Tabletop RPG |OT| I cast a spell

Ultron · Feb 20, 2019

Yay Dungeon World (and by extention yay Powered by the Apocalypse)! I definitely am with you, Tharp , on those styles of games feeling more engaging for the table overall. I honestly haven't had the desire to run Pathfinder or D&D since I started playing Dungeon World, Masks, and The Sprawl. Since things aren't in a strict turn order and combat is more dynamic, everyone seems to be listening more. Also things just get around the table faster because there are less rolls happening.

I think some of that stuff can transfer to D&D. You can reasonably run D&D non-combat skill checks similarly to Dungeon World with having failures cause something to happen. If they don't pick the lock the guards show up, if they don't Intimidate the NPC they react badly, if they try to investigate a room and roll bad something in the room happens etc etc.

In combat this doesn't really work since everything is supposed to act in initiative order, and NPCs have their own attack rolls and action limits. So you can't do the fun DW combat stuff on misses like "You were about to shoot your arrow, but the goliath that was behind you grabs you, lifts you into the air and is about to throw you off the sky barge! What do you do?" Because instead it's "you miss, okay who's next? Oh, the goliath tries to grapple you... gets a 15..." etc. And that kind of number crunching can be what causes people to check out.

Syril · Feb 20, 2019

Tharp said:
I've been running a Dungeon World campaign lately and... I think I really love Dungeon World. I never felt good running D&D. I wanted to be a good GM and really pull my party into the story and world, but I always felt like I fell short at it. There are 5 players and myself, and it felt like combat would break down into the most basic tactical stuff. After someone's turn or failed roll, that was it for them and they'd check out for a bit until it went back to them. I'd look over to see someone on their phone, or etc. I asked them multiple times and they all said they had fun and enjoyed it, they showed up each week, but something just always felt off and I never felt satisfied with how I was running it.

Dungeon World feels completely different. The session we ran last week was the most I've ever seen them invested and engaged. No one was ever looking at their phone, people were making plans and thinking outside the box, they were really engaging with the world. I told them to imagine it like they were a character in a book, tell me what that character would do in this situation, and we'd base the actions/Moves off that. It felt great and I felt like I was an effective GM for the first time. I still have my worries about the longevity, i've heard a lot of people say that there's not nearly as much character progression ("zero to hero") in DW as D&D, but it felt more like what I wanted my D&D sessions to be but could never pull off.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with swapping around games like this, or tips for how I can make make GMing D&D feel more engaging? I just couldn't really figure out how to balance it well with 5 people, you wait 5 minutes for your turn only to fail an attack roll and now you wait another 5 minutes. Dungeon World at least feels great in that regard because every roll is going to do something, the narrative will always move forward. It's not "well your arrow missed. Alright Katho, you're up." Has anyone been able to mix the two styles well so there's less dead rolls?

That was the thing that always bugged me playing D&D too, to the point where I ended up making up my own system from scratch that didn't even have traditional turns or attack rolls just to avoid that kind of boredom. If I run 5e I'll probably try to do something like on a near success an ally can take a bonus action to get advantage attacking the same enemy before its next turn, or if the enemy missed you could use your reaction to make a move to reposition.

Deleted member 13645 · Feb 20, 2019

Ultron said:
Yay Dungeon World (and by extention yay Powered by the Apocalypse)! I definitely am with you, Tharp , on those styles of games feeling more engaging for the table overall. I honestly haven't had the desire to run Pathfinder or D&D since I started playing Dungeon World, Masks, and The Sprawl. Since things aren't in a strict turn order and combat is more dynamic, everyone seems to be listening more. Also things just get around the table faster because there are less rolls happening.

I think some of that stuff can transfer to D&D. You can reasonably run D&D non-combat skill checks similarly to Dungeon World with having failures cause something to happen. If they don't pick the lock the guards show up, if they don't Intimidate the NPC they react badly, if they try to investigate a room and roll bad something in the room happens etc etc.

In combat this doesn't really work since everything is supposed to act in initiative order, and NPCs have their own attack rolls and action limits. So you can't do the fun DW combat stuff on misses like "You were about to shoot your arrow, but the goliath that was behind you grabs you, lifts you into the air and is about to throw you off the sky barge! What do you do?" Because instead it's "you miss, okay who's next? Oh, the goliath tries to grapple you... gets a 15..." etc. And that kind of number crunching can be what causes people to check out.

Yeah I was thinking of trying to play D&D and kinda... roll my own ruleset but the game seems to have had so much work put into the combat and ruleset that I bet it would break pretty fast. Maybe it's something i'll just come back to later, or maybe is suited for smaller groups than I roll with. If there were 3 players that seems like it'd be more manageable than 5. Everything being far more dynamic is great, people start describing the story of their character and others will play off of it or it'll give them ideas. It's just a lot of fun.

Syril said:
That was the thing that always bugged me playing D&D too, to the point where I ended up making up my own system from scratch that didn't even have traditional turns or attack rolls just to avoid that kind of boredom. If I run 5e I'll probably try to do something like on a near success an ally can take a bonus action to get advantage attacking the same enemy before its next turn, or if the enemy missed you could use your reaction to make a move to reposition.

Yeah I've been thinking of things I could take from DW into it, but I think i'd end up breaking the ruleset too fast. I found it difficult to learn how to be a better DM in D&D. Even trying to watch stuff like The Adventure Zone I struggled to take anything away on how to improve my own games, where I found listening to someone like Austin Walker play Dungeon World gave me a ton of ideas and a better mindset of how to approach the game.

OmegaDragon · Feb 21, 2019

I've been hearing about Dungeon World (and Savage World?) in this topic for a while. Sounds really interesting. How does it briefly work? It has a system where the GM reacts to the players failure right? Is it still dice-based for success/failure?

Ultron said:
In combat this doesn't really work since everything is supposed to act in initiative order, and NPCs have their own attack rolls and action limits. So you can't do the fun DW combat stuff on misses like "You were about to shoot your arrow, but the goliath that was behind you grabs you, lifts you into the air and is about to throw you off the sky barge! What do you do?" Because instead it's "you miss, okay who's next? Oh, the goliath tries to grapple you... gets a 15..." etc. And that kind of number crunching can be what causes people to check out.

Don't you get a feedback loop where you're focused on one player? When do you decide to turn your attention to the other players.
Can you explain why your example wouldnt really work in DnD? Because a DnD player would expect a roll (which doesn't happen in Dungeon World?).

Tharp said:
Yeah I was thinking of trying to play D&D and kinda... roll my own ruleset but the game seems to have had so much work put into the combat and ruleset that I bet it would break pretty fast. Maybe it's something i'll just come back to later, or maybe is suited for smaller groups than I roll with. If there were 3 players that seems like it'd be more manageable than 5. Everything being far more dynamic is great, people start describing the story of their character and others will play off of it or it'll give them ideas. It's just a lot of fun.

Yeah I've been thinking of things I could take from DW into it, but I think i'd end up breaking the ruleset too fast. I found it difficult to learn how to be a better DM in D&D. Even trying to watch stuff like The Adventure Zone I struggled to take anything away on how to improve my own games, where I found listening to someone like Austin Walker play Dungeon World gave me a ton of ideas and a better mindset of how to approach the game.

For trying to make DnD combat more like Dungeon World: You could have enemies have their turn directly after a player and focus on that player. You don't have to work with initiative as written in the PHB. Otherwise, legendary actions are a thing, who's stopping you from giving them to whatever enemy you want? But it seems like you (and your table) are more at home with DW.

I'm trying to add some interesting elements to my combat. Some ideas I had: a ruined building with elevation and a very mobile boss who would jump up and down. Archer mooks on the high ground and melee mooks that would attack from the sides. Mooks would respawn unless the boss was defeated.
Other one was basically a time limit during the fight. The PCs were clearing out a keep and the enemies (swarms of very small humanoids) made their last stand in a room. When the PCs entered to clear the room, the enemy mage started a ritual that would destroy a pile of magic items one by one.
Also had a combat from a prewritten adventure that could have been interesting, but was a drag. It had a couple of archers who had the high ground and kept ducking in and out of cover, with some melee guys on the low ground. The PCs could enter the high ground by going up a passage that was covered by shrubs (and in the shrubs, traps), climb up or take a detour to attack the archers in the back. Enough options I thought. Sadly they just stood their ground, took out the melee guys and inefficiently fired at the archers :/

Ultron · Feb 21, 2019

OmegaDragon said:
I've been hearing about Dungeon World (and Savage World?) in this topic for a while. Sounds really interesting. How does it briefly work? It has a system where the GM reacts to the players failure right? Is it still dice-based for success/failure?

