - the XP and Gold is reward enough.

If the players aren't biting it usually means they're just deliberately messing with you OR they don't understand how to proceed.

That said, recurring NPCs are the best way of dangling plot leads infront of the players. Patrons, messengers, friends, guilds, factions...

I have only twice, in... maybe 8 years, had a group turn down a Quest/Mission: one was Shadowrun and by all counts it was a bad run for the characters to take (high-risk, low-pay). A disaster waiting to happen almost :smallbiggrin: The other time was a one-shot mech game and the players were deliberately trying to throw me as many curveballs as possible.

Silus
2011-01-18, 12:41 AM
Well, I'm a new DM (just did my first session last Sunday), and I think I majorly goofed...

I gave the PC's a 5 level limit and little to no restrictions on making their characters. As in, all legal races and classes were open, as were legal 3.0 and 3.5 templates, so long as they met the level requirements for them. Thankfully, my group has a sense of moderation, so their characters are only a LITTLE crazy.

We have:
An Elf Ranger/Monk Gestalt named "Horizon Walker, Planar Ranger" (bonus points if you pick up on that)
A Feral Goliath Barbarian that can bench press a car when raging
An Illumain Bard/Cleric who is pretty much the healing battery of the group.

I kinda figure that at least one of them would be a solid arcane class, seeing as the game is all about planes hopping (They're like Planar Texas Rangers). No trap finding abilities either, save for "the Goliath takes point". I find this greatly amusing, seeing as the BBEG has like 10 Inferno Spikes (like 9d6 Fireball landmines) that he's going to use to cover his tracks (He's like a planar Carmen Sandiego).

So, knowing all this stuff, I have a question.

Should I use Grimtooth's traps?

Pink
2011-01-18, 12:51 AM
Should I use Grimtooth's traps?

...First time DMing and letting players have total and complete range of resources? You are very lucky you didn't get far crazier builds.

As for Grimtooth's traps, this depends how careful your party is. If they're just going to break through the trap with the barbarian anyway, it makes little to no difference. If you want to give them a trap that they can disarm through problem solving, SOME of grimtooth's traps will work for you. Others are designed to be inescapable death traps or dungeon jokes.

TalonDemonKing
2011-01-18, 12:56 AM
When I make enemies, I just assign scores and abilities. Occasionally, I don't evne do that, instead I choose a range, then shift the values up and down when my players say stuff like 'Its AC is 20' or 'Its reflex is 35'. Confuses meta-gamers, makes for interesting challenges, and nothing surpises your players more than a human that can breathe fire. Also makes for memorable encounters.

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 01:03 AM
Speaking of GM venting:

We have one player in our group that is, well, a bit of the living version of the stormwind fallacy. Her builds are generally well below the rest of the group. She doesn't wish to change them or accept advice, citing roleplaying reasons. But then she gets frustrated because her characters - generally front-line melee - never seem to be able to contribute much.

Silus
2011-01-18, 01:08 AM
...First time DMing and letting players have total and complete range of resources? You are very lucky you didn't get far crazier builds.

As for Grimtooth's traps, this depends how careful your party is. If they're just going to break through the trap with the barbarian anyway, it makes little to no difference. If you want to give them a trap that they can disarm through problem solving, SOME of grimtooth's traps will work for you. Others are designed to be inescapable death traps or dungeon jokes.

Well I don't quite know how the trap thing is going to work to be honest. I'm just speculating at the moment. First thing on the agenda is war games with hobgoblins on Ysgard.

As for the crazy characters, at the time, I figured it would be necessary, seeing as they're trying to stop a Carmen Sandiego type character, and one o their first encounters with him is tracking him to Nessus (9th layer of Hell) to try and stop him from stealing the Pact Primeval (laws decreeing the bounds of Hell and Hell's job in the multiverse). That, and they're going to be hitting up Mechanus to try and stop the BBEG from jacking up the general laws of the universe (Elemental, positive/negative energy, ect.).

It's going to be especially fun, seeing as none of them know really anything about the Planes except for the major ones (Celestia, Mechanus, the Abyss, Elementals, Energies, and Hell).

*Evil grin and wrings hands* Hope you guys like Pandemonium...

Tarinaky
2011-01-18, 01:17 AM
Speaking of GM venting:

We have one player in our group that is, well, a bit of the living version of the stormwind fallacy. Her builds are generally well below the rest of the group. She doesn't wish to change them or accept advice, citing roleplaying reasons. But then she gets frustrated because her characters - generally front-line melee - never seem to be able to contribute much.

This reminded me of something I read a while ago on 'Tiers' and 'Balance Points' among D&D classes: essentially, if you know someone's playing a suboptimal build give them a helping hand in other ways.

Hang the plot off them, give them better magic items sooner, give them misc bonuses during the story.

Edit: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0

Pink
2011-01-18, 01:35 AM
This reminded me of something I read a while ago on 'Tiers' and 'Balance Points' among D&D classes: essentially, if you know someone's playing a suboptimal build give them a helping hand in other ways.

Hang the plot off them, give them better magic items sooner, give them misc bonuses during the story.

I see what you're saying here, and I can appreciate it, but in practice this smacks of favouritism to me. Why should the player who is intentionally running something sub optimal and complaining about it, refusing helpful suggestions to improve as well as refusing potential DM permission to restat, be rewarded for it?

Concerning the plot, in theory everyone should have their turn to shine in the spotlight, and having the story focus more often on one player's character just because that character has a suboptimal build only further encourages the stormwind fallacy. If you going to have criteria over which to decide what character gets thrown into the plot mix, base it on the most interesting background or the person who will appreciate it the most (Just because a character builds suboptimal does not automatically make them the most RP focused player. The fact that he complains about his combat ability instead of ignoring it in favor of the story would suggest that he's not there only for story, he wants to kick but too.)

Magic items to the character are something other players may very likely get annoyed about, if all the magic loot they find seems to be geared to one player in order to equalize him. Of course, there's no assuring that it will go to the player, it will generally go to whoever it can benefit the most, and if there starts being huge wealth disparity, groups may decide to sell it to spread out the party wealth a bit more.

Secret bonuses are something I'd be careful about as well. When the person with a +10 rolls a 15 and misses, but the person with a +6 rolls a 15 and hits, something fishy is going on. If we're to say they're story related, then each other player should get equal opportunity for similar bonuses throughout the game.

Now, I'm being a bit negative in this, (partly cause I have my own feelings about players who, through decisions or simple lack of knowledge, don't use the mechanics of the game to get decent results and complain), but if a player is being stubborn about their build, but complaining about their ineffectiveness, there isn't much you can do in that regard aside from saying, "I can help you, and will allow you to restat, if you want to be effective. If you want to keep the build as it is, recognize your limits and please stop disrupting the table with your complaints. Your characters effectiveness is based largely on your decisions, and you're being given a chance to make decisions to rectify a problem you're having with the game. If you choose not to use this chance, I don't want to hear anything more."

...Yeah, I think I'm too bitter on this subject...

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-18, 01:53 AM
Speaking of GM venting:

We have one player in our group that is, well, a bit of the living version of the stormwind fallacy. Her builds are generally well below the rest of the group. She doesn't wish to change them or accept advice, citing roleplaying reasons. But then she gets frustrated because her characters - generally front-line melee - never seem to be able to contribute much.
Have her play a game where Builds are better tied to RP requirements (Burning Wheel) or a game without Build choices at all (Bliss Stage). Certainly don't have her keep coming to a game that she hates playing.

If you don't want to run such a game, encourage her to set one up and offer to play in it. Or see if someone else will.

To paraphrase a blog I'm too lazy to find & link: she wants to play Poker while the rest of you are having fun playing Bridge. Instead of sitting in at a game of Bridge and not having any fun, she should find a game of Poker.

Pink
2011-01-18, 02:03 AM
To paraphrase a blog I'm too lazy to find & link: she wants to play Poker while the rest of you are having fun playing Bridge. Instead of sitting in at a game of Bridge and not having any fun, she should find a game of Poker.

Yeah, I think this says it well.

EccentricOwl
2011-01-18, 02:30 AM
Being a GM is sort of like being a teacher - depending on your style. You have goals, you have things you want to get across, you have themes, stories, and incidents to tell - and you have a limited time to do it. You might even set a timetable for yourself depending on what sort of schedule you're on.

Savannah
2011-01-18, 02:39 AM
As a new DM, I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with good plot hooks. My players, who are also new, are perfectly happy to have me point in a direction and say "go here", but they're also more than willing to investigate leads on their own, which is why I feel that just handing out adventures is inadequate. I have a fairly good story surrounding different locations, factions and such, but what I can't do is figure out how to get my players involved in the first place.

Assuming the players don't need to be beaten over the head with the hooks (and it sounds like yours don't) I generally try to think about how the NPCs who are affected by the hook are reacting, and how their paths might cross with the PCs.


A swarm of giant caterpillars are devouring local crops

Maybe the farmers are actively looking for help from the guards or adventurers (the classic). Maybe people in the market are discussing how the price of food is going to increase from this when the PCs wander by (subtle, but it might work and it highlights how this is affecting the world). Maybe a young wanna-be adventurer has gone after the caterpillars and his/her family needs someone to rescue him/her (another classic; for a twist, the family is overprotective and the wanna-be adventurer is just fine). Maybe there's a shady merchant selling anti-caterpillar charms and a dissatisfied customer decides to get a refund at sword-point when the PCs are walking by (again, a bit subtle as it depends on whether the PCs will choose to get involved).


necromancers have holed up in an abandoned crypt

What are they doing in there? Are there effects from them being there that are affecting the NPCs (roaming undead, for example)? Does anyone know they're there, or will the PCs have to figure that out? All of those affect what plot hooks might work.


a group of cultists are ambushing travelers

Maybe someone needs a guard (yet another classic). Maybe someone's supposed to be getting an item, but it goes missing because the cultists stole it and they're looking for someone to retrieve it (bonus points if the item is related to one of the other quests). Also, what are the cultists doing with the people they ambush? Depending on that, there could be some more hooks.


there is a rare plant that is known to grow in the southern swamps that is invaluable to alchemists.

Maybe an alchemist is looking for someone to go get the herbs (classic; maybe have two or more alchemists all looking for someone so that the PCs can decide who to work for and have to dodge the hires of the other alchemists while they're in the swamps). Maybe a wanna-be adventurer went off in search of the plants, similar to what I mentioned with the caterpillars.

Those are just what sprang to mind, you'll know better than I do whether they're likely to be interesting to your players and work in your world. Hope at least one of the ideas helps.

You might consider having a couple of hooks for each adventure, in case the miss or aren't interested in one (note, however, that having all the hooks lead to one quest might annoy the players, so having either more than one quest or the hooks be very different may be a good idea). And you might want to have an idea of what happens if they ignore a quest, so that the world will change around them depending on what they do or don't do.


Should I use Grimtooth's traps?

Using traps in general is iffy. It tends to slow down play and can get boring for whoever's not dealing with the trap. I'm only vaguely familiar with Grimtooth's traps, so I can't say for them specifically. My favorite traps are the encounter traps described in Dungeonscape, as they work more like enemies so there's no one sitting out the encounter and even if you trigger them they make for an interesting encounter rather than a "you take x damage, move on" situation, so they tend to produce less player paranoia as well.

Kaww
2011-01-18, 04:32 AM
I am curious what, if any, other feats or items that improve bullrush besides Improved Bullrush.


Feats that I could find: Shock Trooper, Raging Bull Rush.

I'm lazy, but I think there are couple of items in MIC.

LansXero
2011-01-18, 06:17 AM
For example, right now I have several possible adventures outlined for next session. A swarm of giant caterpillars are devouring local crops, necromancers have holed up in an abandoned crypt, a group of cultists are ambushing travelers and there is a rare plant that is known to grow in the southern swamps that is invaluable to alchemists. However, I'm not really sure how the players should learn about these things. I've considered having a farmer in the inn sobbing into a mug of ale, and an eager alchemist looking for adventurers to retrieve the plant, but aside from that... Drawing blanks.

Tie them all up, perhaps? That way, whichever plot they follow will lead to the same conclussion:

The necromancers bread and released the catterpillars to tie down guards and resources so they could easily take over the crypt; their cultists/minion/followers (robed bandits not always have to be fully alive) are assaulting caravans for the same reason. The crypt was chosen both because its unhallowed ground for the rebirth of a big bad thing and because of local access to the rare plant, which is a key component in the rebirthing the thing ritual. This way you have a stronger plot which will have, as outlined above, several probable impacts in how the nearby town is living.

As for how to include the players on it, drop them right in the middle of things: As they are getting to town, they are ambushed by these bandits. Just a hit and run, if things go poorly for the bandits they run away (after all, its just a diversion tactic). If they give chase, they see the catterpillars noming up a nearby farm's crop. Or if they get lost they chance upon some of this rare, necrotic, zombifying herb and how have to research the old crypt where texts on how to find a cure may be hidden. Essentially, just hit them in the nose with clues, and they will surely follow.

Earthwalker
2011-01-18, 07:31 AM
Okay, here is the objective they are currently working towards. [SNIP]

I would suggest the next time they come out of the rope trick and have another fight. Have one non-combatant in wizardly robes present. They can either kill him or he will surrender when they beat the fight (if they do). At this stage they find out either through his notes or from himself that the leader of the caslte is working on making the god machine portable.
It will take about 2 days to complete but things do seem to go quicker if the castle isnt under attack. So when they rope trick they are losing time in getting to the god machine.

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 08:58 AM
Have her play a game where Builds are better tied to RP requirements (Burning Wheel) or a game without Build choices at all (Bliss Stage). Certainly don't have her keep coming to a game that she hates playing.

If you don't want to run such a game, encourage her to set one up and offer to play in it. Or see if someone else will.

To paraphrase a blog I'm too lazy to find & link: she wants to play Poker while the rest of you are having fun playing Bridge. Instead of sitting in at a game of Bridge and not having any fun, she should find a game of Poker.

Unfortunately it's a combination of a friend group and only having one D&D group around. I really think she wants to play free-form more than D&D, but I don't have the patience to run that, and we don't really have time to run a different game. Basically, we're the only gaming group around, I can't exclude her without creating a lot of drama, and everyone else wants to play 3.5.

Swordguy
2011-01-18, 09:51 AM
Unfortunately it's a combination of a friend group and only having one D&D group around. I really think she wants to play free-form more than D&D, but I don't have the patience to run that, and we don't really have time to run a different game. Basically, we're the only gaming group around, I can't exclude her without creating a lot of drama, and everyone else wants to play 3.5.

That's a depressingly common scenario: only time for one game, and it's always D&D because it's the only thing everyone can agree on, even it it's nobody's favorite.

It's won't help too much because you're already playing, but when I'm faced with this sort of situation (different levels and acceptance of op-fu in the gaming group), I end up going with pregenerated characters. Each person tells the DM what they want to play, and turns in a backstory to justify build choices. From that, the DM builds each person's PC, balancing them himself, or telling them to pick something else if they're asking to play a Dungeoncrasher or Pun-pun or something.

It's a crapton of extra work, but it ends up largely solving the problem for the majority of games (until people start getting enough levels to put together wildly differently-powered builds). Each person gets to play what they wanted, and the power level is balanced across the group. It works even better if you limit level-up choices to what the characters have actually done in the last level, but that's something that can torque a lot of D&D players off.

The trick is to be up-front about why you're doing it - so nobody feels underpowered, and everybody deserves an equal opportunity to be useful regardless of how long they've been playing and how much of the CharOp boards they've read - when you pitch it to the players.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-18, 10:06 AM
Unfortunately it's a combination of a friend group and only having one D&D group around. I really think she wants to play free-form more than D&D, but I don't have the patience to run that, and we don't really have time to run a different game. Basically, we're the only gaming group around, I can't exclude her without creating a lot of drama, and everyone else wants to play 3.5.
I trust you've looked around for other groups? It's never too early to start expanding your Circle of Gamers - checking in with local game stores and The Internet (http://www.google.com/search?q=rpg+game+finder&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7ADFA_en) to find more people who game. It works a lot better if several of you "meet up" with the new group first so that nobody feels alone or overwhelmed.

Hell, it's how I've found some of my best games. Of course, I'm in Chicago - a large city - so I don't know how many people are in your area. Still, a look around can't hurt if you haven't tried it yet :smallsmile:

EDIT: Also, have y'all tried other gaming systems? Many can be had quite cheaply and - IMHO - playing multiple systems really opens your eyes to different ways of play; ways that may be more fun than your current set-up.

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 10:07 AM
I trust you've looked around for other groups? It's never too early to start expanding your Circle of Gamers - checking in with local game stores and The Internet (http://www.google.com/search?q=rpg+game+finder&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7ADFA_en) to find more people who game. It works a lot better if several of you "meet up" with the new group first so that nobody feels alone or overwhelmed.

