Generic DMing thread

youtube.com/watch?v=OdM4QTuE3hc

>seasickness
Only if you're a fucking landlubber

Now this here classic I learned from GMing ship travel in my campaign
>party on a mission gets on ship
>bunch of plot happens because plot and their employer
>ship gets boarded twice and is badly damaged
>party forced to switch ships to continue journey, forced to cooperate with local smugglers to hijack a vessel
>turns out they hijacked the vessel from another smuggler and they got recognized as legitimate owners of the ship by the smuggler organization after killing the old captain who chased after them
>one of the players vanishes from the face of the earth and the boat ride doesn't end until 2 years later

Counter Monkey was so good before Spoony went nuts

Once upon a time, people had to if their destination wasn't connected by land.

Please. no frogposting on Veeky Forums. Thank you.

>2 year boat ride
Guts?

>BBEG

>fantasy should be as mundane as real life

I think there's something wrong with your brain.

Oh look, it's eternally-triggered bitch user up to his old tricks.

>responding to someone replying to a frogpost

He was just baiting you, you moron.

My party will be on a ship soon. I fully intend to abuse this as much as humanly possible. If, by the time they set foot on their destination, they have not fought at least one massive monster, run a blockade, transported contraband, committed at least one act of piracy, run aground in a storm, and had an actual naval battle with another ship, I will have failed as a DM.

Anyone who is inclined to DM loves Krakens

Shit is impossible to avoid.
Krakens are literally the perfect monsters for DMs

It took Odysseus 10 years to get from Troy back to Ithaca.

Man, it's highly probable that the only reason your DM made you take a boat was to have the chance to use a kraken.

Goblin Punch had a cool resource for ocean conflict. Basically, a slightly damp Mad Max.

>party decides to travel to next destination by Kraken

> kraken retreats into the depths to plan his horrible vengeance
> calls in a few favors from his agua niggas
> party no longer safe even at the village pump

...

Why is your OP image an angry Pepe with a pistol?

Spoony went nuts?

Frogposters are the worst kind of shitposter.

last time my players were on a boat, i attacked them with a Tylosaurus that thought the ship was a whale. i tilted the ship and threw people into the water, who were then dragged under by sharkman opportunists

everyone agrees it was a memorable encounter

What happens to PCs is not what happens to normal folk. Normal folk bake bread or shape horseshoes for a living, not raid evil wizards' towers or elbow drop dragons. Weird and funky things happen to PCs because they're the focus of the game and few people enjoy sitting around a table rolling to see how fast they make a shoe.

>DMing DnD
>Players encounter a spooky skeleton
>Paladin rolls a 20 on initiative
>whole table stops to stare at the sight before our eyes
>"You've done it!" I shout
>tell the player the campaign is over, he's rolled a 20 and we don't let realism get in the way of our FUN
>his character gains forty levels, fucks a dragon, then the rogue becomes a god because why not?
>NAT 20 BRO
>YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT

You're trying too hard.

I'm describing normal DM behavior according to some on Veeky Forums

We get it dude, you want realism in your high magic game. Incredible spells, resurrection, magical songs, monsters and technological and societal anachronisms are ok but godforbid a 20 on a roll warranted a special description or something extra to go with the success.

Fucking insufferable cunt.

>There is no middle ground between HURR REAL'SIM and DURR NAT TUH-WENTY.
Retardation is retardation my man, though it looks more like you have a touch of the 'tism instead.

Look, if my player wants to marry a black slime, he can! He just has to roll a 20 first because that lets you do anything. The rules and any sense of immersion are stupid anyway.

>being this retarded

>falling for bait this obvious
: ^ )

This guy is actually telling the truth

As a designer, it grinds my gears to see players always justify shitty ideas by comparing it exclusively to equally shitty ideas

You're probably just baiting, but you do know that a Nat 20 is supposed to be guaranteed success IF THERE IS ANY CHANCE OF SUCCESS? A Nat 20 can allow you to jump between two speeding trucks on a pogo stick, but it can't let you bounce on the surface of water, or reach the moon with that pogo stick.

How do I deal with my entire party refusing to engage anything and just waiting outside of chokepoints readying up attacks while repeatedly attempting to goad the enemies into the trap until they eventually roll a 20 and I have no choice but to make the enemy walk into the obvious trap

This is my first time DMing and my party are pretty noob as well

Try setting it up so when they test to goad the enemies into the trap if they fail , that's it they have to change the situation or try something else . The enemies can be stand offish too , usually PCs can't afford to be .

