GM Questions Thread

Good answer, thank you.
Now that i think about it my problem is that there often is little to none resolution session to session.
I really should try to improve that.

Not a GM, but I have a question. How legit would it be to be able to gain levels in another class after polymorphing into a humanoid after I permanent True Polymorph into a dragon?

Which system/edition?

5e, I'm just a little unsure about the nature of Change Shape. Is it a blank slate general example of that humanoid every time, or can I have a "template" change that includes shit I've learned as that shape? I know Shapechange specifically disallows class levels, but Change Shape doesn't mention it.

Well, the players are probably going to die outside of the BBEG's "chambers" because of this interloping, persistent enemy that's probably actually the deadliest thing around. The main focus enemy, the 'BBEG' is actually pretty harmless up close and will try and negotiate with the players. This guy doesn't have prisoners because it's not human.

Seconding both. Prisoners are incredibly convenient.

Also curses that will ghost dead party members, but force them to "haunt" the current locale. Better if these get set up way in advance though.

Probably the latter.

The thing I'm mostly worried about, in terms of one or two players not having anything to do, is the negotiation scene. It's in the primary enemy's best interest to have the PCs alone by themselves, because the PCs came across this situation after it developed, and everyone else just hates the primary enemy a whole lot, so I can appeal to the PCs' sympathies because they don't have the same bad history.

Also no curses, there's no magic.

I think it'd be nifty if it still affected muggles. At least as a drug.

If it's a hallucinogen you could create ambiguity around the validity of visions under the influence, or around the here and now realness of things seen.

Like maybe you see a friend of yours murdering a guy, and when you come down there's still a corpse. Did your friend murder the guy? Did someone else murder the guy and you saw them as your friend? Did the drug summon a physical doppelganger?

Two questions:
Aside from lowering hit chance (AC) or reducing direct damage (DR), is there anything that armour can do? Thinking of making an expanded armour list for my game.

Also, is there any system that doesn't resolve combat by turns? It's very clunky.

Goblin Punch has some excellent hallucinations rules.
goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/05/optional-rule-hallucinations.html

>Also, is there any system that doesn't resolve combat by turns? It's very clunky.
Well none of the PbtA system use turns however what you think of them will probably depend on other things. Other than that I'm not sure, the reason most games use turn systems is to allow multiple characters the chance to act and react, the only solutions would be to either have one side be entirely reactive (which is what PbtA games do) or to resolve the fight in one roll (which a lot of more narrative focused systems do)

>Pacing
Read the room. Pose questions to the party that are actually difficult in the course of play. Let them fight it out, and push to move forward when you can hear a clear majority. Or when people are losing interest. Point is you're not the only entertainer in the room here and you should give your party a chance to bring something of their own to the table.

Punctuate this with more straightforward win/lose gameplay. This can be combat, but depending on the game other shit may suffice. A lot of the time this will be brainpower light (relative to mystery or puzzle play, at least) and release any built up tension with a few climactic moments. Big rolls. Cool kills. Hell, a Benny Hill scenario where one dude drowns because he got KOd face down in a puddle still serves here. Done right this stuff can get people more energetic and loose and prevent them from getting bogged down in overthinking during the aforementioned BIG DECISIONS sections.

>Campaign overall
Save your biggest question/decision for just before the end of the session. For example, if the villains are going to hold an NPC hostage and demand the important artifact in exchange, DO THIS LAST. This means you don't have to prep all outcomes of the least predictable portion of your adventure. Instead, you find out the outcome of said unpredictable moment and have a whole week to prep the only outcome that matters: the one that actually happened. Moreover, making the climax of your session a difficult player choice will get them engaged. Flash or no, players care about shit they do more than the shit your world is doing. At first this can be a little disappointing to find out, but it really takes the pressure off of you when you figure out how to use this right.

So you want to leave allying with the big bad an open possibility, but that's less viable if one party member (or half the party) already hates the villain for valid reasons?

This is a good opportunity to give the players of dead characters "soldiers" who are actually spies for the enemy to begin with. Tell them in secret. Maybe even give them one or two concrete goals to accomplish secretly or sway the party into completing.