Hell, it's how I've found some of my best games. Of course, I'm in Chicago - a large city - so I don't know how many people are in your area. Still, a look around can't hurt if you haven't tried it yet :smallsmile:

I'm on a rural college campus where most students don't own cars. There is no such thing as a local gaming store, or really a local anything other than walmart.

Edit: Anyways, I don't think "changing groups" is the answer really. We're in a situation where an existing group decides to play D&D because it's something people really enjoy, not a situation where people decide to play D&D and then get together a group. Honestly I even think the one complainer enjoys it...it's more that she's getting on my and a few other people's nerves because she keeps trying to turn it into a different kind of game than the rest of us want to play.

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 10:13 AM
WarKitty, why not run the occasional different system one-shot as a break from DnD? I mean, unless you have a group who rabidly hates other systems, they'll probably be okay with the occasional splash of cthulhu or wolf or whatever. Your player will get to try out systems she might like--and maybe even build up the experience to run them--and your other players will either only have to deal with short interruptions in their gaming schedule, or they'll find out they like the change in pace.

I've had some luck with this approach before, but if you do it, do it tactfully. Try to hook your players on the idea of the one-shot, and don't start them out with anything too strange. I tried it with one of my groups, and had a player flat out refuse to try anything that wasn't medieval fantasy. In a generic Greyhawk setting. So yeah. :smallyuk:

Eventually I found FFD6, and he took to that like outrageous hair to a hero. :smallamused:

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 10:18 AM
WarKitty, why not run the occasional different system one-shot as a break from DnD? I mean, unless you have a group who rabidly hates other systems, they'll probably be okay with the occasional splash of cthulhu or wolf or whatever. Your player will get to try out systems she might like--and maybe even build up the experience to run them--and your other players will either only have to deal with short interruptions in their gaming schedule, or they'll find out they like the change in pace.

I've had some luck with this approach before, but if you do it, do it tactfully. Try to hook your players on the idea of the one-shot, and don't start them out with anything too strange. I tried it with one of my groups, and had a player flat out refuse to try anything that wasn't medieval fantasy. In a generic Greyhawk setting. So yeah. :smallyuk:

Eventually I found FFD6, and he took to that like outrageous hair to a hero. :smallamused:

I'd need to find more time. We've got 2 long-term games going, and people don't like taking breaks from them.

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 10:21 AM
Oh. Just read your latest post. I can see where the problem is now. That looks like more of a player/group mismatch to me, and the scarcity of other groups is part of the problem. Maybe recommend her to GitP? There's plenty of gaming diversity here. Heck, if fluffier RP-centric gaming is more what she's looking for, I could run something that does that.

I'm *not* proposing that she be kicked out of your group and onto the interwebs, but if she has at least one game that's sorta geared towards what she's looking for, the still-fun-but-not-exactly-it DnD might bother her a lot less.

Edit: Alternately, you could just ask her to make an optimized build and tell her that the stuff she wants as fluff can just be fluffed in. That way she has a solid mechanical skeleton and a character she wants to play. You might have to double-check this with other players so that they don't think she's running the most masterful exploit con ever on the DM, but if they've seen her character's performance over the last couple of sessions, they should be okay with this.

2nd edit: Alternately alternately, run Dread. The one with demons, not the one with Jenga. It's perfect for one-shots, easy to whip up games from, makes every character a badass, and nobody has to worry about build.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-18, 10:30 AM
Honestly I even think the one complainer enjoys it...it's more that she's getting on my and a few other people's nerves because she keeps trying to turn it into a different kind of game than the rest of us want to play.
Yes, this is why you should try to deal with the situation.

This gamer is currently your friend. But she doesn't want to play the kind of game y'all like playing. So she tries to change the game into something y'all don't like. This is disruptive. She is becoming The Problem Player.

Nobody likes The Problem Player and the longer this goes on the worse it will become. Resentment will grow as she keeps disrupting your fun and y'all keep trying to get her to play a game she's uninterested in. This is a poisonous path.

Follow Swordguy's approach for a one-shot, if you can. Just take a break from one of the long-term games for a week and give it a shot. If she likes that, then maybe you can make it work.

Also: If you're on a college campus of any size, there is a good chance that there is at least one other gamer out there. If they're running the sort of game your friend enjoys it would be kinder to her to let her drop from one of the games she's disrupting and go play something she really enjoys. You can still hang out with her when you're not gaming.

Sir_Chivalry
2011-01-18, 10:34 AM
I got a problem as a GM. Kind of not one really, but you can judge.

My group never does anything really adventurous when it comes to running games. I always have to DM, no one else can. When other players have DMed, they've had interesting games, but they just quit because it's "too much work", and they claim "you make it look easy" or "you're better at this". That's all nice and stuff for my ego, but it effectively means I never get to play as a player. Only as a DM. I need to manage the game instead of focusing on and creating a single character.

Does anyone have any advice for how to assist newbie DMs with lightening the workload and keeping with it?

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 10:36 AM
I got a problem as a GM. Kind of not one really, but you can judge.

My group never does anything really adventurous when it comes to running games. I always have to DM, no one else can. When other players have DMed, they've had interesting games, but they just quit because it's "too much work", and they claim "you make it look easy" or "you're better at this". That's all nice and stuff for my ego, but it effectively means I never get to play as a player. Only as a DM. I need to manage the game instead of focusing on and creating a single character.

Does anyone have any advice for how to assist newbie DMs with lightening the workload and keeping with it?

Find a good mod to run, for starters. There's plenty of free online modules. Aim for level 3 or so, there's not so much going on then. That way the DM has the minimal workload.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-18, 10:37 AM
Does anyone have any advice for how to assist newbie DMs with lightening the workload and keeping with it?
Modules.

Depending on your system, you may be able to purchase pre-made adventures. Buy one, give it to a Player and tell him to read it through. If you really want to help him, read it with him and help him prep - and assure him that you will keep your OOC knowledge separate from your IC knowledge.

EDIT: Boo ninjas!

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 11:17 AM
@Sir_Chivalry: What system are you running? If it's 3.5 I might be able to dig up a little kill-the-goblins thing I ran a while back. It was a pretty simple module, with the enemies statted out and detailed descriptions of how they would react to different actions on the PC's part.

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 11:21 AM
I got a problem as a GM. Kind of not one really, but you can judge.

My group never does anything really adventurous when it comes to running games. I always have to DM, no one else can. When other players have DMed, they've had interesting games, but they just quit because it's "too much work", and they claim "you make it look easy" or "you're better at this". That's all nice and stuff for my ego, but it effectively means I never get to play as a player. Only as a DM. I need to manage the game instead of focusing on and creating a single character.

Does anyone have any advice for how to assist newbie DMs with lightening the workload and keeping with it?

I'm going to one-up the 'good module' solution and suggest finding a new system. If DnD is what you like, then getting a module is really the right way to go, but if you haven't tried out other systems, you might not know yet that DnD is one of the harder systems to learn and run. It rates under GURPS, Exalted, Anima, BESM, and M&M for complicatedness, but it's much harder than a lot of the other stuff out there. I started GMing with DnD, and it was a nightmarish headache trying to keep track of everything. I ended up doing what most DMs I know do: winging it.

I've since run Yuuyake Koyake, Delta Green, and a homebrew system called Kallisti, and all of those were vastly easier. Even Delta Green, which runs off the Call of Cthulhu system, did not give me the same feeling of creeping dread that I used to get when I realized I might have to whip up an appropriate CR encounter on the fly.

There's a whole world of other gaming systems out there, and some of them are much more forgiving on their GMs than DnD.

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 11:25 AM
@ Kuma Da: What system are you running? If it's 3.5 I might be able to dig up a little kill-the-goblins thing I ran a while back. It was a pretty simple module, with the enemies statted out and detailed descriptions of how they would react to different actions on the PC's part.

Do you mean for your player? Honestly, I don't know. I have a pretty extensive library of systems I could run, but I usually like to kibitz a bit with any prospective players to find out what sort of game they'd like to play.

Edit: okay, I realize that's not much of an answer. Here are some systems that I like:

-Pathfinder
-Call of Cthulhu (and its many spin-offs)
-New (and Old) World of Darkness
-Dread
-Yuuyake Koyake
-Dogs in the Vineyard
-Geiger Counter
-Monsters and Other Childish Things

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 11:26 AM
Do you mean for your player? Honestly, I don't know. I have a pretty extensive library of systems I could run, but I usually like to kibitz a bit with any prospective players to find out what sort of game they'd like to play.

Sorry got the person I was talking to wrong.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-18, 11:30 AM
There's a whole world of other gaming systems out there, and some of them are much more forgiving on their GMs than DnD.
Even better, there are systems where cooperative storytelling is assumed.

Bliss Stage, for example, has each "player" control a Pilot (i.e. main character), an Anchor (i.e. a support character for a different Pilot) and one or more NPCs that the other Pilots will regularly interact with. Since the system rewards in-game character development with mechanical strength in combat the Players are incentivized to instigate plots on their own. The world itself is also co-written by everyone and even the major aims for the game are the result of Player input.

I have never found an easier system to DM. Run a game yourself (if you like the genre) and then if any of your players got a kick out of it, encourage them to run the next one. It's a great work-out for everyone's RP and characterization skills :smallsmile:

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 11:33 AM
Sorry got the person I was talking to wrong.

Oh, np. I was a little surprised that my "I could run a game for her" bluff was being called. :smallamused:

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 11:35 AM
Even better, there are systems where cooperative storytelling is assumed.

Bliss Stage, for example, has each "player" control a Pilot (i.e. main character), an Anchor (i.e. a support character for a different Pilot) and one or more NPCs that the other Pilots will regularly interact with. Since the system rewards in-game character development with mechanical strength in combat the Players are incentivized to instigate plots on their own. The world itself is also co-written by everyone and even the major aims for the game are the result of Player input.

I have never found an easier system to DM. Run a game yourself (if you like the genre) and then if any of your players got a kick out of it, encourage them to run the next one. It's a great work-out for everyone's RP and characterization skills :smallsmile:

+1

Oracle, you wouldn't be interested in running a game of Bliss Stage on these here forums, would you? Last one I was in kinda died prematurely, and I would not mind having another go at that system.

MightyTim
2011-01-18, 11:37 AM
I got a problem as a GM. Kind of not one really, but you can judge.

My group never does anything really adventurous when it comes to running games. I always have to DM, no one else can. When other players have DMed, they've had interesting games, but they just quit because it's "too much work", and they claim "you make it look easy" or "you're better at this". That's all nice and stuff for my ego, but it effectively means I never get to play as a player. Only as a DM. I need to manage the game instead of focusing on and creating a single character.

Does anyone have any advice for how to assist newbie DMs with lightening the workload and keeping with it?

There are several different things that "you make it look easy" and "you're better at this" can mean.

1: They don't like keeping track of everyone's hitpoints, items and worrying about the mechanics of combat. I can sympathize with this. IMO DMing combat is hands down the most tedious part of gaming.

If this is the case, at the very least, make sure that the DM doesn't have to worry about the PCs characters. If it's your character, keeping track of everything you have is your responsibility.

2: They aren't very creative and don't like world-building, thinking up of hundreds of minor NPCs, or designing unique encounters.

Sorry to say it, but if it's number 2, then they probably aren't cut out to be a DM. If they're not averse to the ideas, just feeling overwhelmed with it all, modules and campaign settings are going to be your best friends. Let them lean on Ebberon or Forgotten Relms or wherever until they can gradually introduce their own people/places into the mix.

3. All of the above, sort of, maybe, or not really. Have you considered switching to a different system? 4e is significantly easier to DM than 3.5.

All in all, it sounds like you would have to pull someone's leg to get them to DM, and more often than not, that would just result in everyone having a lot less fun. You can't really force someone to want to be a DM, they have to have the eagerness already. So what about some out-of-the-box solutions?

Do some One-shots. A DM's life is significantly easier if they know they're only building one session's worth of a story.

Maybe even try a rotating DM game. Essentially, a series of one-shots just with the same general group of characters.

WarKitty
2011-01-18, 11:39 AM
Oh, np. I was a little surprised that my "I could run a game for her" bluff was being called. :smallamused:

Honestly, I'd probably refer her to the free form section rather than the gaming section.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-18, 11:47 AM
+1

Oracle, you wouldn't be interested in running a game of Bliss Stage on these here forums, would you? Last one I was in kinda died prematurely, and I would not mind having another go at that system.
Eh... I much prefer the live-action form of RP for these sorts of games; plus I have an inherent distrust for PbP gaming :smalltongue:

Still, if you're jonesin', this site (http://nearbygamers.com/search?q=bliss+stage) may help.

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 11:48 AM
Honestly, I'd probably refer her to the free form section rather than the gaming section.

That's sorta why I suggested other systems. It sounds like she still enjoys having a powerful character (or else why would she be complaining about party balance,) but she likes the RP. World of Darkness, for example, caters pretty specifically to that kind of gamer.

I mean, I could be wrong. She could just be looking for straight RP. But then the whole nature of the tabletop game would probably chafe at her. If the kind of thing she complains about is that there are stats at all, then freeform rp is probably her only hope.

Kuma Da
2011-01-18, 11:50 AM
Eh... I much prefer the live-action form of RP for these sorts of games; plus I have an inherent distrust for PbP gaming :smalltongue:

Still, if you're jonesin', this site (http://nearbygamers.com/search?q=bliss+stage) may help.

Huh. That is a pretty cool site. I already have a local group, though, and I may try to drag them into Bliss Stage anyways. Thanks all the same. :smallsmile:

Tarinaky
2011-01-18, 07:50 PM
Okay, so my problem is that in most circles where I've ever GMed I fear I tend to very quickly pick up a reputation as a bad GM.

I enjoy GMing and I enjoy doing so with new systems or homebrewed material; unfortunately this can be very hit and miss and one or two bad games can very quickly turn you into a bad GM.

In truth it doesn't help that whenever I run a game it's never, well... quite normal. When I try to run a genre it very frequently ends up as anything but (last time I tried to run a Fantasy with True20 and it very quickly turned into a bizarre magical space opera without firearms). This also plays into my obsession with homebrew systems and mechanics.

When I get excited about a system or setting it's very hard to try and infect players with it; both because I lack the ability to communicate the setting and because everyone, well... they remember the 'last' time they played under me.

Pink
2011-01-18, 08:47 PM
Okay, so my problem is that in most circles where I've ever GMed I fear I tend to very quickly pick up a reputation as a bad GM.

I enjoy GMing and I enjoy doing so with new systems or homebrewed material; unfortunately this can be very hit and miss and one or two bad games can very quickly turn you into a bad GM.

In truth it doesn't help that whenever I run a game it's never, well... quite normal. When I try to run a genre it very frequently ends up as anything but (last time I tried to run a Fantasy with True20 and it very quickly turned into a bizarre magical space opera without firearms). This also plays into my obsession with homebrew systems and mechanics.

When I get excited about a system or setting it's very hard to try and infect players with it; both because I lack the ability to communicate the setting and because everyone, well... they remember the 'last' time they played under me.

Hmmm, this is an interesting problem, and after a particular campaign I ran flopped, I can understand where it comes from.

One of the important things about a long running campaign is that player's need to be as excited about it as you are. If you can't 'infect' them, and try to start in anyway when they're not completely sure about it, you might as well not start.

It's best, especially if you're still in that spot of being a new GM and not entirely sure what players might like, to sit down with the players before the campaign is even started up and ask them what they'd like to see in a campaign. Have a dialogue, tossing themes genres and ideas back and forth before you start planning and writing a game. This gives you a chance to mention the interesting settings you want to run and gauge the interest the players have.

ninja_penguin
2011-01-18, 08:51 PM
I can understand new system wariness, regardless. some people don't care to learn a ton of systems. One guy in my RL group is basically set with 4e DnD for his roleplaying needs and while he doesn't refuse to learn new systems, her certainly isn't asking about trying out any others.

I also have a tendency to run one-shots of a new system just to see how it all works out, and I've found that our group has preferred to have more coherent events together, so they're less enthusiastic about other systems when we already have a few ongoing campaign/adventure series.


For you....I guess I'm curious as to how you get so off-genre. I mean sure, I've been fine when players want to hop the rails of the plot I've got, but you're apparently literally hopping the rails and achieving escape velocity.

Tarinaky
2011-01-18, 08:57 PM
I wouldn't describe myself as a 'new' GM. I've been running games on and off for at least 8 years now I think.

A bad GM? Sure. But I should definately know better by now :p

Fortunately the players flaked out of that game with fond memories of them cutting through the zombie infested Drow drydock with their oxygen torches...

Soylent Dave
2011-01-18, 11:33 PM
Okay, so my problem is that in most circles where I've ever GMed I fear I tend to very quickly pick up a reputation as a bad GM.