This flowchart is a good way to explain the general flow of actions in Dungeon World or other Powered by the Apocalypse games:

This applies all the time, because there isn't a distinction between combat or not combat. Generally the GM will describe the situation based on the current narrative, possibly making some "moves". Moves, in the GM context are descriptive stuff like "Put someone in a spot" or "Show signs of an approaching threat". Then they ask the players "what do you do". Up to that point it isn't really that different from D&D. As the players describe their actions they're generally free to do describe whatever they want and can do just free form narration with the GM responding in kind, but at some point will likely trigger a player move, which can result is dice rolling.

A example of a move trigger is "when you attack an enemy in melee" for Hack and Slash, or "when you closely study a situation of person" for Discern Realities (see the basic move list on the DW SRD here). At that point the rules of the game come in and will usually say to roll 2d6 and what stat to add to those dice. On a 10+ you'll accomplish your thing and get a benefit, on a 7-9 you'll succeed but with a cost, and on a 6 or lower you "fail".

But the failures aren't "you don't do the thing". Any time a failure happens the GM is by the rules supposed to make a new move that changes the situation in a substantive way by "making a move as hard as they want". Sometimes it's pretty straightforward with you failing in melee and the monster damaging you, or you failing to sneak by a guard and them now chasing you. But it doesn't have to be. In melee, a monster could instead knock your sword out of your hand, take you hostage, or kick you off a cliff etc. If you fail to investigate a room, but there isn't an interesting way for the situation in that room to escalate, the GM can take that opportunity to have something dangerous elsewhere in the world escalate and give the players a forewarning of it (the GM move "Show signs of an approaching threat").

I like all this because it gives the GM the ability to keep things interesting without relying on dice rolls and damage numbers ticking down. There shouldn't be fights in Dungeon World where it's just two characters taking turns rolling dice at each other. First, because the GM literally rolls no dice, and second because the system encourages things changing up. You can do this stuff in D&D to, but it feels more restrictive because of the strict action limits and can get stymied by your monsters and NPCs just rolling bad. You don't roll dice as a GM in Dungeon World, so you're free to have the thing that keeps the combat interesting happen with out "cheating".

Don't you get a feedback loop where you're focused on one player? When do you decide to turn your attention to the other players.

This can happen, but the rolls are so fast to resolve it's just 2d6 + X and then check whether they got 1-6, 7-9, or 10+ so that at least you're not stuck doing a bunch of math and are mostly always involved in narration. Also, there isn't a strict initiative order, so you can use moves to bounce around people and make sure everyone's in the action. In the example I gave before, if it made sense from how things had been described up till then, you could pull another character in by saying something like "Kal'dorn, you were about to shoot your arrow when the Goliath behind you grabbed you around the waist, lifted you in the air, and is about to throw you off the skybarge! Hazel, you're the closest to Kal and see this happening! What do you do?!" So you can use move results to bounce the spotlight around and make sure people are involved. Sometimes you do definitely just need to go "Hazel, you killed that orc, and haven't acted for a bit here. *describe remaining combat situation* what do you do?"

Can you explain why your example wouldnt really work in DnD? Because a DnD player would expect a roll (which doesn't happen in Dungeon World?).

I feel like it wouldn't really work because you're restricted to what you can do by initiative, actions, and rolls if you're playing fair as the DM in D&D.

ShadowSwordmaster · Feb 21, 2019

Some new info about the upcoming Age of Sigmar TTRPG.
http://cubicle7.co.uk/age-of-sigmar-cover-reveal-update/

Pixel Grotto · Feb 28, 2019

Any thoughts on Ghosts of Saltmarsh here, especially from people familiar with the old Saltmarsh modules?

I'm looking forward to getting some nautical rules and a potential island setting that can be picked up and placed into any world.

ShadowSwordmaster · Feb 28, 2019

I heard it is one of the best adventures at that time.

Fairy Godmother · Mar 1, 2019

https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Saltmarsh-Hardcover-Adventure/dp/0786966750/
42% off on Amazon!

Edit: I love singular modules collection like these, easy to pop in your own campaign.

The ship rules should be a revision of Unearthed Arcana rule.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/ships-and-sea

Ace Harding · Mar 1, 2019

Anyone have good actual play recommendations (podcast or YT)? I'm almost done making my way through the Adventure Zone and I'm going to be really sad when I'm all caught up. I've tried a few others but none seem to have the same kind of combination of storytelling and chemistry. I don't necessarily need all the laughs, just solid production value, chemistry and a good GM. System agnostic.

Syril · Mar 1, 2019

Ace Harding said:
Anyone have good actual play recommendations (podcast or YT)? I'm almost done making my way through the Adventure Zone and I'm going to be really sad when I'm all caught up. I've tried a few others but none seem to have the same kind of combination of storytelling and chemistry. I don't necessarily need all the laughs, just solid production value, chemistry and a good GM. System agnostic.

I like Critical Role.

Old_King_Coal · Mar 2, 2019

Ace Harding said:
Anyone have good actual play recommendations (podcast or YT)? I'm almost done making my way through the Adventure Zone and I'm going to be really sad when I'm all caught up. I've tried a few others but none seem to have the same kind of combination of storytelling and chemistry. I don't necessarily need all the laughs, just solid production value, chemistry and a good GM. System agnostic.

The one-shot podcast network has a bunch of shows. The main one, one-shot, has the GM James take a bunch of guests through a one shot session of a different RPG every week. The second main show, campaign, is a long-running campaign using the Star Wars Edge of the Empire system. Though I think they finished that one recently and started a new campaign, no idea what system.

I've not listened to Adventue Zone myself but from what I've heard about it I'd say the tone is not dissimilar. And many of the guests, including all three campaign players, are from Chicago's improv theatre scene. So unsurprisingly they are amazing at RPG's. I'd recommend campaign, it's one of the funniest things I've ever listened to.

http://oneshotpodcast.com/actual-play/campaign/the-characters/page/13/

Capt_Shanu · Mar 5, 2019

Friendly reminder, there is a Pathfinder bundle over at Humble Bundle for another 16 hours. https://www.humblebundle.com/books/...ayout_index_2_layout_type_threes_tile_index_3

Some great stuff in there if you want to fill out your library for cheap.

jon bones · Mar 5, 2019

Ace Harding said:
Anyone have good actual play recommendations (podcast or YT)? I'm almost done making my way through the Adventure Zone and I'm going to be really sad when I'm all caught up. I've tried a few others but none seem to have the same kind of combination of storytelling and chemistry. I don't necessarily need all the laughs, just solid production value, chemistry and a good GM. System agnostic.

Androids & Aliens is wonderful - it is Starfinder with excellent production values, crew & GM.

If you want horror - The Infinite Bad is your pick.

Lastly, One Shot is a great rotating game podcast but the production values are very hit or miss.

Arrrammis · Mar 5, 2019

Ace Harding said:
Anyone have good actual play recommendations (podcast or YT)? I'm almost done making my way through the Adventure Zone and I'm going to be really sad when I'm all caught up. I've tried a few others but none seem to have the same kind of combination of storytelling and chemistry. I don't necessarily need all the laughs, just solid production value, chemistry and a good GM. System agnostic.

I really enjoy the Unexpectables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12_OHnrD_lg&list=PLPiMfSTpeu9Y9ElnicvnAjLzlQgVI62ms
Monty (the DM) is amazing at describing the world and characters, and the players all bring something interesting to the table. It starts out kind of rough as players feel out their characters and improve on the tech of the stream, but it's one of my favorite ongoing worlds. There was a session 0 before the stream, but they do a fair job of covering it. They also list a podcast version on Google play and itunes, which recaps the series so far and picks up with the streams on episode 13.

Ultron · Mar 5, 2019

Friends at the Table is pretty great! I'd start with their season called Counterweight. Or for a shorter thing their play of Fall of Magic is just delightful and a good intro to their style. And Austin Walker, the GM for it, is an absolute inspiration for me as a GM. He does such a great job of being a fan of the characters while also being true to the fiction.

Brashnir · Mar 6, 2019

Syril said:
I like Critical Role.

Critical Role is the gold standard, and by far the most popular one out there.

Though there is also like 200 4-hour episodes, so it can be a bit daunting to tackle. Even if you start with Campaign 2, it's still over 50 episodes.

Pixel Grotto · Mar 7, 2019

Pathfinder Second Edition releasing August 1. The new books look quite pretty.