If things go south in the negotiation, you can let the players skip to less villain friendly prisoners. If the party gets slaughtered because half of them are spies and the other half doesn't want to go along it's at least a really entertaining flare out (though it's up to you to figure out if your group would be down for that).

You could also limit things to one spy to lower the odds of that TPK scenario.

Oh hey, that's not a bad idea, I can work something like that into the session. Also, once the players are in the lair, the primary enemy is pretty harmless. He's only dangerous because of numerous and powerful minions.

>minions are his thing
Even better. Good luck user.

>The Sword
OP's taste approved

Hey, i am having a little bit of writer's block / analysis paralysis:
Last session the PCs came across across the summer raiding camp of a group of orcs.
I had two fights planned: the "main one" and a "mop up" one.
Now the problem i have right now is that due to RL reasons we only had the first fight and that the Players hyped up the rest so much that i don't want to start up the session with the "wimpy" fight i already prepared but i am not clear on what they would actually face.

The only brake i have is that one Orc from the first fight managed to escape, so the camp will be prepared when they arrive, removing one reason why the second fight would have been easy.

Oh, and because i didn't mention it: The Orc Camp is about 7 Tents large and the players already killed the shamans.

> been running a savage worlds campaign for about 1.5 years
> one character hates humans, loves dinosaurs, thinks dinosaurs are superior to humans in all ways
> campaign has gone off the rails due to the fact that I don't railroad or even steer the campaign
> group has done the equivalent of hijacking the USS Nimitz, and have previous robbed a train of 100,000 gp, and shot a high general in front of dozens of his men
> they have stayed ahead of the law for now but they are pretty much doomed now
> friend wants campaign to have "helm's deep, but with dinosaurs" in it somewhere
> have a great ending in mind
> PCs get BTFO by country's fleet (It's just inevitable now, unfortunately)
> put in antimagic cages, offered a choice between execution and a chance to die "honorably"
> put down in canyon that would allow extraplanar army to outflank nation
> this extraplanar army has been their main threat for a while before they went full chaotic randumb
> they start fighting hundreds of these extraplanar soldiers and creatures, along with some other criminals similarly condemned to death
> halfway through battle, the dino-character gets contacted by one of these creatures' leaders, mentally
> offered his dream; to become a dinosaur permanently, in return for betraying his friends
> I honestly don't know what the player would choose

Thoughts? Pic related is my campaign summary, and I can go into further depth if people want me to.

Perhaps the orcs had some weird weapon, like cages of undead or bound demons, and the battle accidentally unleashed them.

Or another tribe of orcs arrives to finish off the wounded tribe, then attacks the PCs.

Also what system?

Second fight takes place in wooden fortifications. Old, dry wooden fortifications. For a camp they use half the year and yeah it's nice but they don't really need it.

Skeleton crew retreats as the party enters, but blocks off the exits. Lights old dry fort on fire. Rides off to join the main force on its journey to a moot that might bring all the neighboring tribes down on your head.

Also, pastoralist summer settlement should be a trade outpost, if a minor one. Party should have an opportunity to sense the trap in the spooky abandoned market, or when they see that the last folks out were civilians carrying a shitload of furs/silks/other minor valuables. Then the gates slam shut.

I mean... do they specifically know that? If they're getting amped up for the fight I don't know if they realize this.

If horrific fortification warfare isn't an option, probably something more like this: and just have some interruption by a third party.

>Perhaps the orcs had some weird weapon, like cages of undead or bound demons, and the battle accidentally unleashed them.
>the players already killed the shamans

New idea: The shamans were using magic to hold back a greater entity that has plagued this orc tribe for generations. Now that you've killed off all the shamans, nothing is holding it back and it comes forth into this world. The players come to the orc camp to find that all the orcs are dead or mentally enslaved, and the sky is snowing ash for a mile around. Either have the players defeat the THING now, or spin an entire arc out of it.

The players will be both amused and horrified at the result of their actions, and it'll add a lot of depth to the now extinct orc tribe.

Should I leave my group?

Every 6-8 sessions or so, they want to try a new system. Fine, in theory, I'm ok with that, I don't have any particular axes to grind, and I've always thought that system is less important than setting and worldbuilding and general plot construction.