[snip]

In truth it doesn't help that whenever I run a game it's never, well... quite normal. When I try to run a genre it very frequently ends up as anything but (last time I tried to run a Fantasy with True20 and it very quickly turned into a bizarre magical space opera without firearms). This also plays into my obsession with homebrew systems and mechanics.

When I get excited about a system or setting it's very hard to try and infect players with it


sit down with the players before the campaign is even started up and ask them what they'd like to see in a campaign. Have a dialogue, tossing themes genres and ideas back and forth before you start planning and writing a game.

I'd go with Pink's suggestion here - with the important caveat that you listen to what they want in the campaign, and (provided that's the sort of game you want to run, of course) actually run that sort of game.

If you collaboratively come up with the sort of setting & game your players want to play in, and you want to run - then stick to that setting. It's very easy to wander off into your own flights of fancy as the GM (you control the vertical...), but if you turn the campaign into something utterly different to what your players signed up for, they're just going to be disappointed.

You probably just need to rein in your creativity a bit - or focus it more narrowly, at least.

Grayden (LL)
2011-01-19, 12:42 AM
I bring a confuzulating conundrum before the counsel.

I'm trying to head a D&D game different from any other I've played before (esp. being a brand-new GM,) and I need some advice.

The differences started when determining plot and somehow snuck over to rolling up characters.

The story starts with the introduction of the characters to a Lawful Good orcish tribe. Right? It gets better. The main NPC whose death will eventually (hopefully) unite the characters is half-orc and totally accepted amongst his people.

Morever, one of my players in trying to adamantly build an high elf fighter, magic-user (don't worry) fell so far from clishe doing so it was ridiculous.
He ended up with a misguided, truthful, (obsessive: numbers), sadistic, professional torturer, who wants to be an assassin, captured a man (after being refused a job (and laughed at)) to find the target, only to find the target was the guy he captured, was a nobleman, was setting up the/his Chief Assassin.

(Don't worry. He broke out of jail with said half-orc.)

The other players character has yet to be determined but so far used to hang with a bunch of other (complete idiots)/halfling thugs for some reason and after leaving home was attacked and barely made it to a small village. *Hint*

From there they're supposed to kill a deranged man who wants to use his influence and, literally, striking good looks, (on males or females) to end all life.

My question is, why? Why do they care? What happens to Ryuq? Why is he, or is he connected to the man? What should a Nearly New DM holding a 1st edition AD&D game that spans three planets within easy plane shifting distance and 1st through 20th level do or not do?

Can you see the gaps?
Any help would be appreciated.

Tarinaky
2011-01-19, 01:14 AM
Hmm. Quick query for advice:

I've recently started a game on here and as I understand from the rules swearing isn't allowed. I was wondering what advice people could offer on fictitious swear words or other ways around that limitation.

Pink
2011-01-19, 01:27 AM
Grayden, sorry but you're a little hard to follow. I'm not exactly sure what parts are character background and what parts are game play. Clarity on where things stand at the present would be best please, so sorry if some of my answers have misinterpreted things a bit.

My first suggestion, for a 1-20 game, is don't plan a 1-20 arc. I don't think even I could imagine a plot that fits together completely for the entirety of a 1-20 campaign.

Now I'm not saying don't run a 1-20 game, or don't use the same npcs and characters throughout a 1-20 game. I'm saying the main goals and motivations should change and progress through the game.

At early levels (1-5) maybe try doing some smaller quests of a simpler approach, to let the players get a lay of the land. This is a good period to use money, even smaller amounts, and loot as great motivators. Adventurer player characters want to get equiped. Quests involving dealing with an infestation of goblins/kobolds, strange migration patterns of dangerous beasts, disappearing children in the woods, delivering an important package through bandit infested woods, or working as bodyguards, while cliche, as a good way to all players to stretch their legs and get the hang of how to interact with the world and hopefully gives them opportunity to develop larger goals. This is a good time to introduce NPCs and friendships that you can come back too later but may not need to use for a while. It also lets the characters establish a rep for themselves.

The next levels (6-10) should have things getting more serious. Whereas before things might've been a series of one-shots and what not, now you can establish a larger plot. Enemies at this point are smarter, have more resources and should last long enough to start to develop the PCs hatred for them. Double crosses, mysteries, PLOT! Here's where things thicken and start to get more interesting. Player motivations can now be lands or people they care for, or their own moral compass for good, or thirst for power. An army massing to the east lead by a demonic general, cults spreading across the land that must be investigated to find out that their leader lies in the capital city, a succession battle for the throne with the PCs caught in the middle, or strange artifacts of unknown power and a collector using ruthless methods to obtain them. Along the pathways you can lay down clues to a bigger threat, something that caused the current turmoil, or NPCs that the players previously know acting oddly. At the end, the PCs face down the leader of the plot, and
-With his dying breath, the enemy says, "You may have defeated me, but you will not defeat my master..."
-Just as you thought the artifact was safe, a sudden figure pops into the room, grabs it, says "Thanks." and disappears as suddenly as he arrived
-Etc Etc.

Okay, now things are go for the true BBEG and epic plot. 10-20 (I know it's a big range but this is a huge post as it is).
Your characters are now the movers and shakers of the land, and with that comes a responsibility, if, to nothing else, keep this land in existence so you can flaunt that power of yours. The BBEG should be introduced or alluded to somehow, and now the game becomes about tracking him down and stopping him. This should lead to quests and such to find out where he is, and for items that are potent enough to stop him. The world opens up to the players and they can feel the pressure riding on them. And then, just as they reach his hiding spot, despite the pain and their wounds they've confronted him and wounded him, with a smirk that tries to hide his pain he steps back and utters an arcane word and a teleportation circle appears beneath him, taking him away just as the players start to here the tower they stand in begin to crumble, some magic self destruct activating. From a distance they can see, uncloaked from a massive invisibility spell, a huge object like an invested pyramid floating in the sky, their nemesis laughing as one of his minion clerics heals him. The fight isn't over and now the scale has escalated. Now it's not just a battle through the world, it's a battle through the multiverse, deals are made with outsiders to pass through their lands, strang creatures are met, and the final battlefield, heroes armed with weapon bequeathed unto them by the gods themselves, stand on the plain of creation, where all was made and all will one day be unmade, to stop a made man from destroying everything. With the cheers of every man, woman, and child who watch the fight, the enormity of them projected onto the nightscape of so many different worlds, whose very lives depend on this fight, the strike down the enemy, and with their victory and the cheers of all the many mortals, they ascend into godhood, heroes.

...K..I kinda got carried away by that last bit...and I may have started channelling Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann....I completely forget if I have any other points (I hate when I'm writing a big post and completely forget if I was gonna say something else originally). Let me know if that helps or is way off topic, and if you are looking for something else, try to ask a bit more specifically please.

Pink
2011-01-19, 01:30 AM
Hmm. Quick query for advice:

I've recently started a game on here and as I understand from the rules swearing isn't allowed. I was wondering what advice people could offer on fictitious swear words or other ways around that limitation.

I recall a thread in the mod forum that had a similar topic along these lines. That one got locked. I like this thread and don't want to see if locked. Discussing ways around limitation is also 'gainst rules I think.

Basic answer: Don't swear on the boards. If RPing, make it something humorously outrageous. By Vecna's Severed Testies!

Grayden (LL)
2011-01-19, 08:24 PM
Dear Pink,

That advice was amazing. Thank you. It seems you got to not only the very heart of my villian but also to the very heart of my grandiose quest.

You sound like me. We should keep in touch.

(Have you thought of writing a book?)

I'm sorry if my post was confusing. I will try to clarify. The game hasn't started yet. The orcish tribe and all else save anything about the main villian is backstory. I wasn't worried about them going after the main plot, at least not initially. They each have no home, but they have a tribe. This at this point is their only refuge and for now they will be stuck running errands and fighting the lizardmen that seem to oppressing the tribe more and more. Both insulted their parents through certain things, so...

Do you mind if I use your advice? (wholly and completely?)(sort of)

And if you have any more advice, please, feel free to post long.

Hold your ideas close until you get to a computer and let your fingers fly! That's what I do!

Thanks

Pink
2011-01-20, 02:20 AM
Dear Pink,
*snip*
Thanks

You're very welcome. Thank you very much for the compliments.
I'm glad to answer any correspondence to the best of my ability, and while I have given some though to book writing, it's nothing I've seriously considered, as I'm better at doing plot outlines than coming up with original stuff, not to mention the actions and reactions of heroes (That's what players are for :P).

Feel free to use any and all advice, like I said, I like the idea of this thread as a place for GMs to bounce stuff off each other like that a bit. I've always found, especially with GMing when your own desires for the plot and story may get carried away from the wants and desires of players, a second opinion is always a good source of feedback. So I'll probably be sticking around here and writing my long posts as I can for the as long as this thread survives.

Jay R
2011-01-20, 06:47 PM
I got a problem as a GM. Kind of not one really, but you can judge.

My group never does anything really adventurous when it comes to running games. I always have to DM, no one else can. When other players have DMed, they've had interesting games, but they just quit because it's "too much work", and they claim "you make it look easy" or "you're better at this". That's all nice and stuff for my ego, but it effectively means I never get to play as a player. Only as a DM. I need to manage the game instead of focusing on and creating a single character.

Does anyone have any advice for how to assist newbie DMs with lightening the workload and keeping with it?

You're trying to solve the wrong problem.

The actual problem is that everybody, including you, prefers to play rather than to DM. Everybody except you knows that they can simply opt out of DMing.

The problem is you.

If you are willing to be the only DM, then you will be.

They can learn to DM. But they have no incentive to do so.

The problem may be unsolvable, but if it is solvable, the solution must start with you deciding you won't be the fallback DM.

First, decide if you are willing to be the DM in perpetuity. If you are, then quit trying to change it, because nothing will.

If you aren't willing to do it forever, quit trying to convince yourself that's not what you're doing, and decide that forever is now. Tell them you aren't running the next five sessions. And STICK TO IT. If the group falls apart (which might happen), it fell apart because nobody except you was willing to be the DM, and you'd rather find this out now than spend months trying to help them do something they aren't trying to do.

But the brute fact you must accept and respond to is this. If you are willing to be the only DM, then you will be.

ninja_penguin
2011-01-20, 07:08 PM
If you are willing to be the only DM, then you will be.

They can learn to DM. But they have no incentive to do so.

The problem may be unsolvable, but if it is solvable, the solution must start with you deciding you won't be the fallback DM.

First, decide if you are willing to be the DM in perpetuity. If you are, then quit trying to change it, because nothing will.

This is quite true. The easiest way to fix this is to hope somebody else finds a system they like, and then don't offer to run it.

Also, become an utter sadist with your encounter design. Not TPK levels, but create encounters that leave you cackling with glee behind your screen.

Knaight
2011-01-20, 10:13 PM
If you aren't willing to do it forever, quit trying to convince yourself that's not what you're doing, and decide that forever is now. Tell them you aren't running the next five sessions. And STICK TO IT. If the group falls apart (which might happen), it fell apart because nobody except you was willing to be the DM, and you'd rather find this out now than spend months trying to help them do something they aren't trying to do.

That said, if absolutely nobody wants to GM, see if you can add one more person to the group who does. There are people who prefer the role, and it tends to work better to have them in it.

Tarinaky
2011-01-21, 03:37 AM
Also, become an utter sadist with your encounter design. Not TPK levels, but create encounters that leave you cackling with glee behind your screen.

I'm confused, isn't that part of the fun of GMing in the first place?

Kaww
2011-01-21, 04:51 AM
I'm confused, isn't that part of the fun of GMing in the first place?

Of course it is. The thing is to make your players think you accidentally messed it up.

Now Sir_Chivalry you have two solutions: You ether learn to love this noble vocation or you don't do it. You shouldn't do things that do not offer satisfaction to you in exchange for your effort. Also you may institute rules like:

- You pay for my cab fair
- I don't buy the food
- I don't clean up
...

This way if you don't have emotional satisfaction you are not losing anything ether, besides time. If you enjoy the company of the people in your group this loss is not a big one.

true_shinken
2011-01-21, 05:34 PM
I'm confused, isn't that part of the fun of GMing in the first place?
Of course it is.
Last night I had my players locked between an adult white dragon with 10 levels in assassin and the tarrasque.
They are level 11. :smallamused:

Grayden (LL)
2011-01-23, 12:55 AM
Anyone have any good shockers for first time D&D players that already have a lot of out-of-game information? (OOTS mainly)

That and good first encounters. Their official first for their first ever game has become a juvenile white dragon come down from the western mountains in the middle of a snow storm that found the village they were stuck in.

(The idiot tried to hide himself in fog. Heh. Haha. Because I believe even NPC's and monsters should be humorous endeavors on occasion, if only for myself.)

Yora
2011-01-23, 08:03 AM
There is really only one way to scare players with monsters: Set them up against something they don't know. Either use creatures of which they have no idea what to expect regarding attacks and defenses, or a creature which they expect to know, but turns out to behave differently than it should.
In either case, the important part is, that they don't know which of the actions they can take will help defeat the creature, are completely ineffective, or might even make it stronger.
If you already know how you kill it and how you protect yourself against its abilities, it all comes down to rolling dice and hoping you roll reasonably well. But nothing creates as much tension than not knowing what you do is helpful or makes things worse.

Traveler
2011-01-23, 09:43 AM
Building off of what Yora said, when it is appropriate change something about a monster they think they know well such as hit dice, class levels, templates, etc. Just last night I added the feral template to a standard goblin and my seasoned players were completly thrown for a loop :smallbiggrin:. Now I wouldn't advise doing this to everything, but changing what the players think they know every now and again will help them learn not to always go by books stats.

hotel_papa
2011-01-23, 10:18 AM
I find that a lot of in-game build-up can lead to some delicious nervousness and tension around the table. I was building up to The Blood of Vol's "Project Leviathan" in my campaign for a while. It wasn't the end-game of the plot, but they were uncomfortable when that Tarn Linnorm came out of Lake Brey and sprayed them once before heading north to destroy Korth.

Then they killed it, like they do everything else. But they still were uncomfortable. Truly, if they ever took time to think about their win/loss record, they've only ever run away from one fight, and that was a Chamber-sent Greater Invisible Great Wyrm Red, for Gygax's sake. But it's the fear that makes them good. They work together like a terror-oiled machine and pull out all of the stops.

HP
P.S. Cackling evilly helps.

Pink
2011-01-23, 11:58 AM
Anyone have any good shockers for first time D&D players that already have a lot of out-of-game information? (OOTS mainly)

That and good first encounters. Their official first for their first ever game has become a juvenile white dragon come down from the western mountains in the middle of a snow storm that found the village they were stuck in.

(The idiot tried to hide himself in fog. Heh. Haha. Because I believe even NPC's and monsters should be humorous endeavors on occasion, if only for myself.)

There's been alot of good suggestions here. Something they don't know, or something with an interesting template works fine. For that matter, even just changing the description of something can freak people out.

Everyone knows that a stirge is a giant mosquito and such, and standard low level fair. But, Instead of describing it as a stirge, describe it as a cross between a dragonfly, a centipede, and an eldritch being, and they'll get worried when it flies towards them and tentacles tipped with razor sharp fangs plunge into their flesh.

For that matter, if it's just something unexpected, it can weird players out too. A goblin Barb 3 is a fair challenge, but because of size and built in reduced strength it's not a terror. After players hit it a couple times, and it still stays standing, and it delivers a couple fair blows against them, they might begin to worry they're up against something they can't beat (or a barghest if they're really knowledgable). Use it's feats to get Endurance and Diehard and it'll look like the thing just cannot die.

WarKitty
2011-01-23, 12:33 PM
Refluffing is also your friend. That random thing that looks like a tree? Is actually a roper. The goblin is now some sort of grinning demented thing that looks like a human child. The stats haven't been altered, but they don't know that...

nedz
2011-01-23, 02:06 PM
A fun little encounter for you.

Party travelling along a road see a small humped back bridge ahead. On the Bridge, blocking the way, is a warty green humanoid. As they get close it shouts "I'm a TROLL, and I want my TOLL".
Actually its just a snarky goblin, which will run away should they attack.

Savannah
2011-01-23, 02:22 PM
In my experience, you don't necessarily need special "shockers" for new players, even if they are aware of how the game can run. Knowing about and actually fighting the "classic" monsters are different things, and fighting what you already know a little about (and what got you interested in the game) can be quite fun at first. That's not to say you shouldn't throw a surprise or two at them to keep them on their toes, but make sure you don't overdo it or the unusual and shocking will come to be normal for them.

WarKitty
2011-01-23, 02:33 PM
Tucker's kobolds?

