Zombulian
2015-11-02, 06:59 PM
Hey everyone, something popped into my head while I was walking home today. I was musing about the failings of my old D&D group. One of the worst of which was both how combat-centric our parties and just general playstyle were, and how little variety we had in our fights.
It seems strange, upon looking back, thinking about how the encounter was always the climax of the night. We'd screwed around talking and eating and drinking while getting through whatever padding the DM had put before the combat, and then we all settled in for some good-old fashioned murder-hobo'in'. The problem was, we always fought the same stuff. It was always humanoids of some kind; kobolds (not tucker's), orcs, barbarous humans, etc. Or maybe every now and then it was a dragon (I mean, you can't have D&D without dragons right?).
I've been trying to get some friends here at my Uni into D&D and I obviously really want them to like it. Now, drawing from the fact that one of the first things any player does when they're interested in D&D is look through the MM and see how many cool monsters there are, I wanted to run an adventure to the same effect.
Basically, I'm trying to set up a situation where every living (or undead, just maybe no constructs) being in the MM are equally accessible (possibly the wrong word) to be fought in quick succession. The first idea I had about it was some sort of extra-planar “Wizard’s Zoo” (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PeopleZoo) that people could travel to in order to get an idea of what they’ll be summoning in the future. Then, probably by the prompting of some D&D-esque PETA member, the party is sent to disrupt this place and release all of the imprisoned monsters, who will simply *pop* back to their original planes and habitats. Only, that won’t happen.
I’m currently wrestling with how to execute this exactly, but I was thinking that the party would - rather than just pressing the big red button that releases hundreds of monsters - have to release exhibit by exhibit. After the first exhibit is released, the zoo will shut down with the party still inside it, and they’ll have to fight their way out. This causes an issue though. I don’t want to force the party into not getting loot, but what kind of loot would imprisoned monsters even have? Maybe they’ll get some kind of token from each battle that they cash in for essentially correct WBL from vending machines between the encounters? Since they’ll be new players I was considering just having loadouts of useful gear for them of approximately the same strength that they’ll be able to choose from at each machine. I don’t want to play the game for them or make choices for them, but I also want them to get a preview of what this game has to offer without them having to worry about making the wrong choice (that sounded wrong. But I want to give them a selection of good, cool options. Ya dig?).
Progression will be fast, taking the characters through their levels at the same speed that encounters become more challenging. This would be a lot easier to plot if the CR system made any sense at all (plus the inflation of certain CR’s over others - no I’m not going to have the players face every single CR 1/10-20 monster there is, that would be so boring), unfortunately things like TDC exist so I’ll have to pay attention to what I want to be throwing at them.
So! If you’ve made it this far I applaud you. That bunch of text above was just me trying to figure out the idea while I wrote it out. But my question for the playground is: How would you do it? Would you have themed exhibits? How would you trim down the monster list for a meaningful showcase?
The thing that’s resonating pretty strongly with me right now is the ol’ Phantasy Star Online mechanic of going into a room full of monsters that has an exit somewhere, and that exit doesn’t open up until all of the monsters are dead.
It seems strange, upon looking back, thinking about how the encounter was always the climax of the night. We'd screwed around talking and eating and drinking while getting through whatever padding the DM had put before the combat, and then we all settled in for some good-old fashioned murder-hobo'in'. The problem was, we always fought the same stuff. It was always humanoids of some kind; kobolds (not tucker's), orcs, barbarous humans, etc. Or maybe every now and then it was a dragon (I mean, you can't have D&D without dragons right?).
I've been trying to get some friends here at my Uni into D&D and I obviously really want them to like it. Now, drawing from the fact that one of the first things any player does when they're interested in D&D is look through the MM and see how many cool monsters there are, I wanted to run an adventure to the same effect.
Basically, I'm trying to set up a situation where every living (or undead, just maybe no constructs) being in the MM are equally accessible (possibly the wrong word) to be fought in quick succession. The first idea I had about it was some sort of extra-planar “Wizard’s Zoo” (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PeopleZoo) that people could travel to in order to get an idea of what they’ll be summoning in the future. Then, probably by the prompting of some D&D-esque PETA member, the party is sent to disrupt this place and release all of the imprisoned monsters, who will simply *pop* back to their original planes and habitats. Only, that won’t happen.
I’m currently wrestling with how to execute this exactly, but I was thinking that the party would - rather than just pressing the big red button that releases hundreds of monsters - have to release exhibit by exhibit. After the first exhibit is released, the zoo will shut down with the party still inside it, and they’ll have to fight their way out. This causes an issue though. I don’t want to force the party into not getting loot, but what kind of loot would imprisoned monsters even have? Maybe they’ll get some kind of token from each battle that they cash in for essentially correct WBL from vending machines between the encounters? Since they’ll be new players I was considering just having loadouts of useful gear for them of approximately the same strength that they’ll be able to choose from at each machine. I don’t want to play the game for them or make choices for them, but I also want them to get a preview of what this game has to offer without them having to worry about making the wrong choice (that sounded wrong. But I want to give them a selection of good, cool options. Ya dig?).
Progression will be fast, taking the characters through their levels at the same speed that encounters become more challenging. This would be a lot easier to plot if the CR system made any sense at all (plus the inflation of certain CR’s over others - no I’m not going to have the players face every single CR 1/10-20 monster there is, that would be so boring), unfortunately things like TDC exist so I’ll have to pay attention to what I want to be throwing at them.
So! If you’ve made it this far I applaud you. That bunch of text above was just me trying to figure out the idea while I wrote it out. But my question for the playground is: How would you do it? Would you have themed exhibits? How would you trim down the monster list for a meaningful showcase?
The thing that’s resonating pretty strongly with me right now is the ol’ Phantasy Star Online mechanic of going into a room full of monsters that has an exit somewhere, and that exit doesn’t open up until all of the monsters are dead.