But, since I'm usually slapping shit together with new systems, I don't have great system mastery. I compensate by fudging rolls, or changing encounter stats on the fly to make things close to where I wanted them to be.

Players found out last night, and it started a HUGE argument. Because I am apparently "cheating" them, and that if "I'm not up for the task" I shouldn't be in the DM chair.

I'm torn between telling them all to fuck off forever, or letting one or two of them try (and fail, which I am 100% certain will happen.) to live up to better standards. But I also know I'm not thinking at my clearest, so I wanted some outside objective opinions.

Okay, thanks for the input.
To give a few more infos:
The System is D&D 3.5 and the group is Level 7
The PCs already scouted out the Camp from a little distance.
The Camp is established as an saisonal outpost with little (obvious) defenses made up of about 7 Tents (pic related).

Speaking from a very encounter-design point, if the fight had happened as i planned there would have been one main boss (the Orc leader) as well as minions that would spawn somewhat regularly untill he's defeated (Orcs waking up).

But now i think this would be a bit simple, desu.

I also want to come up with something more creative as the "Shamans" they fought were surprisingly easy and i want to make it up with something more entertaining.

as a GM who also has to switch systems a lot I usually just make it clear that the first couple sessions of any new system are probably going to wind up being a bit slower and the encounters might be a bit worse whilst I figure things out. Other than that it's honestly just a matter of experience, the more systems you learn well the easier it'll get to pick up new ones quickly. For the time being you should just try and make your players understand that GMing changes system to system and you probably won't get it right away and if they want to play a new game then they have to take that into account.

You don't seem to be getting much out of GMing, and they seem to want a bunch of short or one off games anyway. That or they're unhappy with your games and were hoping a new set of rules would change things (which they can't if you fudge everything).

Whether you let someone else run or just quit is your call and depends on whether you'd be happy as a player. Business as usual sounds like a bad idea in either case.

Oh, and if there was something they were trying to fix by using new rules, it might be good to figure out what that was and whether new rules were really the solution. It's possible you were just prepping or running games poorly and their solution wouldn't have worked even if you did play RAW. Either way it's better if you're figuring this out during a break from GMing. It'll take some pressure off you, let you see how others approach the same job, and maybe mitigate the chance that they see you as a pushover (maybe too late if you caved to "let's change the system every week").

I'd probably second this guy:
Adding a supernatural element is good. Adding a massive influx of minions via supernatural element is better.

At the same time, maybe think a little on why a fight against seven tents is hyped. Is it because they wanted a long drag out fight? Or because they were sort of excited to wipe out their foes quickly and easily? Occasionally it is fun to be the overwhelming force rather than to face it.

In the latter case, think of how you can put a twist on the aftermath. It may be a little late to do something like this with no set up, but the camp could surrender and offer important info. Or you could find an old human deserter and these orcs have been up to something important for the past umpteen years. I don't know enough about your campaign to offer too many details, unfortunately.

They didn't hype up the fight so much as they talked up the Orcs. I am very much the type of GM who changes things on the fly and only a "seasonal camp" in mind until the players talked it up to a raiding camp.

But yeah, the more i think about the "unspeakable evil" idea the more i like it.
Because the player did catch the Shamans quite a bit outside the Camp, doing some kind of "baptism".
I thought it was just introducing the newest member, but actually they were cleansing the final sacrifice!
[Luckily he was the one to escape.]

I'm going to running a one shot around Halloween where the players are ordinary people trapped by supernatural forces in an abandoned logging town. Think Twin Peaks meets Silent Hill, having the players trapped in a town with an unseen entity that hates them. I'm debating whether to use CoC or Fear Itself. Just looking at the rules it almost seems like a Fear Itself character is practically indestructible unless going up against vicious monsters on a regular basis. Has anyone run Fear Itself? Is it hard to threaten your characters?

This might be for /hbg/, but Veeky Forums is full of wonderful people.

>I'm changing my skill system from 13 pre-defined skills to a more freeform choose your own skills system.
Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Good idea. Bound to run into some problems, but absolutely worth trying.