Savannah
2011-01-23, 02:36 PM
Tuckers kobolds are supposed to be used against medium-level characters who could easily defeat them if they fought fair. And, personally, I'd save them for experienced players who know that kobolds are a cakewalk, in order to savor their reaction :smallbiggrin:

WarKitty
2011-01-23, 02:48 PM
Still, a bit of tactics can go a long way. You don't have to go all out, just make sure they act intelligently.

Savannah
2011-01-23, 02:57 PM
Granted. Kobolds should always act intelligently. Just save the truly vicious ones for slightly higher level characters :smallwink:

jguy
2011-01-24, 03:52 PM
Took your guys advice and it seems to have kicked my players in gear. A forbiddence has been cast so if they want to rope trick they will have to find an area inside that hasn't been hit with the spell just yet. I modified the spell so they aren't taking 6d6 or 12d6 just entering but allowed the drow and duergar to be attuned to the spell so they can TP if they want.

Left a very obvious message to them from the drow that what they want is being packed up and getting prepared to be taken away so they cannot dilly dally. I think this has solved my 5 minute work day.

They are about to level up so I am not concerned as much about the coming encounters. They were quite shocked when the guy who was the big meat shield with gobs of hit points was nearly killed in an encounter. I think they had gotten a little brazen and this was a good wake up call to them.

Pink
2011-01-24, 05:55 PM
Glad to hear things are working out for you Jguy.

Trekkin
2011-01-24, 07:21 PM
In 22 hours, I GM what is effectively my first ever game (Shadowrun 4e. I GMed it years ago and intervening events have overwritten my memory) and I keep thinking of a hundred ways that the game can go wrong without any conscious decision to pervert it away from its intended function as a mutually fun entertainment. Obviously I'm not going to crush the players for my own amusement or lock them on rails to reduce my workload--and besides, I'm running Food Fight for the first session, so it doesn't really need rails--but I'm curious/stressed concerning those flaws in GMing that are not the result of deliberate choices by the GM. In short, knowing what I must not do, what must I make sure to do to keep everyone amused and intellectually/emotionally involved?

Tarinaky
2011-01-24, 07:42 PM
Dear Trekkin,

Be fast.

Be clear.

Establish eye contact when speaking.

Be witty.

Be fair.

Savannah
2011-01-24, 08:57 PM
Trekkin, lesson #1 of GMing:
You will mess up.
Sometimes your game won't be fun.
That's okay, as long as you learn from your mistakes so that they don't happen again.

There is no way you can predict every problem and stressing out about it won't help (it may even make it worse, as you'll be too stressed to run the game as well as you could). Talk to your players. Talk to your players a lot. Learn what they want and don't want in the game (you can learn a lot of this by observing what they really get into over the course of the game, as well). Let them know that they should tell you after the session if they didn't have fun, so that you can change whatever was making it un-fun. If your players are at all reasonable, they'll understand that you're new at this and they'll understand that it won't always be the very best game ever.

Kuma Da
2011-01-25, 03:29 PM
Trekkin', this is the single best piece of advice I can give to another GM.

Roll with it.

You'll do fine.

Comet
2011-01-25, 03:32 PM
I'm running Food Fight for the first session

Food Fight is awesome. Or at least it was in the first edition Shadowrun (wow, that game was a mess, but still a lot of fun). I bet it's equally fun here, just dive in and have a blast :smallsmile:

Kami2awa
2011-01-25, 07:40 PM
Problem is the castle cannot be emptied so easily, especially in 8 hours. I was thinking of an ambush but then again the point of rope trick is you cannot see the entrance to it, nor find it really. How do I curb this attitude without just imposing harsh penalties and being a jerk?

In eight hours the castle will do everything it can to prevent another invasion. Doors they broke down on the way in will be repaired (or temporarily barricaded). Guard numbers will be increased by calling up off-duty reserves and the guards will be more alert. Traps will have been reloaded and reset. If the occupants work out where they got in, that route will be better guarded than it was before. Basically, after their rest they will have to infiltrate the castle all over again.

Czin
2011-01-25, 08:58 PM
So in my campaign, the Grobsreich (think the Kaiserreich of World War 1) has wiped out the Gnomish race and is waging a genocidal war against all demi-humans (and a more conventional war on other human nations) in which it is holding the upper hand thanks to it's generally Early to Mid 20th century level tech. One of my Co-DMs has suggested that it should be revealed to the players that the Grobsreich has managed to wipe out the High Elves, while another is adamant that the dwarves should be the ones to go, the third wants a greater amount of focus on the mind flayers, and the fourth thinks that the main focus of the war should be man vs man. I personally want to advance the Forces of the Warp (Warhammer Chaos) plotline but have not yet stated my opinion, so none of the five DMs (though I am the highest ranking in the rather convulted heirarchy that was set up by the last Ace of Spades Dungeon Master before he was killed in a car accident) including me agree on which plot line to use.

I am asking you all to decide which plot line sounds best. If needed, I'll provide more details.

Grayden (LL)
2011-01-25, 11:19 PM
@ Savannah

Thank you for the info. I been meaning to say that for a while also for an earlier post on posting tips. Thanks. Sorry I didn't get around to it.

king.com
2011-01-26, 03:25 AM
So in my campaign, the Grobsreich (think the Kaiserreich of World War 1) has wiped out the Gnomish race and is waging a genocidal war against all demi-humans (and a more conventional war on other human nations) in which it is holding the upper hand thanks to it's generally Early to Mid 20th century level tech. One of my Co-DMs has suggested that it should be revealed to the players that the Grobsreich has managed to wipe out the High Elves, while another is adamant that the dwarves should be the ones to go, the third wants a greater amount of focus on the mind flayers, and the fourth thinks that the main focus of the war should be man vs man. I personally want to advance the Forces of the Warp (Warhammer Chaos) plotline but have not yet stated my opinion, so none of the five DMs (though I am the highest ranking in the rather convulted heirarchy that was set up by the last Ace of Spades Dungeon Master before he was killed in a car accident) including me agree on which plot line to use.

I am asking you all to decide which plot line sounds best. If needed, I'll provide more details.

Coming from someone who is completely and utterly biased. The more Chaos, the better :smallbiggrin:

Volos
2011-01-26, 03:49 AM
Refluffing is also your friend. That random thing that looks like a tree? Is actually a roper. The goblin is now some sort of grinning demented thing that looks like a human child. The stats haven't been altered, but they don't know that...

Nice.

An examples of my own refluffs... Mimics are old Doppelgangers who produce offspring when they eat enough adventurers (more Doppelgangers). They can also increase to amazing sizes with enough time and food. The most terrifying adventure or side adventure I have given my players was a Mimic in the form of a sailing ship with a large litter of Doppelganger children. The ship looked like the players' ship and so did the crew. I practiced my ability to mimic my players so that when it came time to roleplay this out, I was able to repeat their actions in real time as they tried speaking to the Doppelganger children. Eventually my players got paranoid enough to start killing everything in sight. They had to jump on board to attack... and that just gave them another whole slew of problems. Mimics are so sticky! :smallbiggrin:

Czin
2011-01-26, 12:35 PM
Coming from someone who is completely and utterly biased. The more Chaos, the better :smallbiggrin:

Where should the Chaos invasion start? The outer planes (the warp invaded the outer planes a hundred years before the start of the campaign, the Daemons of chaos ripped through the Demons of the Abyss, the Yugoloths of hades, and the Devils of hell and mauled all sides in the blood war so badly that a truce had to be called for three decades before their numbers could recover, the upper planes weren't spared either)? The Inner planes? The planes of shadow (the cosmology of the setting has every plane possessing a coexistant ethereal plane, plane of shadow, plane of light, and a plane of dreams, the plane of dreams is closely tied to the warp) light, ethereal, or dreams? The far realm (seperate from the warp)? The Chaos wastes (North and south poles of Zarvhax, very much like the chaos wastes of warhammer fantasy)? Or some combination of the above?

Curious
2011-01-26, 03:19 PM
Chaos. Chaos is too awesome to be confined by other, more meager plot lines. However, you might just want to use the chaos plot simultaneous to your usage of a secondary plot, to give the universe a more varied and realistic feel.

Kuma Da
2011-01-26, 04:04 PM
Chaos can work in conjunction with the other plotlines, especially if it's the behind-the-scenes big evil. No reason you shouldn't all collaborate with your ideas, especially if you're co-DMs.

Czin
2011-01-26, 04:21 PM
Chaos. Chaos is too awesome to be confined by other, more meager plot lines. However, you might just want to use the chaos plot simultaneous to your usage of a secondary plot, to give the universe a more varied and realistic feel.

I have an idea for a secondary plotline, the Kaiser of the Grobsreich* has had his nation and it's allies** embroiled in a war with the combined forces of the High Elves, the Dwarves, the Tsliphian empire***, the Varskin Tsarate (mainly human), and the Cerecian Consultate (Human, Giant, and Halfling dominated) who are collectively called the Free League; while the various Orks (Warhammer Greenskins) tribes and empires, the Skaven, the Arch-County of Trevalia (Gothic-esque undead land), the Hordes of Chaos and others attack both sides****.

The Party (of 20, since the last DM to hold the Ace of Spades spot was a firm believer in 1 DM per four players, we have five DMs) is currently at a highly contested border where The Grobsreich, the Kravian-Livitan Empire, the Tradislavic Czardom fight against the Cerecian Consultate (their current employers), the Tsliphian Empire, The High Elves, and the Dwarves while the Skaven, the Hordes of Chaos, Arch-killa Megastompa's WAAAGH!!!, and the Arch-County of Trevalia descend upon the area for various reasons, forcing each side to fight a five front battle. The players will partake in a large scale battle for the city Selesville as an elite strike force. This provides a way to develop both the forces of the Warp and the Grobsreich as antagonists.



* The Kaiser is an very powerful homebrew construct with a lot of very potent special attacks and qualities in addition to being an Epic Level Cleric. The fluff for him is that many thousands of years ago, a power-hungry Cleric named Karles von Richthofen built himself an metallic body to grant himself immortality and power, believing that mere lichdom was not enough, and funneled his spirit into his creation once the spirit of an mighty and Evil Elder Earth Elemental Cleric of Ogremoch named Grahlk-zar, and the two entities merged into one and under their guidance the Grobsreich was formed from a bunch of quarreling states into one of the mightiest nations on the planet, even the forces of the Outer Planes think twice about crossing them, as slew Asmodeus, Demogorgon, the Slaad princes, Primus, and Zaphkiel in personal combat, destroying them with the power of the last word after he had much of the Arch-Outsiders assassinated during the turmoil of the last great Daemonic invasion of the Great wheel, and his relation with Ogremoch keeps him safe from the meddlings of the Archomentals. Tzeentch has taken a rather dangerous (for the Kaiser) amount of interest in him, and it is not long before the forces of the Warp march against him.

** Three other nations, one is the Kravarian-Livitan Empire, the Qo'slaron Khanate, and the Tradislavic Czardom, all but the Sultunate are almost entirely human dominated, the Khanate is dominated by the Qa'larax, who are homebrewed Beetlemen.

*** A nation that is comprised of Kobolds, Lizardfolk, Half-dragons, Troglodytes, Yuan-ti, Dracotaurs, True Dragons and other Reptillian and Avian races lead by an elected Monarch who is always a true Dragon, distinct and seperate from the Slann lead Lizardmen.

**** Though there is no alliance between the Orks, Undead, or Chaos or any other unaffiliated faction at the moment.

Comments?

ninja_penguin
2011-01-26, 09:21 PM
One question for anybody who might know: I love to use custom monsters when I'm running D&D 4e. I've used the monster maker here (http://www.asmor.com/programs/monstermaker/index.php) often, but it's getting a little annoying with having to re-do all of the math. It's more of a fancy way for me to put it into a decent stat block. I've also become accustomed to the MM3 and Monster Vault format for stats, is anybody aware of a free monster maker that is in that format?

Anansi
2011-01-27, 01:04 PM
Looking for advice on the next twist in my story. Put behind a spoiler because my players browse the forums here.


3.5 game with some homebrew modifications. The party is as follows:
Level 5 Paladin (PF Variant)
http://pifro.com/pro/view.php?id=6010
Level 2 Spellthief / Level 3 Wizard
http://pifro.com/pro/view.php?id=5703
Level 4 Scout / Level 1 Swordsage
http://pifro.com/pro/view.php?id=5701
Level 5 Fighter (late addition to the group)
http://pifro.com/pro/view.php?id=5896
Level 5 Cleric*

*this is where it gets complicated.

Early on, the players encountered a group of bandits. They killed about half of them, tied up the leader and a crony, and went off to do another quest. When they returned, the leader and crony had escaped.

Some time later, the Fighter and Cleric joined the party. The Cleric was found beaten on the side of the road, her holy symbol stolen. When the party finished up in the starting town, they decided to pursue the bandits in their city to the east.

It's now several weeks later, and the leader wants revenge. I've built him as a Level 3 Rogue / Level 3 Swashbuckler, Daring Outlaw build. His two captains are a Level 6 Cleric and a Level 2 Half-Fey / Level 4 Sorcerer. However, to really give it to the party, the leader hired an assassin.

The Rogue 4 / Assassin 5 is currently masquerading as the party's Cleric. Her mission is to lead them to the bandits, putting them in position to be ambushed. She's also likely going to make a single Death Attack against the Scout/Swordsage, who's been IC rubbing her character the wrong way.

The party does not see this coming. I have the Assassin roll Bluff checks privately with me before every session, and that reflects how much of her guise slips. When the Paladin joined, she began casting Undetectable Alignment first thing in the morning, often volunteering for third watch for exactly this reason. She's maxed her Sleight of Hand and has strapped wands of healing to her wrists to imitate the Cleric's healing abilities; the story about the missing symbol is just a ruse to explain her inability to turn undead.

While on the road to the bandits' city, the "Cleric" called upon two of her fellow clergymen, a pair of dwarf priests. One of them is the bandit leader's right-hand man, the Level 6 Cleric. The other is the Half-Fey Sorcerer, under the effects of Alter Self. They're all traveling together to "confront" the bandits.

Best of all, the entire party has a serious white knight complex going for this Cleric, trying to avenge the attack on her and return the holy symbol that was stolen.

What I'm looking for, fellow Playgrounders, is how to make the encounter challenging but not impossible for my players. The bandits obviously have intelligence from weeks of observing the party through the Assassin and "dwarves." I'm planning a small level of preparedness; anticipating the Wizard's Incendiary Slime + Scorching Ray, and the Scout's ranged attacks. A couple potions of fire resistance, or splashing the party in oil to discourage fire attacks. Maybe some well-placed cover, or a fight in the basement storage room of the bandits' lair under the guise of an infiltration mission.

The three bandits aren't optimized, or especially strong, but they are angry and prepared.

The party is cohesive, and the Wizard is exceptionally knowledgeable about the game.

The entire party will be Level 6 for this encounter, except for the Assassin. The Spellthief/Wizard will be taking his first level of Spellwarp Sniper prior to the conflict.

EDIT: Added links to pifro character sheets.

Yora
2011-01-27, 01:11 PM
So 4 people of 5th level will have to deal with two 6th level NPCs and one 9th level NPC who have a huge tactical advantage over them.
This seems like a very easy victory for the NPCs. Best solution would probably be to simply make the NPCs a lower level. If you need the 9th level for a certain spell, give the character a magic item instead that does the same thing. Items might fall into the hands of PCs, but I don't think it will be one that gives them such a huge advantage it would break the game.

Pink
2011-01-27, 01:28 PM
Ugh, I hate feeling guilty over something I shouldn't feel guilty for. Please bear with me as I have a little rant to clear out my feelings.

Tomorrow a group of mine is going to be doing char creation for a new game. Yesterday, I was asked whether another person (One who I know, so it's not like it's a stranger), could join in.
I just sent a message turning them down.
The group is already at five players, and it's going to be an urban game that will hopefully have a higher roleplaying aspect to it. Five is more than enough if I'm to try and give each player their own time to shine in a roleplaying manner, not to mention the sheer problem inherent when more and more people join a table, of side conversations starting and difficulty finding your own place to speak. I shouldn't feel bad, the group is simply full.
And yet, I know that this other person (We'll call him P), doesn't have his own group yet, and currently doesn't have a chance to play. His work schedule makes it tricky for him as well.
I think this is just a problem with the general area, alot of players, not enough GMs. Starting next week, I'll be running 3 games (admittedly though, one is a one-shot 3-4 week game...maybe...it might go longer.) a week, between a total of 15 different players, not including P and several other Roleplayers in the area I know. Maybe it's because of this that I'm getting a bit stressed about new players. I don't want to be the entire city's GM.