Anyone here who tried the playtest and might be checking this out once it releases? As someone who started with tabletop RPGs via D&D 5e, I kinda feel like I'm ready to experiment a little with the extra crunch of PF. But will be waiting for impressions to pour in before I do any purchasing.

Mewzard · Mar 10, 2019

Pixel Grotto said:
Pathfinder Second Edition releasing August 1. The new books look quite pretty.

Anyone here who tried the playtest and might be checking this out once it releases? As someone who started with tabletop RPGs via D&D 5e, I kinda feel like I'm ready to experiment a little with the extra crunch of PF. But will be waiting for impressions to pour in before I do any purchasing.

Sadly, I never got to playtest it (my group was running like three games as is, lol), but I rather enjoyed a lot of the ideas going into it. I'm looking forward to seeing the end result as while I enjoy Pathfinder First Edition, I'd like to give a go at a game that's a little less cobbled together patchwork fixes, but with more complexity than D&D Fifth Edition.

EdibleKnife · Mar 13, 2019

Just discovered the OneShot podcast network for anyone interested in Actual Play casts. They have both industry related shows like reviews and discussions about the craft of making TTRPGs as well as multiple genre actual play podcasts. The namesake OneShot podcast has several multi episode seasons (~1-5 episodes on average) ranging from Numenera to Ryutama to MonsterHearts2. A separate podcast on the network called The Woman With Hollow Eyes is an Invisible Sun series that recently started is about 4 episodes in right now.
EDIT: And of course I'm late to the party lol Still I have no problem adding to the chorus of people praising the OneShot network.

OneShot seems pretty diverse but I was in the mood for finding out if there are any actual play casts primarily filled with black women or women of color in general? I always enjoy supporting black geek media made by women such as the Pretty, Brown & Nerdy channel on YT.

bear force one · Mar 22, 2019

Highly recommend the new Morgrave Miscellany from DM Guild. A wonderful add-on to the Eberron book from last year by the same authors.
164 pages at $14.95

Deleted member 49179 · Mar 26, 2019

Did any of you saw that? Holy shit!

https://kotaku.com/rpg-publisher-says-chinese-government-burned-every-copy-1833590629

"RPG Publisher Says Chinese Government Burned Every Copy Of Their Latest Book"

Sons of the Singularity, a small publisher of RPGs, ran a Kickstarter last year for a Call of Cthulu sourcebook, successfully raising over $20,000. Called The Sassoon Files, it was finally printed last week, only for the publisher to claim that the Chinese government then stepped in and burned every copy.

Covner says that, according to the manufacturers, a Chinese government official inspected the supernatural-themed RPG books, determined they violated Chinese law—despite being bound for a foreign market—and demanded that every copy be destroyed within 24 hours.

Apparently, the book is about a campaign set in historical 1920s Shanghai...

Seriously, what the hell? Somebody missed some paperwork? Overzealous Chinese officials?

ShadowSwordmaster · Mar 26, 2019

Static_Void said:
Did any of you saw that? Holy shit!

https://kotaku.com/rpg-publisher-says-chinese-government-burned-every-copy-1833590629

"RPG Publisher Says Chinese Government Burned Every Copy Of Their Latest Book"

Apparently, the book is about a campaign set in historical 1920s Shanghai...

Seriously, what the hell? Somebody missed some paperwork? Overzealous Chinese officials?

China is going crazy with this stuff.

Pixel Grotto · Mar 27, 2019

Static_Void said:
Did any of you saw that? Holy shit!

https://kotaku.com/rpg-publisher-says-chinese-government-burned-every-copy-1833590629

"RPG Publisher Says Chinese Government Burned Every Copy Of Their Latest Book"

Apparently, the book is about a campaign set in historical 1920s Shanghai...

Seriously, what the hell? Somebody missed some paperwork? Overzealous Chinese officials?

Seems like the module has some touchy stuff in it like a focus on the Communist vs the Nationalists and other assorted political history that could be sensitive. Or, the printer they chose just didn't like the art and shredded it for some reason.

Either way it may be a setback, but it's also great inadvertent promotion for this adventure. I'm gonna get a copy eventually and I'm sure lots of others who hadn't heard of The Sassoon Files are now intrigued after hearing this.

dragonchild · Mar 27, 2019

Pisses off the Chinese government = worth a look

Is the story verifiable though? Only source I see is the publisher so they could be trying to fake a Streisand Effect.

Pixel Grotto · Mar 27, 2019

dragonchild said:
Pisses off the Chinese government = worth a look

Is the story verifiable though? Only source I see is the publisher so they could be trying to fake a Streisand Effect.

Well, they posted an update to their Kickstarter page and it's a tiny two man publisher trying to deliver to backers who wanted the print version. I highly doubt they'd make something this up.

Reddit post here from one of the creators has more details.

It was a government official who ordered the print run destroyed; it's not like Xi Jinping took notice and said destroy it. So it is true and correct to say that this was a government action. But in all likelihood, it was a dumbass local official who got nervous when he saw certain images inside the book.

I had at times said the book was burned, but probably the book was pulped. I misunderstood the salesman who talked to me about it and I got an idea stuck in my mind. And as others have pointed out, burning is the proper response because that is how you deal with books that contain dangerous secret ;-)

We got our money back. We will have a new printer by the end of the week. Backers will get the book. And for backers that did not get the PDF, please send me message via Kickstarter to let me know.

Some have asked what content the Chinese official found sensitive. The Sassoon Files contains photographic images of Zhou Enlai, Chiang Kai-shek, Empress Dowager Cixi, Big Eared Du, and other historical figures. It contains images of Mythos monsters, including an incarnation of a god which appears to have nipples. It contains images of the flag of the Republic of China; that flag is shown on TV in historical TV show, but it's also the flag of the Republic of China on Taiwan. It has a fake historical poster of PLA soldiers fighting the good fight against Cthulhu. In it's textual content, it includes story-elements of time travel, reincarnation, interactions with Christian cultists (or Christians who think they are Christian but are worshiping something else), possession, alien serial murderers, and world-ending plagues (that originate in China).

So there is a little bit of content that would make the Chinese government official nervous about allowing this to be published in China through official distribution channels. But this did not matter in the past nor should have mattered now because the book was made for export and in the past that was not checked.

dragonchild · Mar 28, 2019

Ah, thanks. Still self-sourced but the way they're downplaying the details makes it all seem much more plausible.

absolutbro · Mar 28, 2019

Official Acquisitions Incorporated source book for D&D 5e coming from WotC.

I have no real feelings on this, since I have never follow AI at all.

Metal B · Apr 1, 2019

Hey, my RPG group just decided to throw me out! I originally suggested to host a short one-shoot, because two players were going on vacation. So they called to have Skype to talk about it and then directly hit me with the news. But i wasn't supprised. We just got a new player, there were some tension and i overheard some words ...
I'm fine with it, because i wanted to leave multiple times myself. I joined them, because i just moved to a new city and wanted to make some friends ... and that never worked out. And many were terrible at the game and role-playing.

The main DM said once to me, that i am the best player in the group, so i know, that another player, which tried to be in power and didn't liked me, forced me out. Since they know each other for years, i didn't had a chance against him ... But it took him some years at least.

I'm just angry, that i didn't leaved earlier and wasted my time ... I thought, maybe i was over reacting, but i should just go with my guts.

bmfrosty · Apr 1, 2019

Metal B It's hard to remember to listen to your gut. It's important.

Pixel Grotto · Apr 2, 2019

Metal B said:
Hey, my RPG group just decided to throw me out! I originally suggested to host a short one-shoot, because two players were going on vacation. So they called to have Skype to talk about it and then directly hit me with the news. But i wasn't supprised. We just got a new player, there were some tension and i overheard some words ...
I'm fine with it, because i wanted to leave multiple times myself. I joined them, because i just moved to a new city and wanted to make some friends ... and that never worked out. And many were terrible at the game and role-playing.

The main DM said once to me, that i am the best player in the group, so i know, that another player, which tried to be in power and didn't liked me, forced me out. Since they know each other for years, i didn't had a chance against him ... But it took him some years at least.

I'm just angry, that i didn't leaved earlier and wasted my time ... I thought, maybe i was over reacting, but i should just go with my guts.

That sucks to hear. Hope you can bounce back and find another group more suited to your talents.

Playing RPGs is one of the most fascinating - and socially difficult - group activities that exists because of stuff like this. Sometimes the people you roll with aren't necessarily the best people to roleplay with, and sometimes people who aren't your normal friends are incredible RPG partners. Good luck with finding different folks to play with and don't let yourself feel down. It happens a lot.

Metal B · Apr 2, 2019

Thanks you two for the friendly answers.