You literally control reality. Make other things engage them. A stray dog barks at them off they fail a 18 DC stealth check.

Or hell, invent a random useless enemy to fall into the trap just to kick off the fireworks and start the alarm. The number of enemies and their behavior is entirely yours.

Clearly your party is playing this as a bunch of pussies but as long as they care about the scenario you have solid foundation to build on. Use your god powers to mix things up

>or reach the moon
"It turns out, our character wasn't too bright, and was instead hopping up and down on a rocket ship. One of the bounces slammed back down so hard that it set off the fuel, which blew his ass to the moon. Good thing he had his "special" helmet that he has to wear at all times on. Space travel can be dangerous with no oxygen!"

You, Hulk Hogan, control a force field around you that I am only beginning to understand!

in the future please to try source, or just make from scratch, appropriate OP images instead of posting a random Pepe.

Learn how to sage.

sage is for faggots

You do realize that 3.5 had a whole book dedicated to naval adventure (Stormwrack)?

Please don't try to generate bump chatter in a frogposter thread.

...

What's the deal with frogposting?

>be me
>be DM of a new campaign in DnD 5ed, set in the universe of EarthSea
>I had to revamp all casting classes into one wizard class, which can only cast spells by commanding things with their true name, and every time they do so, it upsets the Balance. Being a wizard is just being able to command.
>This is the only sense in which having to prepare and memorize spells is reasonable imho
>none of my players have read any of the EarthSea stories, they all think its super awesome and original
>They start out in Gont while Ged is still the archmage, and party wizard wants to go to Roke to learn more True Names
>Have them meet with a weatherworker at the docks, and after some sidequesting party wizard is taught how to command the wind to give speed to the sailboats, i.e. the magewind
>They travel the world of archipelagos and swim in the sun, fish, spot dragons from far away and just forget all about going to Roke
>I allow the wizard to learn the True Names by studing things for a long time by rolling multiple Arcana, Nature, etc. checks
>They meet up with the raftpeople in the west and see the runes of ending in the stars and join in on the midsummer festival
>one of the raftpeople drown in the water, and we have a mystery detective murder case
>after solving it party is given some enchanted stuff and more True Names
They loved every second of it, seriously EarthSea is the greatest setting for this shit.

can you be my DM pls that sounds comfy as shit

Tactics to counter PCs...

>Backup
If they leave a region/room unsecured, it gets filled with tougher enemies that are more prepared. This counteracts players leaving to take rests mid-dungeon.

>Message runners.
If a group of shitty enemies are losing, have them attempt to flee. If the party's well-geared, have them send a goblin or something to sound an alarm.

>Dungeon architecture.
Tunnels, staircases and trapdoors in a fortress are designed exclusively to benefit the defenders. Specifically point out things like murder holes, nightingale floors, and passages too narrow to swing a greataxe.

>Scorched Earth
If the party has a secure position, some intelligent enemies may decide to cut their losses and just burn/flood/collapse sections of the dungeon to keep out an adventuring party.

If the group holding the dungeon is paranoid enough, you can start with the Fun. Think '6 traps to a single door, with half the traps magically set to trigger when the others are disarmed.'

>Ship
>Kraken
>Generic

You fucking wish, OP. I bet you'd love the FUN we've had on boat thanks to our bad DM. We were all playing D&D for the first time so we didn't know good from bad DMs yet, but after this... we started to notice something was up. So here's how it went:

>Faerun, party was trying to cross the Sea of Fallen Stars to escape from some orc infested forest
>Have been hearing tales of how dangerous the sea was, giant monsters in the water
>We have always said that our dream was not to kill a dragon, but a kraken. So, we're very hyped for this
>Really gear up for the sea trip with maps, compasses, harpoons and whatnot while we move to the coast
>Once we get to a port, we acquire the nicest ship on the docks as a reward for helping a noble earlier
>Apparently it's called "Kraken Slayer" and has some magical runes painted on. Nice.
>Things seem to be going really well, and we sail, headed for an island we're interested in exploring and resting in
>DM asks for rolls to see how we sail and whatnot, then once he sees we pass, he nods and says "nice, so the trip takes one year"
>What. One fucking year?
>To get to one island that should be 10km from the shore
>We complain about that, but DM goes "well yeah in case you didn't know, sea trips take really long"
>After that royal decree we just shut up. Apparently we had one year worth of supplies or something, but we get to the island after an year
>Roll for initiative upon getting to the island
>As we approach, some Sahuagins surface and attack
>Easily dispatch the lvl 2 enemies as we are lvl 10, land
>The island had a few trees and a chest on it
>There's literally nothing more there. It's like the island is 5x5 meters.
>This chest better be worth-
>Had a mundane broken necklace and 500gp inside it
>We collectively facepalm, and head straight back to the sea. This time we sail for the biggest fucking island that NEEDS to have something on it (Pirate Isle)
>Try to guess how long it takes