As a side note, I do get a chance to play. The night that's the one-shot is usually the game I play at, but I'm taking over to give our GM a chance to play. The being said, I tend to have more fun GMing than playing, and I could easily be satisfied if I didn't get to play and only GMed, but I'm right at the limit of how much I can manage and the stress is starting to build a bit from it.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-27, 02:58 PM
Nobody said sitting in the big chair with the GM hat was easy Pink. You did what was good for the majority of the group, but you have enough empathy to feel for P. Just give him a head's up if your game opens up or you hear tell of another game that's going to start up.

Anansi
2011-01-27, 03:53 PM
So 4 people of 5th level will have to deal with two 6th level NPCs and one 9th level NPC who have a huge tactical advantage over them.
This seems like a very easy victory for the NPCs. Best solution would probably be to simply make the NPCs a lower level. If you need the 9th level for a certain spell, give the character a magic item instead that does the same thing. Items might fall into the hands of PCs, but I don't think it will be one that gives them such a huge advantage it would break the game.

Four PCs of 6th level will have to deal with three NPCs of 6th level, and one attack by a 9th level PC during Round 1.

Volos
2011-01-27, 03:59 PM
Pink, all of us GM/DM/ST types are burdened with the same curse. Whenever word gets out that we are running a game, every gamer within 50 miles centers in on our location and tries to make their way into our game(s). I've had to turn down lots of people for lots of reasons, but my core group is strong and I always let people know if positions open up. And as a GM/DM/ST it is so difficult to find a game that you can play in as a player. People tend to just think of you as the person who runs the games. A player of mine started a game of his own a while back, one that I enjoy playing in. We both have some of the same players in our games but his players tend to view me as the DM even when we are playing his game. It has led to some akward situations. When he was unable to run his game as schedualed a few weeks back, his players asked me to run it for him without asking him about it first. I, of course, declined. But it disturbed me to think that the gamers and friends around me can only see me in the role of being the GM/DM/ST.

Also... you're running three games at once? I have two games, and one of those is online while the other is in person... and I'm kinda bogged down between the two of them. How do you run three games in person? That's just insane! You must have some sort of superpower.

Grayden (LL)
2011-01-27, 09:38 PM
Hang in there Pink. And Make a break if you have to. If they don't understand, tell them why. I went from having a game with nearly 15 people to now only two. Be thankful you have a reasonable game. Five's my number, and roleplaying is a MUST.

Czin
2011-01-27, 09:47 PM
I myself believe in the ratio of one DM per four players. Since my group had 25 people (including me), my old DM (who used to run the group before his untimely death on April 13th) arranged the group into five DMs whose ranks were based on playing cards.

The highest ranking and overall DM was given the Ace of Spades rank, the ace of spades has the most power behind his deicisons, though he can be vetoed. Next is the King of Hearts DM, who is essentially the second in command, following him is the Queen of Diamonds DM (which has been held by a female for the entire time the post existed), lastly there are two Jacks of Clubs, these have the least influence in what I call the DM deck (my old DM named the system something in Russian I cannot even fathom the pronunciation of.)

Since I have a lot of help, my workload never gets overwhelming...
I'd personally suggest that you look into Co-DMs Pink, I don't know what I would do without them.

WarKitty
2011-01-27, 10:48 PM
So I have an issue that I'm sure other GM's have dealt with - players with wildly varying tastes. Of my 5, I have two that love RP but hate rolling dice and tend to tune out combat. I also have one that loves combat and rolling dice but gets bored and starts doing silly things during RP. My remaining two are fine either way.

Presuming that (as in this case) splitting the rl group or splitting the party isn't a viable option, how does one design a game around this?

true_shinken
2011-01-27, 10:56 PM
Presuming that (as in this case) splitting the rl group or splitting the party isn't a viable option, how does one design a game around this?
Please everyone. Have both RP parts and combat parts in all your sessions.

WarKitty
2011-01-27, 11:07 PM
Please everyone. Have both RP parts and combat parts in all your sessions.

That is what I've been doing. Unfortunately it seems to end up in "a good compromise makes nobody happy" territory. I.e. each party is ending up being bored for a significant part of the session. I'd really like a session where no one spends long chunks of time playing games on their phone. :smallyuk:

Lurkmoar
2011-01-27, 11:53 PM
That is what I've been doing. Unfortunately it seems to end up in "a good compromise makes nobody happy" territory. I.e. each party is ending up being bored for a significant part of the session. I'd really like a session where no one spends long chunks of time playing games on their phone. :smallyuk:

What kind of game would you like to play if you weren't GMing? Also, make some mock texts you can send suggesting that their genitalia need expansion (there's a gentleman's agreement at my groups table that the only electronics in use are for game purposes).

Do the role players not care about combat period?

Perhaps try Exalted? That might interest your dice rollers if they like being totally over the top.

WarKitty
2011-01-28, 12:00 AM
What kind of game would you like to play if you weren't GMing? Also, make some mock texts you can send suggesting that their genitalia need expansion (there's a gentleman's agreement at my groups table that the only electronics in use are for game purposes).

Do the role players not care about combat period?

Perhaps try Exalted? That might interest your dice rollers if they like being totally over the top.

The role players do enjoy combat, but they get too bogged down in the numbers and dice rolling. They're the kind that wants to go "I feint downwards and then aim for his neck as he tries to block with his shield" rather than "I roll to hit for 1d10 damage." Whereas my combat player is the type of "skip the description and just tell me how bloodied it looks."

Personally...well, I'm the lone person that prefers to play casters when I'm not GM'ing. So I enjoy combat, but in the game I'm playing in I don't think I've rolled a die outside of initiative rolls for the last 6 weeks. I tend to like a good mix though.

As a side note: I don't think any of the players that are playing on phones have genitalia that expand.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-28, 12:12 AM
Well... there's always *cough* expansion. Upper body expansion.

WarKitty
2011-01-28, 12:14 AM
Well... there's always *cough* expansion. Upper body expansion.

Honestly, my group would consider comments like that to be horribly offensive and cause for never being allowed to DM again. On either sex.

Volos
2011-01-28, 12:17 AM
That is what I've been doing. Unfortunately it seems to end up in "a good compromise makes nobody happy" territory. I.e. each party is ending up being bored for a significant part of the session. I'd really like a session where no one spends long chunks of time playing games on their phone. :smallyuk:

Have the RP junkies try to do something story worthy in the middle of combat while letting the combat junkies do their thing. Like trying to talk down someone who you just saved from imprisonment. They never saw their captor's face, so they are terrfied but you have a ton and a half of guards trying to break into the room. The combat junkie can get his fix and kill alot of foes while the RP lovers get to expand the story. Keep setting up situations like this, only having a few situations being purely combat without having to ruin the story.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-28, 12:18 AM
Wonder if that means I'm going in for sensitivity training again. Crap, think I see them coming now, better fast.

But in all seriousness, the two role players aren't getting a whole lot of a 'whims of fate' aka dice rolls. You can always subject them to Paranoia if you haven't already. A game where everybody dies laughing OOC is always a winner in my bo-

WarKitty
2011-01-28, 12:34 AM
Have the RP junkies try to do something story worthy in the middle of combat while letting the combat junkies do their thing. Like trying to talk down someone who you just saved from imprisonment. They never saw their captor's face, so they are terrfied but you have a ton and a half of guards trying to break into the room. The combat junkie can get his fix and kill alot of foes while the RP lovers get to expand the story. Keep setting up situations like this, only having a few situations being purely combat without having to ruin the story.

Not bad, thanks!


Wonder if that means I'm going in for sensitivity training again. Crap, think I see them coming now, better fast.

But in all seriousness, the two role players aren't getting a whole lot of a 'whims of fate' aka dice rolls. You can always subject them to Paranoia if you haven't already. A game where everybody dies laughing OOC is always a winner in my bo-

When you have a mixed group with openly genderqueer and homosexual members, a lot of the usual jokes don't really work. And I was actually planning on giving them a one-shot of paranoia.

Yora
2011-01-28, 07:36 AM
Please everyone. Have both RP parts and combat parts in all your sessions.

Why? Lots of groups are happy with playing a tabletop tactical wargame or solving qomplex problems without the use of violence. While a combination of both is probably a good balance for the average group, I don't see any reason why it needs to be done with every specific group.

Earthwalker
2011-01-28, 07:49 AM
That is what I've been doing. Unfortunately it seems to end up in "a good compromise makes nobody happy" territory. I.e. each party is ending up being bored for a significant part of the session. I'd really like a session where no one spends long chunks of time playing games on their phone. :smallyuk:

I can picture alot of closed doors to help keep people happy.
One of the role players stood on one side trying to bluff that everything is ok, (talking to someone offical) on the other side of the door a huge melee is going on as ninjas have attacked the group. Both sides of the door need to do thier jobs, the RP person needs to bluff, the combaters are combatting.

Switch between the twoin rounds. When there is a big whck behind the door the RP is trying to cover it up. Moves into farce but in a good way.

If you can give the payers a clear idea when they can try talking / bluffing / persuading in combat go for it.

Thinking of other ideas, something like an Anhk Morpork bar fight. 20 participants over 50 alliances.

"Wait don't hit me we are after the dwarf remember ?"
"No Mr Dwarf I am sure we were working together".

Earthwalker
2011-01-28, 07:53 AM
Please everyone. Have both RP parts and combat parts in all your sessions.


Why? Lots of groups are happy with playing a tabletop tactical wargame or solving qomplex problems without the use of violence. While a combination of both is probably a good balance for the average group, I don't see any reason why it needs to be done with every specific group.

LOL this made me laugth I may have this wrong but I think True_stinken meant.

Please everyone = Make everyone at the OPs roleplaying table happy.

not

Please everyone = All the people reading these forums please pay attention to what I am saying.

Like I said made me laugth but I like silly word misunderstandings like this.

Jay R
2011-01-28, 10:00 AM
Looking for advice on the next twist in my story. Put behind a spoiler because my players browse the forums here.

Well, you've just improved their chances, by offering them the exact details. You now have no idea whether they know what's coming or not. Which means you can't tell how difficult the encounter will be. My recommendation is that you put in some detail that will trap them if they read the spoiler and are expecting your main plot.

I won't offer you a specific idea, because any player who read your spoiler is now avidly monitoring the thread.

WarKitty
2011-01-28, 10:03 AM
Well, you've just improved their chances, by offering them the exact details. You now have no idea whether they know what's coming or not. Which means you can't tell how difficult the encounter will be. My recommendation is that you put in some detail that will trap them if they read the spoiler and are expecting your main plot.

I won't offer you a specific idea, because any player who read your spoiler is now avidly monitoring the thread.

Honestly, my players would have the decency to not read my stuff on the forums. I figured the spoiler was so if any of them browse this thread they know that it's something they're not supposed to read. If it wasn't in a spoiler, they could read it by accident.

Choco
2011-01-28, 10:28 AM
Anyone have any creative ways to stop players from using RL science in fantasy games?

I personally have done one of the following, depending on my mood and the atmosphere of the game and/or group:

1) Simply rule that nothing happens (example: players are trying to "invent" gunpowder, all they get is a useless black powder). If I am feeling particularly evil, and if this group KNOWS how I feel about them using RL knowledge/science in a fantasy game (especially the melee types with both int and wis as dump stats), I sometimes do this after letting them spend a session or 2 trying to gather together the supplies they would need.

2) Roll on a random effect table. Results vary from nothing happening to it exploding in your face, doing nothing but making a funny smell to actually working as intended (5% chance).

I keep telling them if they want to do this, they need to either seek out or become experts, where expert == wizards, alchemists, etc. If they want to research something like gunpowder, they are more than welcome to use the appropriate skills and take years or even decades of in-game time to do it.

WarKitty
2011-01-28, 10:35 AM
Anyone have any creative ways to stop players from using RL science in fantasy games?

I personally have done one of the following, depending on my mood and the atmosphere of the game and/or group:

1) Simply rule that nothing happens (example: players are trying to "invent" gunpowder, all they get is a useless black powder). If I am feeling particularly evil, and if this group KNOWS how I feel about them using RL knowledge/science in a fantasy game (especially the melee types with both int and wis as dump stats), I sometimes do this after letting them spend a session or 2 trying to gather together the supplies they would need.

2) Roll on a random effect table. Results vary from nothing happening to it exploding in your face, doing nothing but making a funny smell to actually working as intended (5% chance).

I keep telling them if they want to do this, they need to either seek out or become experts, where expert == wizards, alchemists, etc.

Have them make the relevant checks. You want to make gunpowder? Fine, make a craft (alchemy) check to get the proportions right. Oh, you don't have craft (alchemy)? Sorry, the mixture doesn't work.

Anansi
2011-01-28, 11:05 AM
Well, you've just improved their chances, by offering them the exact details. You now have no idea whether they know what's coming or not. Which means you can't tell how difficult the encounter will be. My recommendation is that you put in some detail that will trap them if they read the spoiler and are expecting your main plot.

I won't offer you a specific idea, because any player who read your spoiler is now avidly monitoring the thread.


Honestly, my players would have the decency to not read my stuff on the forums. I figured the spoiler was so if any of them browse this thread they know that it's something they're not supposed to read. If it wasn't in a spoiler, they could read it by accident.

WarKitty's pretty much got it right on. I trust them not to dig through something I've marked as a spoiler. Although if you do have an idea to share, Jay R., I'm interested in hearing it, even in PM if you're more comfortable that way.

Czin
2011-01-28, 11:14 AM
Have them make the relevant checks. You want to make gunpowder? Fine, make a craft (alchemy) check to get the proportions right. Oh, you don't have craft (alchemy)? Sorry, the mixture doesn't work.

Mostly correct but I'd add one clause; Making "black" powder is fairly easy, making "black" powder that is useful for anything other than arson (burning very intensely) not so much. If one is messing with the ingredients that go into black powder however, I'd rule that they could accidentally discover it on a 20 (I use critical successes and failures for skill checks since quite a lot of man's greatest discoveries were accidental, gunpowder included; the chinese were looking for a drug that would grant immortality and cure all sicknesses so essentially they wanted something very good at saving lives, what they got was something very good at ending lives. I pity the poor SoB who had to test out the black powder drug though...) but they'd need to pass multiple alchemy checks to get explosive black powder unless their accidental natural 20 success beat the first check by a LOT.

Then they would have to record and publish the steps they took (make sure that your players physically do the scientific recording of their experiments) for it to make a great difference in the campaign setting. Then there is the fact that at first they probably wouldn't have guns, but unguided rockets (that may or may not be attatched to an arrow or propel a bucket load of arrows). When they finally make their first true man portable fire-arms, they will have a short ranged, woefully inaccurate (penalty to attack or percentile chance of missing), thing with a painfully slow rate of fire that is incredibly tempermental (it's raining? No sorry the ignition charge won't start up. Didn't clean the barrel properly? Your gun's performance would at best drop like a rock, fire before you are ready, or worse; blow up in your face), needs a lot of maintanence, all for a large scare-factor (something that may not be as great in a high fantasy setting as it was in medieval europe) and great stopping power.

And guess what? Well designed full plate armor (contrary to what the PHB states there were huge variety of designs for full plate armor of varying ability, the very finest laughed at bolts, bullets, swords, arrows, spears and the works and the only reliable way to hurt their users was to hit them with siege weaponry, shoot them out from under their horse, heavy bludgeoning weapons like maces, or with your own lance wielding cavalry charge) was more than able to deflect the bullets/rocks that early fire arms could shoot

In fact, early "hand-cannons" as they were called in the late middle-ages were so bad at being ranged weapons that they were always built like clubs with a spike on them so that you could whack someone with it in the very frequent case that it failed to kill the guy you were shooting at and the users were given secondary weapons like swords as well as heavy body armor.

Choco
2011-01-28, 11:31 AM
And guess what? Well designed full plate armor (contrary to what the PHB states there were huge variety of designs for full plate armor of varying ability, the very finest laughed at bolts, bullets, swords, arrows, spears and the works and the only reliable way to hurt their users was to hit them with siege weaponry, shoot them out from under their horse, heavy bludgeoning weapons like maces, or with your own lance wielding cavalry charge) was more than able to deflect the bullets/rocks that early fire arms could shoot

Or get in close and attack exposed areas, like armpits. In general though the only people who could afford armor so good were people you didn't want to kill anyway. Why kill them when you can capture them and ransom them back to their rich, high level noble or even royal family?

Now we are getting into the exact territory I am trying to avoid though. If I allow even one instance of real life science working, I am expected to do so every time. And then an engineer joins the group... I usually rule that physics doesn't work the same in fantasy worlds, cause otherwise this gets really old fast.

Czin
2011-01-28, 11:51 AM
Or get in close and attack exposed areas, like armpits. In general though the only people who could afford armor so good were people you didn't want to kill anyway. Why kill them when you can capture them and ransom them back to their rich, high level noble or even royal family?