Ondor · Apr 4, 2019

Question for DM's out there running homebrew camaigns. I've played in homebrew and I've DM'ed a couple modules and a bunch of one shots but this will be my first time running a homebrew campaign.

How do you deal with story? Do you have a beginning, middle, end plotted out? Do you dump a bunch of plothooks in the world and wait for them to pick one up? Do you have self-contained arcs you have lined up?

I have lots of ideas and stories to tell but I just don't know when to use them or how far along to plot them out.

dragonchild · Apr 4, 2019

Speaking as someone who learned this the hard way, at players' expense: If you have a story to tell, you're not a DM. You're a writer.

You can't (and shouldn't) control the players, so while there's something to be said for story, a good adventure's structure is very different from a conventional narrative. It's more. . . fragmented. I'll have bits of beginning and middle and end and plot hooks and self-contained arcs, but instead of a fixed sequence, it's a mixture of locations, MacGuffins, autonomous NPCs, and some event triggers. It also helps to have some random maps & encounters in a grab bag in case they really go off the rails. It's a wasted effort to meticulously plan an encounter that the PCs bypass by a league, and it's rarely successful to shoehorn the encounter back into their path just so it gets used.

Ironically, it's probably helpful to think of the DM as NOT the storyteller. The players create the story, but they're like those film directors that cast themselves as the star, delegate everything menial, show up without a plan, and make wholesale changes to the script on the fly. The DM is in charge of the extras, sets, props, and a rushed script of which 90% is going to be re-written between takes so why try to make it perfect. So the key is to write a loose script and build up a pile of flexible pieces to give the illusion of detail. In a meta sense it's kind of like making a Roger Corman film, I guess.

That's not to say there can't be structure. Unlike a director, the players don't make the rules or setting. So for example, you can create a BBEG out to destroy the world, who can only be damaged by the Sword of a Thousand Truths, which can only be found at the bottom of the Swamp of Despair, whose location is known only to the Old Man from Scene 24. That will likely lead to a linear sequence, but there's a subtle yet very important difference between going, "OK, the players will go to the Old Man, then to the Swamp of Despair, then acquire the Sword. . ." and just laying out the pieces. For starters, you can see that all you have is two NPCs, a MacGuffin, and 2-3 locations. Your map & cast are pretty sparse. In a linear narrative, you're tempted to add more events and sequences and characters to pad it out. The story becomes increasingly fragile and complex, a Rube Goldberg machine broken up by the smallest distraction. In a non-linear structure, you add more NPCs with their own agendas, locations between the locations, etc., and let the chips fall where they may. The things the PCs do and the order in which they do them matters less, but by design, the odds they'll hit everything you've prepared go way down.

Skaterboy · Apr 4, 2019

I have less experience as a tabletop DM than I do as Online GM. I used to run Forum games and one of the things I was able to apply to IRL GMing was as Dragonchild said don't come at this with a story to tell.
Telling a Story essentially means forcing your players into situations they might not want to be into and they'll likely rebel in that instance.
If you can't satisfactorily respond to the rebellion that's when shit gets bad.
IRL this could damage a friendship, online it'll cause dwindling player counts.

Brashnir · Apr 4, 2019

Ondor said:
Question for DM's out there running homebrew camaigns. I've played in homebrew and I've DM'ed a couple modules and a bunch of one shots but this will be my first time running a homebrew campaign.

How do you deal with story? Do you have a beginning, middle, end plotted out? Do you dump a bunch of plothooks in the world and wait for them to pick one up? Do you have self-contained arcs you have lined up?

I have lots of ideas and stories to tell but I just don't know when to use them or how far along to plot them out.

The key to a good dynamic campaign is that you don't plan a story, but rather you plan a conflict. There should be something going on in the world which will - either immediately or eventually - affect the players.

Once you have an idea for the central conflict, you take some time and think about some rough ideas for three possible outcomes:

1 - The players follow the path as presented to them by the DM.
2 - The players actively work against the path as presented by the DM.
3 - The players completely ignore the path as presented by the DM.

If your idea doesn't make for a potentially fun campaign in all three scenarios, it's time to workshop the concept and tweak things so it is.

As an example, here's the last campaign arc I ran:

A war had just ended, and the players were presented with a task. There were a series of magical seals around the land which protected it from invasion from other planes. I didn't even decide which plane or planes were the threat as I was planning the campaign. I only made that decision when it became important. The seals potency deteriorated over time and they needed to be periodically checked up on. The players were hired by Rabnick, the captain of the guard and given vials of magic stuff which needed to be applied to the seals to restore them.

It became clear quickly that Rabnick was taking orders from Countess Meridia, wife of the ruling noble. Meridia, unbeknownst to Rabnick and the players had tainted the vials such that instead of repairing the seals, it would actually destroy them.

Eventually, after destroying half of the seals - see scenario 1 above, the players got wise to the plot, and decided to take Meridia (and Rabnick, because they thought he was in on it) down - see scenario 2 above. However, on their way back to confront them, they took a trip through a forest which had an extremely thin barrier to the Feywild because it was the most direct path back. The 6 days they spent trudging across the Feywild turned into 6 months when they rolled on the Feywild time dilation chart. See scenario 3 above.

During this six months, the Countess had advanced her plan with another group of adventurers whom I had already set up as mostly off-screen rivals to the players' party. They had destroyed the rest of the seals, and were preparing to start the process for opening up a permanent portal to another plane in a ruin where several of the previous adventures had taken place. This city was destroyed the last time a portal was opened, a fact the players knew. They confronted Rabnick, who convinced him that he was on their side. Together they challenged Meridia and had a big confrontation in the throne room. Meridia and most of the rival adventuring party escaped, and they found the Count dead in his own bed - a dagger bearing his family crest buried in his heart.

They made their way to the site where the portal was expected to open, and they got there right as the process had finished. I still hadn't decided until the week I ran this adventure where the portal was going to open to, or what Meridia's true nature was. I decided it was going to be the Astral Plane and Meridia was a Githyanki, because I loved the image of a giant portal opening and a shitload of Gith riding Red Dragons and airships flying out of it and fucking everything up.

The players were standing basically on the site of the portal as it opened, and it engulfed them. After a bit of getting their bearings, they eventually confronted Meridia on an airship set to leave the portal. They defeated her (2 of the other adventurers escaped) and plane shifted out with a scroll I had given them a few adventures before.

That's where the arc ended. I have just started the next arc with a new central conflict (which should be pretty obvious given how this one ended)

As for setting up hooks in the world, I just kind of play it by ear. Depending on the urgency of the situation it may not make sense for the players to do much in the way of side quests, or it might be interesting to dangle some out there. I try to pay attention to what sorts of things my players latch onto and create NPCs and plot hooks around them. Even if they're taking a pretty direct path towards an end goal, there's usually a way to get something personal in there. For instance, when my players first arrived in the ruined city in the campaign I just described, they found a destroyed temple of Bahamut there, which had some pretty interesting things for the Dragonborn Paladin in the group.

So yeah, I don't plan a story, I plan a conflict. The story generally writes itself once you have a good conflict. Matt Collville's Running the Game youtube series has a lot of good advice as well (the first several videos you can probably skip - he gets to the bigger campaign building ideas further on in the series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Y...Bzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&ab_channel=MatthewColville

Pixel Grotto · Apr 4, 2019

I recommend Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master for advice on how to plot a decent campaign without falling into the trap of telling a specific story with steps that must be undertaken.

He has an 8-part system of prep that can be done in about 30 minutes to an hour and essentially serves as the framework to creating a good session. As someone who previously used to plan his campaigns SUPER METICULOUSLY (to the point of it being exhausting) this book has helped me settle back and learn to be looser, which is a good thing when DMing.

Ondor · Apr 4, 2019

Brashnir said:
The key to a good dynamic campaign is that you don't plan a story, but rather you plan a conflict. There should be something going on in the world which will - either immediately or eventually - affect the players.

Once you have an idea for the central conflict, you take some time and think about some rough ideas for three possible outcomes:

1 - The players follow the path as presented to them by the DM.
2 - The players actively work against the path as presented by the DM.
3 - The players completely ignore the path as presented by the DM.

If your idea doesn't make for a potentially fun campaign in all three scenarios, it's time to workshop the concept and tweak things so it is.

As an example, here's the last campaign arc I ran:

A war had just ended, and the players were presented with a task. There were a series of magical seals around the land which protected it from invasion from other planes. I didn't even decide which plane or planes were the threat as I was planning the campaign. I only made that decision when it became important. The seals potency deteriorated over time and they needed to be periodically checked up on. The players were hired by Rabnick, the captain of the guard and given vials of magic stuff which needed to be applied to the seals to restore them.