cont

>One year later and we get to the pirate isle
>Surely we'll be attacked by pirates, maybe we can loot their treasure, maybe...
>Literally nothing until we get to the island. Boredom IC and OOC, and since there's a nice harbor with some ships in sight, we figure we'll just go see these pirates
>Our path is blocked by a pirate ship. Finally-
>They want to parley?
>Something that amounts to "We're pirates, are you bad enough to dare land in our port?"
>We just say yes, and they're totally fine with us
>Roam about the port, there's almost nothing interesting there apart from rowdy sailors. According to the DM we don't even need to resupply.
>Eventually we find someone who tells us about a secret treasure stash on a island surrounded by "dangerous things"
>Finally
>Sail there
>One week later
>We run into a nasty storm, strong winds, and something hits the underside of the ship. We're almost crying.
>Legit Kraken battle! It wraps itself around the ship and we fight off the tentacles and stuff, we take some damage but we know we can finish the fight
>As things are halfway through and we're getting to the best part, rigging cannons to fire at the Kraken, hitting it with harpoons attached to chains-
>The magical runes on the side of the ship glow
>A large shadow approaches on the horizon, lumbering and carrying a massive sword
>It's a giant
>It's walking waist deep in the sea
>It picks up the Kraken with one hand
>Impales the Kraken on the sword
>Disappears
>DM: "So wizard, you can tell that was the magic on the ship, its why its called Kraken Slayer! Really clever right"
>6 hours irl, 2 years and a week IC, just looking forward to this fight
>We don't even get the pleasure of finishing the battle. It literally ended before the climax even started.
>At least maybe the treasure on that island can ease our sorrow-
>5000 gp and a +1 sword

So, something off track from naval encounters.
I'm currently in a 5e game with some guys I knew from highschool. I'm a player, not a DM. But, our DM is... unimaginative. I can tell he's reading straight from the scenario book's descriptions and such. The other players are about as murderhobo as it gets; they constantly pick fights and ignore anything that isn't a fight. Concepts of diplomacy or tact are alien to them.
Is there anything I, as a player, can do to try and get them to try and RP a bit more, or at least stop looking at the game as a pen and paper world of warcraft?

Not even wacky pirates? Laaaaaame!

Leave the game, it will be the best decision you can make

I'd let a player marry the black slime with a nat 20. I'd have the slime try to murder the player a few minutes into the ceremony, but I'd let it get that far before ruining the fun.

And they're the life of a party.

Just shoot him senpai. No jury in the world would convict you.

Can't become something you already are.

Well yeah, you can't have meaningful travel unless you're keeping track of time. Without some sort of overland map, things turn into "you get from point A to Point B with a, uh let me roll the dice, random encounter." Also, noncombat encounters or encounters with things that aren't immediately hostile bring a campaign to life.

Now, I can see a pointcrawl digraph sort of thing working for sea travel to represent shipping routes, but even then, that isn't a the normal travel handwave.

A failed roll means the NPC realizes they're trying to lure them into a trap, and won't respond. Or you could give them ranged weapons and have them start luring the PCs out of the chokepoint their own way. Or have them go get backup and wind up with the entire dungeon storming the chokepoint, which isn't such a good chokepoint when 20 people are pushing through it.

Yeah but he spent like, 5 years fucking Calypso and a few more years with Circe
Not all of us are unfaithful bastards, user. Some of us actually want to get home to our families.

That was also like 500 BC when boats were super fucking shitty, and most D&D settings have sailing tech at least equivalent to Age of Exploration stuff.

It took Christopher Fucking Columbus less than three months to cross the entire Atlantic ocean in 1492, a journey of over 3,000 miles.

That's patently untrue. A Nat 20 is only a guaranteed success on a saving throw or an attack roll, and that's regardless of whether there was any chance of success.

Nat 20s don't matter on any other checks, unless you house rule it in.

And that was an entire campaign, and such a ridiculous amount of time his name is the root for ridiculously long voyage.

Everyone else got back faster, he literally had the god of the sea personally pissed at him in specific.