Now we are getting into the exact territory I am trying to avoid though. If I allow even one instance of real life science working, I am expected to do so every time. And then an engineer joins the group... I usually rule that physics doesn't work the same in fantasy worlds, cause otherwise this gets really old fast.

You could just allow for more variations of plate armor. You could have Gothic Plate, Equestrian Plate, Maximillian Plate and so on. Maximillian plate (a development of Gothic plate made in the 16th century and typically considered the highest development of full plate armor) would probably provide a very high AC bonus (I'd say at least double the AC that full plate armor in the PHB gives, heck personally I'd redo all the statistics of all the armor in the PHB so that they would no longer reflect the woefully outdated view of medieval armor being largely inefficient and ineffective, scratch that I'd redesign the statistics of every piece of weaponry and armor in every book), some DR, while giving a lower Armor check penalty, arcane spell chance failure, and a much higher maximum dexterity bonus (perhaps not even having an upper limit on dexterity bonuses or having an arcane spell chance failure I have worn a suit of the stuff once, you'd be amazed at just how easy it is to move in it, heck plate armor in general is actually incredibly easy to move around in and is much more comfortable than mail which will give you an ungodly shoulderache rather quickly) and allow it's user to move at their full speed.


If you want, I can advise you on stats for equipment in the PMs to alleviate your workload as a DM.

The Big Dice
2011-01-28, 12:38 PM
Anyone have any creative ways to stop players from using RL science in fantasy games?
The obvious one is to ask where their character heard of this amazing alchemical reaction, and how they "just happen to know" about this fairly arcane stuff without having any skills or background in the field.

In the case of "inventing" gunpowder without going through the tedious process of mixing all kinds of stuff and then setting the result on fire to see what happens, just laugh at them.

Jay R
2011-01-28, 02:43 PM
Anyone have any creative ways to stop players from using RL science in fantasy games?

Merely being in a fantasy game keeps them from using RL science. My background sheet includes the following:

A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

Your character is not an expert, and cannot display expert knowledge. But he or she has traveled a lot, and could easily have picked up a useful fact along the way. I will allow the use of an occasional useful fact, and it might even get you experience points.

[This also includes two hints for the first scenario, but I assumed that nobody could find them before the scenario started, and that nobody would look back at the sheet after character generation.]

Choco
2011-01-28, 03:03 PM
Merely being in a fantasy game keeps them from using RL science. My background sheet includes the following:

A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

Your character is not an expert, and cannot display expert knowledge. But he or she has traveled a lot, and could easily have picked up a useful fact along the way. I will allow the use of an occasional useful fact, and it might even get you experience points.

[This also includes two hints for the first scenario, but I assumed that nobody could find them before the scenario started, and that nobody would look back at the sheet after character generation.]

Dude, thanks for that, I'm gonna have to start doing this now. I already imply this is how things are, but unless it is in writing, notarized, and signed off on by each player and their lawyer, some players just don't seem to get it. Of course, like good players the rest are ever on the lookout for laws to abuse, and ask how things actually do work then. Not everyone likes my answer of "magic".

And while I remember, let's head this problem off before it becomes one: I am soon going to be starting up a cyberpunk game where one person in the group not only knows A LOT more about the various physical and technological sciences than me, but finds it fun using those skills in game. Obviously it's a lot harder to enforce anything like above in a setting where it is assumed things DO work like they do in the real world, and I don't plan on stopping him from doing this, I am just wondering how I can best mitigate the damage. I was thinking or telling him that everything he does then becomes fair game for the enemies. Also, if I don't understand the science behind what he is trying to do and it would require me pausing the game to read up on it to make sure it's true, it will not be allowed (without a skill check anyway). Any other ideas?

Czin
2011-01-28, 03:11 PM
Merely being in a fantasy game keeps them from using RL science. My background sheet includes the following:

A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

Your character is not an expert, and cannot display expert knowledge. But he or she has traveled a lot, and could easily have picked up a useful fact along the way. I will allow the use of an occasional useful fact, and it might even get you experience points.

[This also includes two hints for the first scenario, but I assumed that nobody could find them before the scenario started, and that nobody would look back at the sheet after character generation.]
That is, this works until you run into something stupid, like the T-rex in the monster manual being so much weaker than a Triceratops that it would never be able to successfully hunt one even though the Tyrannosaurus Rex was Triceratops' primary predator (though not it's all time favorite prey, the Triceratops was up there on a T-rex's yummy list, and all evidence points to the T-rex usually coming out on top whenever they clashed, which is to be expected; when an predator and it's prey are about the same size, the predator usually wins.) At which point, for the sake of verisimilitude I raise my pen and fix this glaring error with some homebrew.

I mean really, I had to fix the stats of virtually animal, dinosaur, and the assorted prehistoric beasts (well, the ones that had stats any way) so that they would make at least some sense for my friday night games (where I have always been the highest ranking DM though at the moment we're on between campaigns interim, unlike my Saturday night game where I only achieved the position of the Ace of Spades Dungeon Master following the death of the last one since I was next in line, in that game, the last DM had already fixed or created sensible stats for most everything, even obscure beasties like Mastodontosaurus.) Which was a rather enjoyable but lengthy process.

Czin
2011-01-28, 03:14 PM
Dude, thanks for that, I'm gonna have to start doing this now. I already imply this is how things are, but unless it is in writing, notarized, and signed off on by each player and their lawyer, some players just don't seem to get it. Of course, like good players the rest are ever on the lookout for laws to abuse, and ask how things actually do work then. Not everyone likes my answer of "magic".

And while I remember, let's head this problem off before it becomes one: I am soon going to be starting up a cyberpunk game where one person in the group not only knows A LOT more about the various physical and technological sciences than me, but finds it fun using those skills in game. Obviously it's a lot harder to enforce anything like above in a setting where it is assumed things DO work like they do in the real world, and I don't plan on stopping him from doing this, I am just wondering how I can best mitigate the damage. I was thinking or telling him that everything he does then becomes fair game for the enemies. Also, if I don't understand the science behind what he is trying to do and it would require me pausing the game to read up on it to make sure it's true, it will not be allowed (without a skill check anyway). Any other ideas?

I'd go with the skill check. If his character doesn't know it, then he can't use that information even if he knows it. But to placate them, perhaps you could show me the stats for some of the equipment/enemies so I could make them easier to swallow without straining the verisimilitude.

Choco
2011-01-28, 03:14 PM
That is, this works until you run into something stupid, like the T-rex in the monster manual being so much weaker than a Triceratops that it would never be able to successfully hunt one even though the Tyrannosaurus Rex was Triceratops' primary predator (though not it's all time favorite prey, the Triceratops was up there on a T-rex's yummy list, and all evidence points to the T-rex usually coming out on top whenever they clashed, which is to be expected; when an predator and it's prey are about the same size, the predator usually wins.) At which point, for the sake of verisimilitude I raise my pen and fix this glaring error with some homebrew.

I mean really, I had to fix the stats of virtually animal, dinosaur, and the assorted prehistoric beasts (well, the ones that had stats any way) so that they would make at least some sense for my friday night games (where I have always been the highest ranking DM though at the moment we're on between campaigns interim, unlike my Saturday night game where I only achieved the position of the Ace of Spades Dungeon Master following the death of the last one since I was next in line, in that game, the last DM had already fixed or created sensible stats for most everything, even obscure beasties like Mastodontosaurus.) Which was a rather enjoyable but lengthy process.

I usually don't worry about realism. IMO gameplay > simulation.

But just out of curiosity, what did you do to fix the cats vs commoners issue?

Czin
2011-01-28, 03:30 PM
I usually don't worry about realism. IMO gameplay > simulation.

But just out of curiosity, what did you do to fix the cats vs commoners issue?

I made a system that makes it harder for smaller creatures to damage larger ones. If the attacked creature is one size category larger than the atatcking creature, the attacked creature would gain 1/- DR against the attacking creature, if the attacked creature is two size categories larger than the attacker it gains 2/- dr, if it is three size categories larger then it gains 4/-. This also works the other way, for every size category the attacking creature is larger than the attacked creature it gains a +1 bonus to damage, which scales exponentially like the DR.

So a Medium commoner would have 2/- DR vs the Cat's claws, and since damage reduction is specifically outlined as an exception to the "every hit must do at least one point of damage" rule (though you can't reduce the damage into the negatives) the cat cannot deal lethal damage to the commoner. It can however, cause moderate pain (-2 penalty to attacks, checks, and counts as being under duress for the purposes of spell concentration or taking 10 though one can ignore this penalty if they pass a will save with a DC dependant upon how much damage the moderate pain causing attack would have done, though there is an exception to the DC determination system for things like spells which also cause moderate pain, in these cases use the DC of the spell/ability, if you want to know more about my pain system you can ask me.) So the Commoner won't be getting off totally scott free. Also if the cat lands a confirmed critical hit, it will be able to penetrate the DR and cause a quarter point of lethal damage (there were already fractional hit dice so I figured that making fractional hit points was a logical step) and a half point of charisma damage (scarring, feelings of emasculation, humilation and so on.)

Some of my players on my Friday night games say that I had arranged a relationship between 3.5e and Dark Heresy and that the system I created was their bastard offspring, which I find oddly flattering.

Volos
2011-01-28, 06:09 PM
Not bad, thanks!

You're welcome.


And while I remember, let's head this problem off before it becomes one: I am soon going to be starting up a cyberpunk game where one person in the group not only knows A LOT more about the various physical and technological sciences than me, but finds it fun using those skills in game. Obviously it's a lot harder to enforce anything like above in a setting where it is assumed things DO work like they do in the real world, and I don't plan on stopping him from doing this, I am just wondering how I can best mitigate the damage. I was thinking or telling him that everything he does then becomes fair game for the enemies. Also, if I don't understand the science behind what he is trying to do and it would require me pausing the game to read up on it to make sure it's true, it will not be allowed (without a skill check anyway). Any other ideas?

My first suggestion is the mean one, either don't run a game in a setting you don't understand, or don't run with players who understand the setting better than you and will abuse that power. If you're not keen on either of those options, you can do the following.

Have said genius player explain what he plans to do with certian skills when he obtains ranks in said skills. If he doesn't lay it out that he can X + Y - Z = DOOM, then he isn't allowed to do it. But if he does lay it out, he has to give you a chance to look it up and see what it is all about. If he is right or if your agree that it works that way, then see if you're willing to let him do it. You can always limit what sort of things his character knows. Or you can limit how many things his character knows. Since he wants to use science and to be realistic, his character wouldn't be able to ballance being a melee master, a genius in several fields, and being a charming dude. He would need some sort of limits. Give the same limits to the other players. And give your other players the opprotunity to take similar or just as powerful/interesting skills. If he can do cold fusion, let the next player make wormholes. Bad examples, but you should get my drift here.

Jay R
2011-01-28, 08:23 PM
Dude, thanks for that, I'm gonna have to start doing this now. I already imply this is how things are, but unless it is in writing, notarized, and signed off on by each player and their lawyer, some players just don't seem to get it. Of course, like good players the rest are ever on the lookout for laws to abuse, and ask how things actually do work then. Not everyone likes my answer of "magic".

Put your answer in clear D&D terms. For instance, if a player successfully made a Craft (Alchemy) roll to develop gunpowder, I would congratulate him and show him the entry for the Fireball spell. "This is gunpowder in this world. Similar research into electricity will get you a Lightning Bolt spell."

Another good answer is, "The greatest and wisest sages in the world haven't figured that out yet. If you want to do so, stop adventuring and spend sixty or seventy years studying the world. I will then give you an answer at about the level of what medieval philosophers believed, as carefully worked out, and as wrong, as Ptolemy's earth-centered universe, or phlogiston physics."


And while I remember, let's head this problem off before it becomes one: I am soon going to be starting up a cyberpunk game where one person in the group not only knows A LOT more about the various physical and technological sciences than me, but finds it fun using those skills in game. Obviously it's a lot harder to enforce anything like above in a setting where it is assumed things DO work like they do in the real world, and I don't plan on stopping him from doing this, I am just wondering how I can best mitigate the damage. I was thinking or telling him that everything he does then becomes fair game for the enemies. Also, if I don't understand the science behind what he is trying to do and it would require me pausing the game to read up on it to make sure it's true, it will not be allowed (without a skill check anyway). Any other ideas?

I had a similar situation in Champions (modern day superhero game). One player tried to use a low-level telekinesis power to shut of the villain's air and kill him quickly. Fortunately, the Champions rules make it easy to deal with. I told him. "10 STR of TK will only do 2d6 of damage. I don't care what persona story you give your power, you can only do as much damage as you paid for. You can buy a power that will knock him unconscious in one turn, but you have to pay for that much effect."

In a cyberpunk game in which the player knows more than you do, I recommend that you say, "I can't let you use the rules to get more power than the rules give. Don't try to explain the physics; I don't understand it. Just point to the rule or it doesn't work."

(Actually, I know more physics and chemistry than anyone else in my group, so that's not an issue for me, but that's your way out.)

Again and again, you need some version of "You only get as much power as the rules allow. Cleverness is great; you can start an avalanche by throwing a single rock. But no amount of discussion will let you lift a boulder."

Kuma Da
2011-01-29, 05:45 PM
Choco, this may be the exact opposite of the answer you want (and the one that most DMs will give,) but unless your players is using his knowledge to make the game less fun for everyone else, it's not unreasonable to just let him be awesome. Absolutely continue to challenge him, though.

Okay, so he's good with chemistry. Throw some politics his way. Or some physics. Or a fistfight.

Yes, I know the "you don't need to have a black-belt to play a monk" rule, but I like to let my players bring the stuff they know to the table.

I run Delta Green for a group of three players. One knows way more about biology and medicine than I do, another knows vastly more about computers than I ever will, and the third has a whole lot of military knowledge that I never picked up. During sessions, I occasionally pause the game to ask one of my players how a hospital is typically laid out, or what military rank an NPC might reasonably have. When a player comes up with something scenario-wreckingly clever, I roll with it.

Player knowledge can do a lot to inform gaming, and I honestly don't like cutting it out unless it's being used only as an exploit.

Volos
2011-01-29, 06:04 PM
I think that Jay R has a good point (great even). If a player comes up with some sort of whacky plan involving physics, math, or logic... and it isn't already supported by the rules. It doesn't happen. Shrink an entire barrel of wine into a single bottle and have the nobleman drink it shortly before dismissing the spell to have him explode? Didn't happen. Why? You weren't inside of his body to witness said lack of happening, so you don't know. Trying to use X to make Y happen even though the rules clearly state that X can only result in Z? Y didn't happen, Z happened. This is a perfect way to handle overly creative or meta-gaming players who try to bring logic to the table. Still allow parts of your game that logic will work in, dropping a boulder on a guard will do Xd6 damage and might kill him. If you take a running leap off of a moving boat, you will be slightly faster than the boat for a short period of time during the jump. Wearing gloves either makes you immune to the contact poison on the door knob or gives you a sweet bonus. But things like a player knowing how to tie all sorts of knots wanting to be able to tie up the BBEG without any ranks in use rope is probably going to fail. The player who knows what a specific type of wolf IRL is like doesn't get to wildshape into it unless his druid character has seen it before. And the player who wants to take a level 1 spell and talk his way into making it replicate a 4th level spell effect because "that makes sense" shouldn't be allowed to do it. All those examples make as much sense as letting a player use his meta knowledge of physics to manipulate your game world, even if it is in a sci-fi setting. He knows how to hack in real life? Well in your world they could use a trinary computing langauge.

Czin
2011-01-29, 09:07 PM
Alright so todays session is over.

During the big battle, the PCs had a run in with the Kaiser himself after the party sorcerer attacked him in an attempt to one up his (friendly) rival the party Psion, and despite the PCs all being level 19-20, they were slaughtered (4-5ths of the party of 20 were killed despite them being fairly well optimized) since they were going up against an epic construct with an epic number of cleric levels. The first thing of note is the collective look of "Oh...crap..." when the miniature (a very well sculpted and crafted piece of work made with warhammer 40k miniature tools, it's like an Iron Golem with a Sauron-esque crown of blades and cloak) Oddly, the most optimized characters were the first to die since they were the first to attack.

Summarized version:
The Party Clericzilla uses all his remaining buffs and summons and charges the Grobsreichen Monarch and attempts to ensnare and trip the metal emperor with his spiked chain; he horribly loses the grapple check which (as per homebrew rules) allows the Kaiser to grab the chain, yank the cleric towards him and make his own grapple check to rip him in half.

Druidzilla follows, wildshaping and buffing before charging in with her and her animal companion, manages to put a sizeable dent in the Kaiser's even more sizeable hit point count.

Wizard attempts to use a very carefully worded wish to kill the kaiser, whose epic spell turn inverts the spell upon the wizard who gets obliterated by his own spell, his contigencies proving useless as he never foresaw his own wish being used against him.