It became clear quickly that Rabnick was taking orders from Countess Meridia, wife of the ruling noble. Meridia, unbeknownst to Rabnick and the players had tainted the vials such that instead of repairing the seals, it would actually destroy them.

Eventually, after destroying half of the seals - see scenario 1 above, the players got wise to the plot, and decided to take Meridia (and Rabnick, because they thought he was in on it) down - see scenario 2 above. However, on their way back to confront them, they took a trip through a forest which had an extremely thin barrier to the Feywild because it was the most direct path back. The 6 days they spent trudging across the Feywild turned into 6 months when they rolled on the Feywild time dilation chart. See scenario 3 above.

During this six months, the Countess had advanced her plan with another group of adventurers whom I had already set up as mostly off-screen rivals to the players' party. They had destroyed the rest of the seals, and were preparing to start the process for opening up a permanent portal to another plane in a ruin where several of the previous adventures had taken place. This city was destroyed the last time a portal was opened, a fact the players knew. They confronted Rabnick, who convinced him that he was on their side. Together they challenged Meridia and had a big confrontation in the throne room. Meridia and most of the rival adventuring party escaped, and they found the Count dead in his own bed - a dagger bearing his family crest buried in his heart.

They made their way to the site where the portal was expected to open, and they got there right as the process had finished. I still hadn't decided until the week I ran this adventure where the portal was going to open to, or what Meridia's true nature was. I decided it was going to be the Astral Plane and Meridia was a Githyanki, because I loved the image of a giant portal opening and a shitload of Gith riding Red Dragons and airships flying out of it and fucking everything up.

The players were standing basically on the site of the portal as it opened, and it engulfed them. After a bit of getting their bearings, they eventually confronted Meridia on an airship set to leave the portal. They defeated her (2 of the other adventurers escaped) and plane shifted out with a scroll I had given them a few adventures before.

That's where the arc ended. I have just started the next arc with a new central conflict (which should be pretty obvious given how this one ended)

As for setting up hooks in the world, I just kind of play it by ear. Depending on the urgency of the situation it may not make sense for the players to do much in the way of side quests, or it might be interesting to dangle some out there. I try to pay attention to what sorts of things my players latch onto and create NPCs and plot hooks around them. Even if they're taking a pretty direct path towards an end goal, there's usually a way to get something personal in there. For instance, when my players first arrived in the ruined city in the campaign I just described, they found a destroyed temple of Bahamut there, which had some pretty interesting things for the Dragonborn Paladin in the group.

So yeah, I don't plan a story, I plan a conflict. The story generally writes itself once you have a good conflict. Matt Collville's Running the Game youtube series has a lot of good advice as well (the first several videos you can probably skip - he gets to the bigger campaign building ideas further on in the series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Y...Bzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_&ab_channel=MatthewColville

This was an incredibly detailed response and exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate this.

Pixel Grotto said:
I recommend Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master for advice on how to plot a decent campaign without falling into the trap of telling a specific story with steps that must be undertaken.

He has an 8-part system of prep that can be done in about 30 minutes to an hour and essentially serves as the framework to creating a good session. As someone who previously used to plan his campaigns SUPER METICULOUSLY (to the point of it being exhausting) this book has helped me settle back and learn to be looser, which is a good thing when DMing.

I did consider the super meticulous route so I think I'll check this out to help restrain me. Thanks for the recommendation!

Metal B · Apr 4, 2019

Ondor said:
Question for DM's out there running homebrew camaigns. I've played in homebrew and I've DM'ed a couple modules and a bunch of one shots but this will be my first time running a homebrew campaign.

How do you deal with story? Do you have a beginning, middle, end plotted out? Do you dump a bunch of plothooks in the world and wait for them to pick one up? Do you have self-contained arcs you have lined up?

I have lots of ideas and stories to tell but I just don't know when to use them or how far along to plot them out.

Here is my framework for a campagne, which worked so far for me:

Elevator Pitch
Try to pin down in a few sentence, what do you wanna archive with your adventure. Do you want your player to survive a dangerous island? Be part of a gang war, where they have to chose side? Experience all facets of an weird country?
If you have a mission statement, you can weight all future ideas and scenarios against it to see if they fit with your overall idea.
Upside down Flow-Chart
Next try to build a Flow-Chart, where you pin down keywords and a few sentence, and visualize the flow of your campagne. Best you start with a clear end-goal in mind and think how the player will find there way there. You can have alternate ways, a different number of "Keys" (items, events, characters) to unlock the next parts and side-quests to make a less linear story.
Don't go in detail at this point! Nothing should be set in stone here, since the flow of the story, the decisions of the players or simply the dice can and will change your plans. Don't be afraid to change the flow-chart, when things change drastically, and go with the flow, if new ideas were generated in a session or people don't like aspects of it.
As long as you have an idea, where things should be moving, you can be free in how to get to the goals.

What i also found helpful, was creating different chapters in the Flow-Charts. This gives you milestones, which help planning out your next sessions.
Create Keys
Keys can be anything, which is extreme important for your campagne. It can be an item, which is the center of the plot, the main opposent army, which tries to rule over the world, or the main city, where the story takes place. Since you have your Flow-Chart and Elevator Pitch, you should be able to pin-down your most important key elements. This is where you should put the most pre-work into. Understand how they function, what there goals are, how they are build and all the other details.
They act as the pillars of your campagne, that's why you should know them in detail. Having such constants, helps building new scenarios or answer questions on the fly, and still keep everything together.

That is also why, you should never change them much through the campaign! Otherwise your campagne will feel inconsistent for your players. If things go wrong (For example: Your players find a way to kill the villain too early and you find no logical way out of this situation.) It is always better to take the "L" instead of being inconsistent. Nothing is worse, then Deus Ex Machinas or plotholes for the players. You can always go back to your Flow Charts. There you will always find a new way to move the story around and there is always the option to create new keys.
Just don't create too many keys or the story becomes too complex to follow.
Just plan the next two sessions
The first three parts were the pre-work, now we are moving week by week. Since you have a plan, you can just plan your content for each week. Draw maps, create encounters, have a list of NPCs, setup puzzels, etc. Just don't do too much. Either your players will take double the time you planed or they will go into another direction. Then you can take the information form last session and work it into the next one. As long as you always have your Elevator Pitch, Flow-Chart and Keys, you should come up with new ideas every week or on the fly without much trouble and keep everything consistent. If you don't plan to far ahead, you will also not become too defensive with your content and your campagne.

You main goal should be each session, find reason to move players into a direction of a Key, challenge them to keep a Key or give then a reason, why they want the Key in the first place. Then them having those Keys, unlock next parts of the campagne and access to new Keys. I talk about it very abstract, because based on then nature of the Key, there many different options.

Never forget to have a good work life balance, when creating a campagne, so that you don't lose the fun at running the game.

Of course, everybody has his own methods. Just use the one, which fits for you.

dragonchild · Apr 4, 2019

Brashnir said:
As for setting up hooks in the world, I just kind of play it by ear. Depending on the urgency of the situation it may not make sense for the players to do much in the way of side quests, or it might be interesting to dangle some out there. I try to pay attention to what sorts of things my players latch onto and create NPCs and plot hooks around them.

There are concrete ways to go about it. Off the top of my head:

1) Make the players write a conflict. Pre-campaign, the PC background isn't just "stuff happened", but ties into why they're adventuring. They're seeking fortune to pay off a family debt, they're seeking revenge against someone, they're trying to restore their honor, searching for a lost loved one, need a cure for curse, whatever. They should go as far as name & describe the who/what that drives them, though you decide the where. Firmly set the expectation that what they create may never come up, but it gives the DM options to make things personal. Nice part is, you get them to do some of the work.
2) Drop a trail of bread crumbs. A classic example is Dragons of Despair. The PCs are given a large degree of freedom, but the overworld map is riddled with events and clues that emphasize the Blue Crystal Staff's significance and the location of Xak Tsaroth. Other areas are dead ends that give the PCs no reason to stick around. It's railroading, but it's indirect so it feels less invasive. This artifact is just really really important, so if you're not interested in it then why the hell are you an adventurer at all?
3) Eff it, just hand them the MacGuffin and make it their problem. You don't always have to design a gauntlet and then figure out how to get the players to run it; you have them start with the MacGuffin and take the fight to them. Rather common in suspense/spy stories -- guy with MacGuffin walks up to protagonist and dies, bad guys show up, chase is on. If that seems too cliche, one quick way to go about it is to review the players' inventories; arbitrarily decide something they bought during character creation is really really important, flesh out why (say, maybe a normal-looking sword scabbard has a coded map to treasure), don't tell them what it is (make them figure it out), and now every bandit and bounty hunter is looking for some folks matching the PCs' description. Just know when to give the players a reprieve -- even suspense movies give their heroes downtime.
4) Role-play the NPCs autonomously, not reactively. This is the stock solution to Brashnir's scenarios #2 and #3 -- the players either ignore your hooks or rebel. Say they realize they're carrying a MacGuffin, go "NOPE", and ditch everything. Well, even if the PCs don't have agendas, NPCs sure do. They'll just grab the scabbard-map and win. They won't wait for the PCs to stumble out of the tavern to put their plans in motion, and if they're overconfident, they won't even be subtle about it. For example, it's cliche but let's say an evil cleric is kidnapping folks to feed some beastie. Makes sense to target the most vulnerable, refugees and the homeless, out of sight. This is a bad hook because it's not clear how to make sure the PCs get wind of it. But say the BBEG is a despotic noble with an inexhaustible army of orcs. Shucks, wherever the PCs are, they could easily witness a kidnapping in broad daylight because A) who's gonna stop me, and B) show the poors who's in charge.
4) Keep the game clock moving. Similar to NPC agendas, world events also happen when they happen. Dragons of Despair does this as well. In fact, it's utilized every hook I've suggested so far. (I consider Dragons of Despair a masterpiece in weaving adventure hooks into the setting, maybe the best module ever written at dangling carrots & sticks without actually forcing anyone to do anything. Buy a copy of it or download a scan and study the overworld map structure. Just don't pick up its fondness for purple prose. Also, it kind of goes downhill in the second half. But, dat overworld map, man. . .) The random encounter tables include roving bands looking for the staff, and if the players keep fussing around, eventually the dragonarmies march and start razing everything in their path. The players are technically free to do whatever, maybe they can escape, but their options narrow the longer they take to make up their minds.

Ondor · Apr 4, 2019

Metal B said:
Here is my framework for a campagne, which worked so far for me:

Elevator Pitch
Try to pin down in a few sentence, what do you wanna archive with your adventure. Do you want your player to survive a dangerous island? Be part of a gang war, where they have to chose side? Experience all facets of an weird country?
If you have a mission statement, you can weight all future ideas and scenarios against it to see if they fit with your overall idea.

Upside down Flow-Chart
Next try to build a Flow-Chart, where you pin down keywords and a few sentence, and visualize the flow of your campagne. Best you start with a clear end-goal in mind and think how the player will find there way there. You can have alternate ways, a different number of "Keys" (items, events, characters) to unlock the next parts and side-quests to make a less linear story.
Don't go in detail at this point! Nothing should be set in stone here, since the flow of the story, the decisions of the players or simply the dice can and will change your plans. Don't be afraid to change the flow-chart, when things change drastically, and go with the flow, if new ideas were generated in a session or people don't like aspects of it.
As long as you have an idea, where things should be moving, you can be free in how to get to the goals.

What i also found helpful, was creating different chapters in the Flow-Charts. This gives you milestones, which help planning out your next sessions.

Create Keys
Keys can be anything, which is extreme important for your campagne. It can be an item, which is the center of the plot, the main opposent army, which tries to rule over the world, or the main city, where the story takes place. Since you have your Flow-Chart and Elevator Pitch, you should be able to pin-down your most important key elements. This is where you should put the mist pre-work into. Understand how they function, what there goals are, how they are build and all the other details.
They act as the pillars of your campagne, that's why you should know them in detail. Having such constants, helps building new scenarios or answer questions on the fly, and still keep everything together.

That is also why, you should never change them much through the campaign! Otherwise your campagne will feel inconsistent for your players. If things go wrong (For example: Your players find a way to kill the villain too early and you find no logical way out of this situation.) It is always better to take the "L" instead of being inconsistent. Nothing is worse, then Deus Ex Machinas or plotholes for the players. You can always go back to your Flow Charts. There you will always find a new way to move the story around and there is always the option to create new keys.
Just don't create too many keys or the story becomes too complex to follow.

Just plan the next two sessions
The first three parts were the pre-work, now we are moving week by week. Since you have a plan, you can just plan your content for each week. Draw maps, create encounters, have a list of NPCs, setup puzzels, etc. Just don't do too much. Either your players will take double the time you planed or they will go into another direction. Then you can take the information form last session and work it into the next one. As long as you always have your Elevator Pitch, Flow-Chart and Keys, you should come up with new ideas every week or on the fly without much trouble and keep everything consistent. If you don't plan to far ahead, you will also not become too defensive with your content and your campagne.

You main goal should be each session, find reason to move players into a direction of a Key, challenge them to keep a Key or give then a reason, why they want the Key in the first place. Then them having those Keys, unlock next parts of the campagne and access to new Keys. I talk about it very abstract, because based on then nature of the Key, there many different options.

Never forget to have a good work life balance, when creating a campagne, so that you don't lose the fun at running the game.

Of course, everybody has his own methods. Just use the one, which fits for you.

dragonchild said:
There are concrete ways to go about it. Off the top of my head:

1) Make the players write a conflict. Pre-campaign, the PC background isn't just "stuff happened", but ties into why they're adventuring. They're seeking fortune to pay off a family debt, they're seeking revenge against someone, they're trying to restore their honor, searching for a lost loved one, need a cure for curse, whatever. They should go as far as name & describe the who/what that drives them, though you decide the where. Firmly set the expectation that what they create may never come up, but it gives the DM options to make things personal. Nice part is, you get them to do some of the work.
2) Drop a trail of bread crumbs. A classic example is Dragons of Despair. The PCs are given a large degree of freedom, but the overworld map is riddled with events and clues that emphasize the Blue Crystal Staff's significance and the location of Xak Tsaroth. Other areas are dead ends that give the PCs no reason to stick around. It's railroading, but it's indirect so it feels less invasive. This artifact is just really really important, so if you're not interested in it then why the hell are you an adventurer at all?
3) Eff it, just hand them the MacGuffin and make it their problem. You don't always have to design a gauntlet and then figure out how to get the players to run it; you have them start with the MacGuffin and take the fight to them. Rather common in suspense/spy stories -- guy with MacGuffin walks up to protagonist and dies, bad guys show up, chase is on. If that seems too cliche, one quick way to go about it is to review the players' inventories; arbitrarily decide something they bought during character creation is really really important, flesh out why (say, maybe a normal-looking sword scabbard has a coded map to treasure), don't tell them what it is (make them figure it out), and now every bandit and bounty hunter is looking for some folks matching the PCs' description. Just know when to give the players a reprieve -- even suspense movies give their heroes downtime.
4) Role-play the NPCs autonomously, not reactively. This is the stock solution to Brashnir's scenarios #2 and #3 -- the players either ignore your hooks or rebel. Say they realize they're carrying a MacGuffin, go "NOPE", and ditch everything. Well, even if the PCs don't have agendas, NPCs sure do. They'll just grab the scabbard-map and win. They won't wait for the PCs to stumble out of the tavern to put their plans in motion, and if they're overconfident, they won't even be subtle about it. For example, it's cliche but let's say an evil cleric is kidnapping folks to feed some beastie. Makes sense to target the most vulnerable, refugees and the homeless, out of sight. This is a bad hook because it's not clear how to make sure the PCs get wind of it. But say the BBEG is a despotic noble with an inexhaustible army of orcs. Shucks, wherever the PCs are, they could easily witness a kidnapping in broad daylight because A) who's gonna stop me, and B) show the poors who's in charge.
4) Keep the game clock moving. Similar to NPC agendas, world events also happen when they happen. Dragons of Despair does this as well. In fact, it's utilized every hook I've suggested so far. (I consider Dragons of Despair a masterpiece in weaving adventure hooks into the setting, maybe the best module ever written at dangling carrots & sticks without actually forcing anyone to do anything. Buy a copy of it or download a scan and study the overworld map structure. Just don't pick up its fondness for purple prose. Also, it kind of goes downhill in the second half. But, dat overworld map, man. . .) The random encounter tables include roving bands looking for the staff, and if the players keep fussing around, eventually the dragonarmies march and start razing everything in their path. The players are technically free to do whatever, maybe they can escape, but their options narrow the longer they take to make up their minds.

I'm grateful for this advice too. You both have definitely mentioned some things I was struggling to figure out. I actually struggled with some of this with Curse of Strahd which I just finished running. Not enough urgency to keep them moving and not really knowing what to do with them after they've ignored my plot hooks (which they frequently tended to do).