The Erudite who believes that the Kaiser's defenses have been exhausted by the Wizard's sacrifice tries the same but with reality vision, he follows the wizard in being zotted out of the mortal coil.

The party Paladin and his Gold Dragon mount have a go, Paladin starts off with a heavily metabreathed breath weapon attack, which only succeeds in healing the emperor because he forgot that to this point there has not been a single metal construct that runs on magic that has not been healed by fire. Cue whole table facepalming and paladin player blushing out of embarassment. Then makes a spirited charge with a lance which takes a respectable amount of hit points away from the emperor (but the sovereign's hit point count ran into the thousands.)

Sorcerer uses gate to summon an advanced solar.

Psion uses timeless body.

Archers (mostly rangers with some prestige classes) fire arrows, of which very hit (by rolling 20s.) The few that do hit cannot do enough damage to pierce his DR.

Other melee members (fighters, barbarians, rogues, the works) move into position, one rogue (whose hide and move silently checks were in the upper stratosphere) decides to move into an ambush position (he had a feat that would let him hurt constructs.)

On the Kaiser's turn his ultra-aclarity (allows him to take 10 rounds worth of actions and move at 500 foott base speed) kicks in, at which point he rampages across the battlefield with ridiculous amounts of speed. By the end of the turn, everyone but the Psion and hiding rogue are dead or dying, before he can finish off the Psion; a great flash in the sky (described as outshining the sun by two orders of magnitude for a few moments) caused by the destruction of the planet closest to the setting (a gas giant that's about twice the size of jupiter) at the hands of an approaching elder evil (whose approach was being foreshadowed from the beginning, when the player characters converge together on a meeting that was called to discuss the implications of the destruction of the outermost planet in the solar system, which effectively meant that most of the world's nations would not have their higher level heroes to protect them, allowing the Kaiser to start his war.)

The Kaiser is forced to pull back since his troops were already pulling back (primarily since the players had destroyed his artillery batteries and tanks, thus rendering the air supremacy he had gained after his metal monoplanes blew the flying beasts of the elves and tsiphilians, and the clumsy gryocopters and gryoplanes of the Cerecians and the dwarves; a moot point. Though I will note that 30mm Autocannon fire has a delightful tendency to reduce even great wyrm dragons into charred hamburger) , which the sudden green flash in the sky has managed to turn into a fullscale rout and the Orks are slaughtering his retreating troops and there is a good possibility that Megakilla's WAAAGH! is going to charge into his own territory.

Of course, in the actual game there was a lot of very heavy and very well done role playing, and we all enjoyed it.

Since I don't have school on monday, the group has agreed to meet again on Monday.

What I am asking is whether to go ahead and provide some exposition on the hordes of Chaos (lead by the warlord Varaxar the Doombringer; champion of Chaos Undivided and the only Chaos Champion with every mark of Chaos, essentially Zarvhax's equivalent of Archaon Lord of the End times or Abaddon the Despoiler Failbaddon the Armless. He has proven himself to the chaos gods by killing the lady of pain and destroying the sigil, casting the spire down, though he never could have succeeded if the players hadn't disabled the spire's no-magic thingamagig.) and the approaching Elder Evil (simply named Inritus Nex, or Void-Death), simply focus on one of them as villains, or keep the Kaiser as the main BBEG.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-29, 09:40 PM
Epic stuff

I'd keep the Kaiser as the BBEG, if the party didn't want him dead before, they want him dead now...

Did the PCs have any back up plans if they got reamed?

Czin
2011-01-29, 10:01 PM
I'd keep the Kaiser as the BBEG, if the party didn't want him dead before, they want him dead now...

Did the PCs have any back up plans if they got reamed?

The player group had agreed that each member should carry enough 25,000 gp diamonds to fund for true ressurections for every member of the party and their cohorts/familiars/animal companions. So roughly 30ish or so diamonds in bags of holding. The Psion healed the members who were simply dying (though he couldn't reattach or regrow any limbs they might have lost, he could stop them from bleeding to death) and is bringing the corpses to Selesville's Grand Cathedral of Pelor(grand as in, if the medieval catholic church had 1910's building technology and magic to construct those fancy cathedrals grand, so; it would make the Notre Dame look like a decrepit rural church) to have them true resurrected by the High Priest who had to stay inside to keep the cathedral from being destroyed by bombing raids and artillery strikes by maintaining a magic shield.

Hawkfrost000
2011-01-30, 01:44 AM
random DM question, were can i find the rules regarding Archivists? i have heard people talking about them and i think an NPC Archivist would make a good addition to my campaign.

Thanks

DM

Fable Wright
2011-01-30, 01:45 AM
random DM question, were can i find the rules regarding Archivists? i have heard people talking about them and i think an NPC Archivist would make a good addition to my campaign.

Thanks

DM

Heroes of Horror.

Hawkfrost000
2011-01-30, 02:15 AM
thanks a lot

WarKitty
2011-01-30, 10:43 AM
Ok, question for everyone: how exactly does one keep out of game stuff from interfering in-game? I mean, we generally try, but...well, an example:

On player (say player A) makes a bisexual character. The character is evil and a bit of a jerk, but within bounds for a reasonable PC and doesn't generally disrupt the party. Notably, player A is themself bisexual, but has not revealed this to Player B. A while later, we're playing as descendants of the same set of PC's. One of the other PC's (played by player B) starts going on a long rant about PC A's bisexuality and how this is evidence of immorality and started on his evil path.

There's been a couple of different things like that. Usually over one of politics or religion as played out in the game world. It's to the point where I'm not entirely comfortable with this player, but I don't really have the freedom to kick them out. (DM's have say within our group over the max number of players, but individual players are up to the entire group to decide and not the DM.)

Kylarra
2011-01-30, 11:01 AM
Well, when things start to get a little too personally offensive, you basically have to interject and ask them to back off a bit. It's unrealistic to expect them to know other people's buttons and sore spots without foreknowledge.

WarKitty
2011-01-30, 11:15 AM
Well, when things start to get a little too personally offensive, you basically have to interject and ask them to back off a bit. It's unrealistic to expect them to know other people's buttons and sore spots without foreknowledge.

Trust me, it's been done. Not in that particular case, but in others. The trouble is the problem player doesn't really acknowledge that other people have different views. So to transpose another response onto a different case, you'd get something like:


Interjector: Can you back off on the bisexuality a bit? I don't think player A put it in as an evil thing.
Player B: But...that's always evil! Everyone knows that same-gender sex is wrong! It's just obvious!
*follow with long rant and some very sulky silence afterwards with occasional muttering about perverts and people being stupid*

Czin
2011-01-30, 12:08 PM
Crap I woke up late and slept through my alarm...now I only have an hour to prepare! What to do?

WarKitty
2011-01-30, 12:16 PM
Crap I woke up late and slept through my alarm...now I only have an hour to prepare! What to do?

Google "Free modules for <<system>>". Find one of the appropriate CR. Figure out a way that your BBBEG is really behind it.

Pink
2011-01-30, 01:29 PM
*needs to catch up with the rest of the thread, but for now responding to latest posts*

Oh WarKitty, I feel your pain. I have a player who views their opinions as the 'right' opinion and speaks, shall we say, lowly of other points of view. And by lowly I mean insultingly.

This hasn't been much of a deal in my own games, because in general, we're a fairly easy going group on opinions and values and such, and have fairly thick skin. But, well, there have been times. Suffice to say though, it's not been as though there's been two completely opposite sides of view that Player has actually offended somebody repeatedly. So I can understand your situation a bit, and I just sorta pray I never actually have such a situation myself.

Now, in honesty, there's not alot of advice I can give on this. The best thing I can say is that, when rant comes up, say something along the lines of "K, that's enough of that. We're here to play, not debate political/religion/etc. viewpoints." and try to be firm to that. But this can be tricky, especially when debate can be argued to be tied into in game beliefs. It might be just as easy as taken said player aside before the game and privately asking them not to do that, say that you recognize their own beliefs, but would rather not have it at the game table, for your own comfort as well as the others. Really, depends on the person and group. If the rest of the group except you and Bi-player find Player's rants refreshing and agreeable, you may have trouble putting a stop to it.

Alot of out of game issues all come back to the group in some way shape or form. You said that a GM can pick the number of players, but it's up to the group to decide who is in and such. This is true, but a GM is still part of a group. While it sounds a horrible thing to say, if you have a player who makes the game unfun for you, it's just as big of an issue as if it's just another player ruining a players fun. Everyone at the table should be having some amount of fun, otherwise there's no reason to be there. We try to fix problems as they come up, to keep the game going, but sometimes there isn't a way to fix things and games fall apart. Not saying things should always go to that level, but if they do, don't feel bad over it, just try again with a more carefully selected group. I've learned slowly that the best groups are when everyone gets along with each other already as friends and everyone knows where the other people stand on beliefs and such.

Anyway...Looking back over this I think it sounds confusing, so let's summarize for my own clarity.

Talk to player privately. Maybe make a rule to keep certain subjects off the table. Know how everyone feels about this. If this is a big issue that's preventing fun, don't torture yourself out of obligation as GM.

Kylarra
2011-01-30, 02:30 PM
Trust me, it's been done. Not in that particular case, but in others. The trouble is the problem player doesn't really acknowledge that other people have different views. So to transpose another response onto a different case, you'd get something like:


Interjector: Can you back off on the bisexuality a bit? I don't think player A put it in as an evil thing.
Player B: But...that's always evil! Everyone knows that same-gender sex is wrong! It's just obvious!
*follow with long rant and some very sulky silence afterwards with occasional muttering about perverts and people being stupid*Well from there, I'd have to second what Pink said, you'll probably want to try to cut them short at least. Alternatively, point out that D&D morality* is not necessarily equivalent to modern morality* or his own morality*, so being so vehemently outspoken against what may actually be a relatively common practice could paint him as a highly prejudiced bigot and so on in game. If all else fails, I'd talk to the rest of the group and see how they feel about the situation. If they're all fine with it, then you may just have to try to mitigate the damage and deal with it (or leave to find another group/try to form a different game sans problem player), if they're equally or similarly annoyed, then you have a case to present about shaping up or getting out.




*Not claiming a stance either way, but simply using this as a poor catchall for beliefs et al.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-30, 03:32 PM
Crap I woke up late and slept through my alarm...now I only have an hour to prepare! What to do?

Let us know how it turned out.

Pink
2011-01-30, 03:35 PM
Crap I woke up late and slept through my alarm...now I only have an hour to prepare! What to do?

Yes, let us know.

Myself, if I'm ever horribly unprepared, I bring along some of my boardgames and say it's a boardgame day instead. Generally this is accepted amongst my group, though there is some slight disappointment.

WarKitty
2011-01-30, 06:13 PM
Ok, a bit more info on the situation:

Most of the group thinks Player B is overbearing. What seems to vary is how much they think it's a problem. I admittedly am one of the more sensitive people in the group to some of these things, in part because a lot of them are very big parts of my real life.

What I'm debating doing is going to some of the other people and saying "Hey, I know I'm not the only one that this bothers. I don't want these issues to disrupt our gaming time. Can I have a bit of support in saying that this needs to be dropped? I don't want to be the only one trying to enforce this, because then I end up looking like the bad guy all the time."

Pink
2011-01-30, 06:43 PM
What I'm debating doing is going to some of the other people and saying "Hey, I know I'm not the only one that this bothers. I don't want these issues to disrupt our gaming time. Can I have a bit of support in saying that this needs to be dropped? I don't want to be the only one trying to enforce this, because then I end up looking like the bad guy all the time."

That sounds fairly reasonable, but maybe just having a private conversation with the fellow first without 'ganging up' on him might also be fruitful. Now, obviously you have a better grasp of the situation, but I think talking to him from your own point of view first, just saying that you don't appreciate the exerts, as a person as a table not just as the GM, might be a good way to give him a chance before uniting the group on the issue. If he's a good player, there for the fun of everyone not just himself, he should realize that even if it is just you, if he's causing you to have 'less fun' than you should with his comments, he should try to avoid making them. For a good player, all it should take is one person saying they don't appreciate it, not the entire group. If he disagrees on it being such a big issue, then you can open up saying that you might talk with the other players to appraise how everyone feels about it.

Now, again, you know your situation and these people best, so if you think it's best to get support of other first then you can go ahead, you seem to plan to do it in a civil fashion, but I still have to give a shot at the private talk first.

There is just something about being out of the loop, having people talking about a situation behind your back, that isn't a good feeling. We don't want this to turn into some sort've shock and awe intervention when the player is just there for a RPG. I'm using hyperbole here, but being surprised is rarely a good state for someone to hear a request. It's better to say that, "You know that talk you and I had, etc etc." than just launch into it with no sort've forewarning.

Anyway, again, you do seem to have a good plan, I just hope you can appreciate what I'm saying. Don't leave the offender out of the loop on the issue and such.

Amphetryon
2011-01-30, 07:04 PM
Ok, a bit more info on the situation:

Most of the group thinks Player B is overbearing. What seems to vary is how much they think it's a problem. I admittedly am one of the more sensitive people in the group to some of these things, in part because a lot of them are very big parts of my real life.

What I'm debating doing is going to some of the other people and saying "Hey, I know I'm not the only one that this bothers. I don't want these issues to disrupt our gaming time. Can I have a bit of support in saying that this needs to be dropped? I don't want to be the only one trying to enforce this, because then I end up looking like the bad guy all the time."
Here's the thing: if you're the only one who acts as if the 'bother' is actually a 'disruption' and a 'problem', then you are the bad guy, because you're trying to enforce a change in behavior that the other people with whom you game do not see as necessary. You may be best served by trying to figure out whether others are perceiving a legitimate issue or simply a minor annoyance.

WarKitty
2011-01-30, 08:44 PM
Here's the thing: if you're the only one who acts as if the 'bother' is actually a 'disruption' and a 'problem', then you are the bad guy, because you're trying to enforce a change in behavior that the other people with whom you game do not see as necessary. You may be best served by trying to figure out whether others are perceiving a legitimate issue or simply a minor annoyance.

Yeah. I think part of the frustration on my part is that I'm the one who is disproportionately the target of the other player's rants (this was pointed out to me by several other people). So I feel that it's not as much of a disruption to them because it's not specifically being targeted at them. It's fairly clear that she has a problem with *me*, and I don't think it's right that I have to put up with it simply because it's not bothering anyone else.

*just fyi, I didn't want to say this right out, but I was player A in the original scenario.

Volos
2011-01-30, 08:48 PM
Ok, a bit more info on the situation:

Most of the group thinks Player B is overbearing. What seems to vary is how much they think it's a problem. I admittedly am one of the more sensitive people in the group to some of these things, in part because a lot of them are very big parts of my real life.

What I'm debating doing is going to some of the other people and saying "Hey, I know I'm not the only one that this bothers. I don't want these issues to disrupt our gaming time. Can I have a bit of support in saying that this needs to be dropped? I don't want to be the only one trying to enforce this, because then I end up looking like the bad guy all the time."

I think your problem is twofold. First, the Player A you had mentioned decided that they would play an evil bisexual character without first coming out to Player B. Whether Player A was attempting to use the game as a medium to come out or just hadn't gotten around to telling Player B... it is a sort of a problem. If Player B knew that Player A was bisexual / political veiw A / relgious view A / whatever, and was still making such hurtful comments. Then it would be time to tell Player B to leave the group. While Player B is at fault for his words and actions, he might just be seeing it as an in game issue only not an out of game issue as well. Player B shouldn't be making these kind of comments under any circumstances, but just telling him that Player A is bisexual or whatever should clear up the issue. If it doesn't then Player B shouldn't be in you group.

WarKitty
2011-01-31, 01:35 AM
I think your problem is twofold. First, the Player A you had mentioned decided that they would play an evil bisexual character without first coming out to Player B. Whether Player A was attempting to use the game as a medium to come out or just hadn't gotten around to telling Player B... it is a sort of a problem. If Player B knew that Player A was bisexual / political veiw A / relgious view A / whatever, and was still making such hurtful comments. Then it would be time to tell Player B to leave the group. While Player B is at fault for his words and actions, he might just be seeing it as an in game issue only not an out of game issue as well. Player B shouldn't be making these kind of comments under any circumstances, but just telling him that Player A is bisexual or whatever should clear up the issue. If it doesn't then Player B shouldn't be in you group.

Player B wasn't told because said player has a tendency to go on long homophobic rants about how awful it is being related to a gay person. I don't want to game with this person but I'm not sure I have a choice.

Pink
2011-01-31, 02:08 AM
Player B wasn't told because said player has a tendency to go on long homophobic rants about how awful it is being related to a gay person. I don't want to game with this person but I'm not sure I have a choice.