Brashnir · Apr 4, 2019

dragonchild said:
There are concrete ways to go about it. Off the top of my head:

Yeah, I do some of all of those things. For the arc I just started, one of my players wanted to change characters. His new character is a druid, and asked if there were any druid orders in the world. I hadn't come up with any yet, because it never seemed important. But once he asked, we sat down and workshopped some ideas for druid orders. We came up with several, which are tied to various creature types (plant, beast, dragon, fey, etc) and I've decided to have them play a role in the upcoming conflict. I have already made up my mind on the role some of them will play, and will come up with some business for the others as the campaign goes on.

When I say I play things by ear, it's mostly that I don't plan those sorts of things in detail way in advance, but rather fit things into the campaign in places where they make sense based both on things I get from my players before the campaign, and things that come up during it that they seem interested in.

Ondor said:
I'm grateful for this advice too. You both have definitely mentioned some things I was struggling to figure out. I actually struggled with some of this with Curse of Strahd which I just finished running. Not enough urgency to keep them moving and not really knowing what to do with them after they've ignored my plot hooks (which they frequently tended to do).

I find personally that it's much easier to keep my players motivated when running my own homebrew stuff than when I'm running a prepared adventure since A) I have a much better grasp on the state of the world since I created it, and B) I am not beholden to pre-planned future events and encounters. There's a lot more freedom for me to just make something up that fits when I'm already making all of it up. And since i'm not trying to get to a pre-determined ending, there's also no pressure to make things go in a way that we get to it. In the arc I detailed earlier, my expectation was that the players would probably prevent the countess from opening the portal, and save the day - but that's not what happened. I'm actually kind of glad since this set up for a far more interesting final arc to the campaign. I already know the central conflict and don't need to come up with something new, really. I just need to come up with new adventures that fit into what's already there.

Like I said in the previous post, once you have a good conflict, the individual plots and adventures tend to write themselves. It's also easier to keep the players motivated when you have the ability to change the world based on their actions or inactions.

dragonchild · Apr 4, 2019

Metal B said:
If things go wrong (For example: Your players find a way to kill the villain too early and you find no logical way out of this situation.) It is always better to take the "L" instead of being inconsistent.

It is, but this kind of worst-case scenario is really quite avoidable. BBEGs have a lot to do, so they'll delegate down a chain of command. At 1st level, the PCs should be dealing with a lowly Lieutenant in the BBEG's army. This is in fact how the heroes are given a fighting chance -- the BBEG misallocates resources, and not really out of stupidity. Who summons a balrog to deal with some 1st-level scrubs?
I know, I know, the takeaway is that it's always better to roll with the punches than try to "undo" what the players do, and that's true, but I'm just not fond of this example.

As for detailing those keys, I say go wide, not deep. Voice of experience again, the BBEG does not need a twenty-page backstory, much less the Lieutenant. A recurring NPC needs a name, a personality, basic combat stats (make 'em ad hoc -- the players won't care if they don't know it's not by-the-book), a goal, a purpose, AND -- the secret sauce -- a quirk. For example, most innkeepers are chiseled from the same stone, and that's fine if all the PCs want is a place to sleep. Not everyone the PCs meet needs to be interesting, but if the PCs take an interest, you've got the quirk. The quirk gives you something outside the archetype to work with. Unfortunately, thinking up quirks on the fly can be challenging. Most people are tempted to go weird or overt, which only makes NPCs seem more one-dimensional, so what I like to do is go small. A daily ritual, a tune, a trinket, an absence of something common. For example, maybe the inn has a statue of a cat behind the bar. Was it created in honor of a pet? Is it a memento of a past adventure when a treasure map (now long gone) was hidden inside it? Is it an act of defiance against the Queen, who detests cats? See where I'm going with this, but don't immediately dwell on it, and don't go out of your way to let the players know about it. And for the love of pants, don't name the inn after the cat statue. It's just an internal memo at first, a buried seed to sprout only if there's an opportunity. The innkeeper is just a boring innkeeper, until being otherwise serves the interests of the campaign.
Everyone with something to say gets a quirk; the quirk is arguably more important than a name or physical description. You don't need to ponder the subtle differences between Guard A's ring mail vs. Guard B's scale mail (the players won't care), and personally I'm terrible at thinking up names so Imma only use one if the character's recurring. But you can, say, decide Guard A's spear has a ribbon on it. If the players ask, you think for a bit, and Guard A goes, "Oh, it's me daughter's. Poor girl died of the plague* three years ago; it's how I honor her memory." Players realize there's nothing to chase here, and you got worldbuilding in almost completely off the cuff out of a nameless guard. Get used to them and quirks are immensely more efficient than backstory or detailed physical descriptions. Might be a good idea to carry around a small notepad and think up quirks whenever you've got a few minutes to kill. You can literally pull them from your day-to-day surroundings IRL.

Locations are tougher. Detailed locations are nice, but you've only got so much time to prepare, which is why there's still a market for modules. So you gotta pick and choose what to spend time on, and here's where it's tempting to go all-or-nothing. However, it's probably better to give the players some meat along the way, than invest all your effort in where you think they're going to go and ignore everything in between. One problem with that is that players sometimes try to pick up on the meta. It's fine to flesh the crap out of location X on the map if all arcs lead to X, but if you go "oh nothing happens on the way to the inn" and then spend ten minutes describing everything about the inn and the innkeeper's cat statue, the players are gonna go, "Holy shit, that cat statue's gotta be really important!" when you were just world-building. Spare some detail for the scenery, but don't overdo anything. Again, Dragons of Despair (prose aside) strikes a good balance. Xak Tsaroth (the final dungeon) is huge, but most of the areas aren't that important. And if the PCs wander into a dead-end valley on the overworld map that has no purpose to the plot:

Kiri Valley
Boxed text: The forest darkens and thickens beside an ancient trail. A cold, dry stillness hovers in the air, and the trees are knotted and bent. Everything seems to watch you.
DM's note: An evil wizard died here long ago. Only his essence remains.

That's it. There's mood, there's world-building, there's a quirky detail initially kept from the players, but five sentences total and no compelling reason for the PCs to stick around.

*that's spreading throughout the land because the BBEG cast a curse on the kingdom but the guard won't say that because everyone damn well knows it's the BBEG's fault

Brashnir · Apr 4, 2019

dragonchild said:
It is, but this kind of worst-case scenario is really quite avoidable. BBEGs have a lot to do, so they'll delegate down a chain of command. At 1st level, the PCs should be dealing with a lowly Lieutenant in the BBEG's army. This is in fact how the heroes are given a fighting chance -- the BBEG misallocates resources, and not really out of stupidity. Who summons a balrog to deal with some 1st-level scrubs?
I know, I know, the takeaway is that it's always better to roll with the punches than try to "undo" what the players do, and that's true, but I'm just not fond of this example.

Excellent advice on the quirks. Reading it I found that I often do this subconsciously, but had never really thought about doing it intentionally. But almost all of my truly memorable NPCs had one. Sometimes it's as simple as a memorable voice, or something it's along the lines of the things you said. I'm going to add that to my things to think about when designing NPCs. The BBEG in my upcoming campaign arc has two heads, and I'm planning to use a Mic and voice modeler to pitch one head up and the other down when they speak, so I guess that's a pretty big quirk!

On the other BBEG stuff, I mostly agree as well. They shouldn't generally be easy for the players to get to, or sometimes even identify early on, but depending on the nature of my central conflict it can also be fun for the players to put things together and push the confrontation forward. This also links into the stuff you said about not over-designing your BBEG right off the bat. If you've decided that it's this creature type and this level but then the players put things together at a much lower level than they could possibly win a fight, you've over-designed yourself into a problem. I never put together the stats of my major villains until they're absolutely needed. If they're hiding something from the players, I also don't commit to that until it's truly needed. Maybe I'll have a way cooler idea in 4 months two weeks before the final confrontation. I do like to foreshadow, though - but sometimes that stuff can end up being red herrings or deliberate deceptions if I change my mind later. Players are only going to remember the quirk anyway. ;)

So I have had campaigns where the BBEG got clipped way earlier than I anticipated, but there's always room for another one. Maybe he was only really a henchman for the real boss. Maybe there was another bigger danger over the horizon that the players never even noticed because they were so focused on the original BBEG. Maybe the PCs have a slow period where they get some personal downtime and get to bask in their glory before another hook pulls them in a new direction and a slow build to the next BBEG begins. Many of my favorite sessions of D&D were when the PCs foiled my plans. I had a one-shot that I ran recently where the PCs decided to negotiate an alliance with the BBEGs rather than fight them, and instead turned their combined power against the organization they were working for to take control of it. It. Was. Awesome.

The greatest tool the DM has in their arsenal is that nothing is real in the game until it shows up. If the players going left when you wanted them to go right will cause an anticlimactic finish to a session, switch the left and right outcomes to make things work out in the more satisfying way. Always listen to your players at the table and pay attention to the things that they focus their attention on, and try to come up with some reason that it's interesting on the spot, even if you hadn't even planned for it to be a remarkable thing at all. Make the things they take interest in truly interesting whenever possible.

One last thing on that final point. Any time one of my players asks something like, "Is there any X here?" because they want to do something cool with X, I tell them as long as X is anything reasonable, just say what you want to do as if X is there. If it's fun, there will always be X there. Your players will consistently think of things that you couldn't have anticipated. Always indulge them whenever it's reasonable. If there's a bookcase in a room during an encounter, my players know they can always reasonably assume there's a huge tome, or a vial of murky liquid, or a heavy piece of art, or whatever else they need on it to do something cool. So while it's true that nothing in the world is real until the DM says it's there, this should also go for players whenever it's not something ridiculous. "No, there's not a Holy Avenger on the altar, but there is a sword leaning against it."

dragonchild · Apr 5, 2019

Brashnir said:
The BBEG in my upcoming campaign arc has two heads, and I'm planning to use a Mic and voice modeler to pitch one head up and the other down when they speak, so I guess that's a pretty big quirk!

Uh, I'm going to quibble here (purely for educational purposes and totes not because I'm a curmudgeonly old pedant) but that isn't what I'd call a "quirk" in the way I used the term yesterday. That is full-blown thinking up ways to make a major character distinctive, which is very much a reasonable thing to do for a campaign BBEG. Point is, if it's big, it's not a quirk.

"Quirks" are fleeting-thought, single-use add-ons to [template] NPCs, like an innkeeper or guard, so you don't have the PCs walking through a stock medieval fantasy town whenever named NPCs aren't around. It's certainly fine to add a quirk to your BBEG, and in fact I recommend giving a quirk to every NPC, even the ones you already spent time on. But it's nothing on the level of having two heads with different voices. Quirks are thought up quickly (that's the point -- if you've got 50 NPCs to role-play, including many off-the-cuff, you ain't got time to develop them all) and are generally superficial, at least to start. To reiterate, most go unmentioned -- the loud fat innkeeper is usually just another loud fat innkeeper. (I'm sure some talented folks here can think up a dozen different innkeepers of all shapes & sizes as they go, but I have zero creativity. My innkeepers tend to look & act the same.)
In my case, I absolutely suck at off-the-cuff DM-ing, so I need a pile of these in advance. Unused quirks can be recycled, of course -- what the players don't know, the DM gets away with. There's a bit of a knack to it, but you can start by just looking around. For example, I'm using a laptop with a conventional mouse. Oh, and there's a blue mug of coffee next to me. OK, "blue mouse" -- that's a quirk. I have no idea what the hell that means. I don't have to right now. It could be a plush toy the NPC keeps in a pocket. Or a tongue-in-cheek coat-of-arms. Or an actual mouse with blue fur -- maybe it has superpowers? Point is, I can tack that onto an otherwise stock NPC to expand if there's an occasion for it. Note since they come without context, you can adapt them to any sort of tone -- the coat-of-arms or superpowered mouse can be dropped into a light-hearted campaign, whereas a "dark & gritty" setting is likely to be mawkish with mementos. The fun part is that there's no knowing how far a quirk can go, because not even the DM knows. 99% are meaningless, but if the players take a liking to one, next thing you know, dat blue mouse is a silver dragon in disguise.
As you progress you can start thinking outside your immediate surroundings. As I mentioned briefly earlier, a quirk can be immaterial or even a lack of something. Maybe a orc's quirk is "missing right gauntlet". Why is the orc missing a gauntlet? Dunno. Can think up a story later. Point is, the two seconds I spent thinking that up gives me a means to turn that orc into something more than just another faceless mook.

You can apply quirks to locations and items as well. The cat statue in my previous post is arguably a location quirk. Note these aren't broad adjectives like "dirty" or "small", but superfluous details. Also note you want to avoid red herrings -- don't put a blood stain on the floor unless you want the PCs to spend the next hour inspecting every inch of the room. I wouldn't think up a separate quirk for everything -- the number of discrete items in any particular scene could well be in the hundreds -- but like I said, if you have a pre-made list of these you can apply them as occasions call for it.

dragonchild · Apr 5, 2019

Doing firearms research for my gaming system project and I just gotta say the alt-right propaganda battles being fought on Wikipedia are getting really fucking annoying.

Pixel Grotto · Apr 7, 2019

Man, I never realized how important pre-gens are at introducing people to D&D, mostly because I was super into making my own character when I started. But I ran half of the first chapter of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for a group with no prior RPG experience last night and despite it going quite well by the end, going through character creation w/ a group of 5 individuals with zero tabletop knowledge was a tough process. I sped through as fast as I could and it still took 2 hours. IMO there should be a big chapter in the Player's Handbook just with 20 assorted pre-gens or so, because the ones in the Starter Set ain't enough. All of my players said they appreciated the process of making their own characters at the end of our session, but I saw a lot of "WTF AM I LOOKING AT" as we were going through the actual process (ability mods & proficiency bonus seem to be the things that trip people up the most).

Next newbie group I DM for, I'm printing out a fat stack from fastcharacter.com and asking them to describe what they want to play in generic terms before letting them pick from that.

ShadowSwordmaster · Apr 7, 2019

dragonchild said:
Doing firearms research for my gaming system project and I just gotta say the alt-right propaganda battles being fought on Wikipedia are getting really fucking annoying.

How bad is it?

dragonchild · Apr 8, 2019

Wikipedia is heavily moderated so the tone is nowhere near the level of YouTube comments, but if your goal is to gather impartial information then the amateurism is infuriating. Trying to get a sense of how one weapon's accuracy compares to another's is an exercise in futility. But when history revisionism paths of alt-rights cross, it's a whole new level of derp.

The article on the M60 machine gun, for example. I'm trying to incorporate strengths and weaknesses of weaponry into my game, so things like reliability and design flaws really interest me. This is stuff you can easily gather data on, theoretically, but the doctoring of studies & reports is often problematic enough due to military higher-ups and contractors maneuvering for PR. But the M60 in particular borrowed design elements from Nazi Germany's MG42 (featured prominently in Saving Private Ryan), so we've got alt-right NRA fanbois and alt-right neo-Nazi "wehraboos" marking up the article with clear vendettas against one another.
I'd be all "let them fight" but in my case I can't just go out and find an M60 to test fire (or even if I could, I can't do that for every firearm out there), so it feels like I'm asking a bunch of 7th-grade dorks to do my homework.

What's particularly hilarious (if I wasn't trying to get shit done) is that gun nuts are obsessed with appearing studious, yet I've commented multiple articles for messing up unit conversions.

ShadowSwordmaster · Apr 8, 2019

dragonchild said:
Wikipedia is heavily moderated so the tone is nowhere near the level of YouTube comments, but if your goal is to gather impartial information then the amateurism is infuriating. Trying to get a sense of how one weapon's accuracy compares to another's is an exercise in futility. But when history revisionism paths of alt-rights cross, it's a whole new level of derp.

The article on the M60 machine gun, for example. I'm trying to incorporate strengths and weaknesses of weaponry into my game, so things like reliability and design flaws really interest me. This is stuff you can easily gather data on, theoretically, but the doctoring of studies & reports is often problematic enough due to military higher-ups and contractors maneuvering for PR. But the M60 in particular borrowed design elements from Nazi Germany's MG42 (featured prominently in Saving Private Ryan), so we've got alt-right NRA fanbois and alt-right neo-Nazi "wehraboos" marking up the article with clear vendettas against one another.
I'd be all "let them fight" but in my case I can't just go out and find an M60 to test fire (or even if I could, I can't do that for every firearm out there), so it feels like I'm asking a bunch of 7th-grade dorks to do my homework.

What's particularly hilarious (if I wasn't trying to get shit done) is that gun nuts are obsessed with appearing studious, yet I've commented multiple articles for messing up unit conversions.

I hope this works out for you then.

Tabletop RPG |OT| I cast a spell

User requested account closure

Community Resettler

Community Resettler

Backward compatible

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

User requested account closure

Community Resettler

Community Resettler

Community Resettler