This is kinda sounding less like "How to deal with group issue" and more like "Start trying to find/create a group without Player B"

If it's a person you can't really stand hanging around with, you shouldn't be gaming with them. Games should be fun, not something you start to dread because it's spending hours in the same room with a certain Player.

WarKitty
2011-01-31, 08:55 AM
This is kinda sounding less like "How to deal with group issue" and more like "Start trying to find/create a group without Player B"

If it's a person you can't really stand hanging around with, you shouldn't be gaming with them. Games should be fun, not something you start to dread because it's spending hours in the same room with a certain Player.

So I talked to a few people, and what it's come down to is:

No one else really wants to game with said player either. However no one (myself included) knows how to bring this up. Said player has a fierce temper and a habit of getting back at people in rather nasty ways when feeling slighted, and none of us want to be on the receiving end.

*sigh* yay drama?

Kaww
2011-01-31, 09:14 AM
So I talked to a few people, and what it's come down to is:

No one else really wants to game with said player either. However no one (myself included) knows how to bring this up. Said player has a fierce temper and a habit of getting back at people in rather nasty ways when feeling slighted, and none of us want to be on the receiving end.

*sigh* yay drama?

Uninviting people is easy. You ether have a three strike rule or you just don't invite them (as you see fit).

People shouldn't have grudges IRL because of stuff that happen in game, while gaming. The players have the right to walk away, the DM has the right to uninvite people.

In the case of player B you have to ask yourself why do you want to be friends with a person that would take revenge over something DnD related.

WarKitty
2011-01-31, 02:26 PM
Uninviting people is easy. You ether have a three strike rule or you just don't invite them (as you see fit).

People shouldn't have grudges IRL because of stuff that happen in game, while gaming. The players have the right to walk away, the DM has the right to uninvite people.

In the case of player B you have to ask yourself why do you want to be friends with a person that would take revenge over something DnD related.

Uninviting people when you play in a publicly accessible space in a small area isn't quite so easy...

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-31, 09:44 PM
Uninviting people when you play in a publicly accessible space in a small area isn't quite so easy...
Unless you're playing in a park, there's going to be someone in charge. Tell them that this person has been harassing you; chances are the person in charge will be happy to eject said person if he decides to come and disrupt your game.

Don't be intimidated by a jerk. If nobody likes playing with the guy, kick him out of the group. If you don't feel capable of handling his "retribution" then approach someone in authority who can.

So... why are you gaming with this guy in the first place? :smallconfused:

WarKitty
2011-01-31, 09:57 PM
Unless you're playing in a park, there's going to be someone in charge. Tell them that this person has been harassing you; chances are the person in charge will be happy to eject said person if he decides to come and disrupt your game.

Don't be intimidated by a jerk. If nobody likes playing with the guy, kick him out of the group. If you don't feel capable of handling his "retribution" then approach someone in authority who can.

So... why are you gaming with this guy in the first place? :smallconfused:

Because the person wasn't like this when they were invited. We think there's an oncoming mental health issue, but there's really nothing we can do about it given that the person refuses any sort of screening.

And we're playing in the public lounge areas of our campus. Short of threats of physical violence, the college authorities don't want to intervene in student disputes.

Pink
2011-01-31, 10:03 PM
Well, unforunately, your options right now aren't looking that great. Correct me if I'm simplifying things, but it seems you got:

A) Kick him out and suffer potential repercussions.
B) Continue gaming and suffer continued outbreaks.
C) Stop gaming, don't hang out with him, and suffer from lack of gaming.
D) Find private(r) place to game (The suffering in this is inherent in the task of searching).

Anyway, it's a kind of pick your poison type situation. Life unfortunately does not always give a 'win' solution to all problems. Best of luck, though I really hope that a tabletop sit down might cure him of this if the group is really united on it.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-01-31, 10:22 PM
Because the person wasn't like this when they were invited. We think there's an oncoming mental health issue, but there's really nothing we can do about it given that the person refuses any sort of screening.

And we're playing in the public lounge areas of our campus. Short of threats of physical violence, the college authorities don't want to intervene in student disputes.
If you're on a campus, you should speak to one of the folks in charge of student well-being. Be it the Resident Head of your dorm, or the Dean of Students, someone is going to be interested if there is a student who is harassing other students. Particularly if you suspect an oncoming mental breakdown of the Problem Player.

Or you can go with one of Pink's choices. It's a tough one but, IMHO, there's no reason to suffer this sort of crap while gaming.

Czin
2011-01-31, 10:40 PM
So now that Sunday's game has passed and I've been relaxed by my free Monday I shall tell you all how it went. My lack of preparation and inability to organize my dead-former DM's plot contigency cards proved moot, as the player group immediately went to investigate the Grobsriech once they were resurrected (and quite a lot of other people, they did have 400 diamonds for true resurrections after all).

They discovered news that confirmed the worst of the League of Free nations fears; the Grobsreich has developed (magically enhanced) Nuclear weapons and has mass produced them in gigantic quantities. Thanks to the spy work of the players, they have dscovered that the nuclear arsenal that the Reichens have created is not meant to be used against the League, but is to be fired upon the outermost moon of Zarvhax when the planet shattering Elder evil Inritus Nex descends upon it to destroy it and kill it's Drow inhabitants.

The party then immediately descended into an incharacter arguement as to whether the ploy would succeed, fail, or only make the Elder Evil stronger/very angry. They also argued as to whether or not they should stop the nuclear gambit and the arguement continued for the last two hours of the session, so me and the other DMs got something of a break.

Lurkmoar
2011-01-31, 10:59 PM
I love it when the players drive the story. Allows me open a bag of chips while taking a few notes and rolling dice to keep them on their toes.

Volos
2011-01-31, 11:07 PM
Because the person wasn't like this when they were invited. We think there's an oncoming mental health issue, but there's really nothing we can do about it given that the person refuses any sort of screening.

And we're playing in the public lounge areas of our campus. Short of threats of physical violence, the college authorities don't want to intervene in student disputes.

I had this exact same problem. We were playing in the student lounge area of the community college campus, and our 'Player B' was a guy who didn't even go to school there. The college security said they wouldn't do anything unless it came down to physical violence or repeated threats. Apparently being threatened with a knife once wasn't enough to get this guy booted from the campus. The way we ended up handling it was by moving out game. I realize that probably won't work for you, so you could try what we were planning on doing.

If you can get enough people to agree to it, instead of having a game session next time you meet; have a discussion about how it is not acceptable to bring out of game opinions to the game itself. Even if everyone around the table agrees that group of people X are terrible evil things that should be exterminated, no one is to talk about it. You're gaming in a public place, and racism, sexism, and other-isms should be excluded from the game table. You may offend people around you or people at the table without realizing it. So yes, the game is going to be 'poilitically correct'. If anyone doesn't like it, they can leave.

That was what we were going to impliment if our version of 'Player B' wasn't going to leave. He was an anti-feminist who not only was constantlly making snide comments to cut down on the female gamers in my group but would single out any female NPCs in my game. He claimed that all the women in my campaigns were just trying to seduce him for his gold and/or kill him while trying to get pregnate with his babies. I was actually worried that I was protraying the women NPCs in my game incorrectly, but my lady gamers told me they actually were impressed with how I handled a wide varriety of male, female, genderless, and other NPCs in my game. My players to this day will never forget the changling who owned that one brothel.


I love it when the players drive the story. Allows me open a bag of chips while taking a few notes and rolling dice to keep them on their toes.

I love it when the players take the wheel and drive the story without realizing it. Then I get praise for having such an amazing plot and for being so creative with my story. I never tell them, of course, partially for my ego but mostly to keep them coming back. If they realized they could do this on their own, why would they need me? All I do is set up a shell and they fill in the rest.

WarKitty
2011-01-31, 11:12 PM
Well, unforunately, your options right now aren't looking that great. Correct me if I'm simplifying things, but it seems you got:

A) Kick him out and suffer potential repercussions.
B) Continue gaming and suffer continued outbreaks.
C) Stop gaming, don't hang out with him, and suffer from lack of gaming.
D) Find private(r) place to game (The suffering in this is inherent in the task of searching).

Anyway, it's a kind of pick your poison type situation. Life unfortunately does not always give a 'win' solution to all problems. Best of luck, though I really hope that a tabletop sit down might cure him of this if the group is really united on it.


If you're on a campus, you should speak to one of the folks in charge of student well-being. Be it the Resident Head of your dorm, or the Dean of Students, someone is going to be interested if there is a student who is harassing other students. Particularly if you suspect an oncoming mental breakdown of the Problem Player.

Or you can go with one of Pink's choices. It's a tough one but, IMHO, there's no reason to suffer this sort of crap while gaming.

Yeah, I hope as a group we can get the behavior toned down a bit. We're unfortunately in one of those schools that believes that students of the opposite gender ought not to be allowed in private places with each other, so gaming space is at a premium. And I really wouldn't trust the place to know what to do with mental illness.

Volos
2011-01-31, 11:23 PM
Yeah, I hope as a group we can get the behavior toned down a bit. We're unfortunately in one of those schools that believes that students of the opposite gender ought not to be allowed in private places with each other, so gaming space is at a premium. And I really wouldn't trust the place to know what to do with mental illness.

Check my previous post. I covered a plan for this.

Czin
2011-01-31, 11:39 PM
I love it when the players drive the story. Allows me open a bag of chips while taking a few notes and rolling dice to keep them on their toes.

It helps that some of" the midnoon crew" as we've been come to be calle in light of our love of MSPA (while some tables may worship Rich Burlew, Aaron Williams, or Howard Tayler, Andrew Hussie overshadows them all greatly at our table, though Rokossovsky never got past Problem sleuth before his untimely demise) and meeting times; have been roleplaying since I was in diapers.

The oldest member of the group is like, 48..and I'm 15 so that makes him like 3 times older than I am. :smallbiggrin:

zorba1994
2011-02-01, 03:04 PM
I just started DMing a game for a bunch of my friends (all of them newbies with the exception of 2). One of them happens to be my girlfriend (she is a newbie). We were making her character (a half-elf warlock, 4e) and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Okay, so with Fate of the Void you basically gain a bonus to the next thing you do after your curse target dies.
She: Wait, I gain something from people dying?
Me: Well, yeah.
She: *evil grin*

Her character is NE, and has a propensity to react to dragons (regardless of size) by going "OOOOH KITTY! /tries to pet dragon". This will be interesting (have I just screwed up?).

Knaight
2011-02-01, 03:24 PM
Yeah, I hope as a group we can get the behavior toned down a bit. We're unfortunately in one of those schools that believes that students of the opposite gender ought not to be allowed in private places with each other, so gaming space is at a premium. And I really wouldn't trust the place to know what to do with mental illness.

Does anyone live in an area that the school doesn't directly control? If so, see about using that area.

Dust
2011-02-01, 03:24 PM
Nope. Prepare for a Chaotic Evil alignment drop, and for your girlfriend to learn about consequences in gaming. That said, it'll be fun while it lasts. :smallbiggrin:


I'm busy being astonished by player's inability to grasp plotlines. After being criticized a few games back about having my hints be too obscure - a fair critique - I decided I'd be as blunt and straightforward as possible. The McGuffins are powerful relics that ascend mortals to godhood over time, but they come with a curse, or perhaps a quirk, causing them to also bring jealousy and war and anarchy. When the party grabbed the first one, I flat-out told them this in a cryptic voice - beware the servants, not the master. Betrayal is always done by the one you think you can trust the most. Everything the party has researched on these relics points to the same thing, ever since Vecna held the first one and was shut down by his right-hand-man; the vampire, Kas.
Since then, we've had no less than FIFTEEN different incidents where the group meets with someone in a position of power, doesn't trust them, and puts their faith in the hired wizard, court vizier, low-ranking militiaman or messenger boy instead. And every single time they get stabbed in the back whilst the NPC in the position of power proves to be 'on their side'.
This is not an exaggeration. Fifteen. I've counted.

It's absolutely blowing me away the group hasn't even picked up on the pattern yet. Eventually, when one of the PCs takes the throne to her kingdom, her twin sister will be the one stabbing her in the back. And the player won't see it coming. :smalleek:

Kaww
2011-02-01, 03:27 PM
Uninviting people when you play in a publicly accessible space in a small area isn't quite so easy...

Could you maybe start a RP club or something like that. Try to get a permission to use empty classrooms? If a player lives close you could play at his/her home? There should be some alternatives. It is not possible for your problem player to always know when and where you are playing if you don't inform him.

MightyTim
2011-02-01, 03:28 PM
It's absolutely blowing me away the group hasn't even picked up on the pattern yet. Eventually, when one of the PCs takes the throne to her kingdom, her twin sister will be the one stabbing her in the back. And the player won't see it coming. :smalleek:

I think you've found the DM's holy grail: A plot line that you can use over and over again without the players getting used to it. :smalltongue:
Rejoice Brother!

Tarinaky
2011-02-01, 03:58 PM
Everyone is too busy to play 'another' game.

This is frustrating.

Silus
2011-02-01, 04:46 PM
Quick question, hope nobody minds: As DM, can I Rule 0 a horde of Fiendish Animated Objects? Or are there proper rules for malevolent, possessed animated objects?

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 04:57 PM
Quick question, hope nobody minds: As DM, can I Rule 0 a horde of Fiendish Animated Objects? Or are there proper rules for malevolent, possessed animated objects?
You can Rule 0 anything you want, but I believe there are rules for those somewhere. Maybe Heroes of Horror.

Silus
2011-02-01, 04:59 PM
You can Rule 0 anything you want, but I believe there are rules for those somewhere. Maybe Heroes of Horror.

Spiffy. I get the feeling I'm gonna need them soon.

Volos
2011-02-01, 06:36 PM
Due to random complications that I will not bore you with, I have lost all but one of the original players of my group. Instead of bringing in new people to an old plotline, I have decided to restart my game. It's starting at a lower level and in a slightly less deadly setting. The group had been heading toward an island with terrible giant beasts and areas of chaotic magic, now they will probably be on the mainland somewhere.

I need to bring in fresh blood to keep the game afloat, but I am stuck between two options. I can choose newbie players and help them to learn the game while getting them hooked on my story, or I can invite gamers from the area. There are issues with either plan. The newbie players are... really fresh. One asked me what I meant when I sent him an email with 'PHB', 'DMG', '4d6' and such in it. And the gamers I was thinking of inviting are known for trying to 'break' games right out of the gate. While I enjoy a challenge, it was alot of attempts to 'break' the game that led to this current state of affairs. There isn't enough room in the group for both the newbies and the gamers, and I can't pick an choose between individuals.

If you were behind my DM screen, what would you do? Go with the new players who will be a hassle to teach but seem to be more excited about your story; or go with the gamers who know the game but are more interested in breaking the game and ignoring the story when it doesn't give them more gold or power?

Pink
2011-02-01, 06:44 PM
Newbies. Always newbies.

I've never found teaching to be much of a hassle, as long as those on the other side of it are willing and eager to learn. They'll also be that much more interested in the game and you'll be able to surprise and shock them with things that to a more experienced player, would be 'been there, done that' material. Imagine their shock and awe when you describe a square corridor that seems to be filled with an acidic ooze, that's slowly moving towards them. Experienced players just think "Oh, gelatinous cube." and roll initiative.

Yeah, there's a curve, but you can't really expect people to get what you mean by PHB and DMG and such off that bat. Just start slow, and be patient, and you may get the best group of players you'll have.

true_shinken
2011-02-01, 06:46 PM
If you were behind my DM screen, what would you do? Go with the new players who will be a hassle to teach but seem to be more excited about your story; or go with the gamers who know the game but are more interested in breaking the game and ignoring the story when it doesn't give them more gold or power?

I'd go for the noobs. Story > anything else, period.

Oracle_Hunter
2011-02-01, 06:47 PM
If you were behind my DM screen, what would you do? Go with the new players who will be a hassle to teach but seem to be more excited about your story; or go with the gamers who know the game but are more interested in breaking the game and ignoring the story when it doesn't give them more gold or power?
New Players - provided you feel confident in being able to teach them. As a DM, I'm always more interested in having Players who give a damn about the plot than optimaxing everything.

Savannah
2011-02-01, 07:47 PM
Yep, take the newbies. Newbies are awesome. Just remember when you're starting that D&D is a game with a HUGE amount of jargon, so you'll have to remember to explain what it means (on top of the obvious 'here's how you play' explanation). It'll be a bit slower at first, but they catch on fast if they're interested in the game. (Ultimately, D&D is fairly simple: Roll a d20, add stuff, and hope for a high number. In fact, that's how I explain it to new players. They can learn the specifics as they go, if you take the time to explain their options.)

Silus
2011-02-01, 08:10 PM
Any suggestion on how to encourage players to play evil characters?