/rrg/ Railroading General - 2nd Edition Edition

>working on new game is slowly making me more productive in other things
It doesn't sound like much but it does feel good.

What are you working on?

Look I'm all about generals because they keep discussion focused on one topic for long periods of time and avoid pointless little threads but I think DMing/GMing is the one thing that should stay outside of Generals and pop up from time to time as standalone threads.

I'd suggest thinking through if this is really the direction you want to take GMing into, OP, and the rest of the people here.

But that's my opinion - feel free to disregard it. I'll continue to monitor this thread for the future to see how things go.

A RE:outbreak theme game using op's and tactics. Being 100% honest with myself I'm just making macros for weapons and skill tests in hopes of making it smooth as possible when game (if ever) happens.

Mind telling me what your worried about? I can see how a general (of any kind really) can turn into something bad but most of the time it depends on the people who go to it.

So, one of my players has a 9 year old kid. I'm still not entirely sure how he managed to talk me into letting him have a seat at the gaming table, but he did somehow. Justin's not terrible (he's not amazing by any stretch of the word, either mechanically nor at engaging the plot, most of which I think goes a bit over his head).

His character's main defining characteristic involves feeding stray animals, and he's built up a small menagerie of random wildlife that follows him at a distance hoping for more yummies. It's indulged by the rest of them. I'm trying to think of a (generally but ideally not entirely) good consequence for this kind of behavior, but I'm drawing a blank. Does anyone have any ideas?

>Mind telling me what your worried about? I can see how a general (of any kind really) can turn into something bad but most of the time it depends on the people who go to it.

Generals tend to circle around small temporary discussions inbetween a bunch of them, and tend to move faster than normal threads. Sometimes, threads about things like GM tips get a bunch of replies with sound advice posted in the span of at least one day total, and that kind of discussion rarely holds up in generals.

Ah yeah that is true I could easily see that happen the general could turn into some kind of how's your progress kind of deal too but maybe not only time will tell.

>Where do you run your games?
Now, a friend's house, one of two depending on who is in the game.

>Best place ever?
My gaming store used to have a small back room you could get for games. It had a big table and some comfy chairs and a door that closed and it was amazing. That was back when I was a kid though, they haven't had that room in like 15 years.

>Weirdest place ever?
Played in a moving car once (road trip). Dice rolls were a pain in the ass. RP was good though.

>Worst?
My old college's lecture hall. We used to find a lecture hall that was free and play in there for lack of anywhere else to play. It worked, technically, but it was really uncomfortable and crappy overall. Pretty much sucked ass, wouldn't recommend.

Have the animals bail the party out if they find themselves in a particularly grim situation.

Have them assist the group by leading them away from hostiles and traps on occasion.

Conversely, have hostiles drawn to the group because of the animals.

Having a train of critters following your group around is going to raise more than a few eyebrows, and NPCs might not want the group to enter their shops or restaurants.

Have someone offer to build a petting zoo for the party if that's your thing, they'll get a cut of the profits when they stop by and they can drop off more fluffy creatures for more profit.

That's about all I can think of without knowing your player characters or your setting.

>>Where do you run your games?
I run it on roll20 but its people I know over discord so its not as bad as it COULD be.

>Look I'm all about generals because they keep discussion focused on one topic for long periods of time and avoid pointless little threads but I think DMing/GMing is the one thing that should stay outside of Generals and pop up from time to time as standalone threads.
disagree. The last one helped me on my first game immensely.

>actually running games

...

So, "fail forward" mechanics. Yay or nay?

A lot of game advice from more narratives circles advise that the dice should only hit the table when failure has meaningful consequences, and those consequences should always change the circumstances the players are facing in some meaningful way.

Some GMs say this is a meaningful tool for maintaining momentum in a game. Some GMs think it disincentivizes critical thinking in their players, since there's never a reason to consider a plan "B" if plan "A" always "moves the story forward."

What do you guys think?

Depends on one's perspective.
If one is running a "realist"(for lack of a better term) game, then failure to pick a lock, or overcome a monster, *is* failing forward, because it should be possible that the PCs will exhaust all possible options for dealing with a situation and the players should realise this, and move on to other things. However, this should not be a problem, as the GM of such a game should not have one "golden path" that the PCs are required to follow.

However if one is running a "storygame" (again for lack of a better term), then the GM should make sure that if there is a "golden path"(vague or branched as it may be) then the players should not be able to completely cut this golden thread.

Full disclosure I'm a massive OSRfag, and I'm definitely selling the storygame perspective short. I'm not intentionally trying to malign the approach, but it's just not for me.

I tend to only ask for rolls when there is some kind of risk involved and if failing does change things for the worst or better depending on how well they roll. Like if they are picking a lock and they are about to be spotted. If noting at all is going on and the character in question is good at lockpicking tend to let them open the door either way if they are under no pressure at all but still ask for a roll- In the event they fail I still say the door is open but you make noise or your pick breaks and so on.

Other times I might say you don't open the door but give them a other (more risky) way to get inside or ask if they have any other ideas either way I try to keep things from slowing down to a halt because all the players failed to see the hidden key/door etc so now they are all guessing or asking for rerolls--"It takes you some time to find it but there is a door behind the bookshelf but your hear a guard coming up to the door". I'm sorry if what I say doesn't make much sense but a TL;DR would be is I like how blades in the dark handles it actions in the sense of your get it done but something still bad happens and if things get worst you will have to do something else

Also I should mention that in the former approach one should not force the players into a situation where they cannot possibly win.
However, if they want to dive into a Troll-hole with no way of making a fire, then fair is fair.
Do give them some warning though, it's just good form

I dunno I could see it being a useful thing for sure.

For example, I can't talk about/ask for input on my concepts for my Star Wars campaign in star wars general, because two of my players read that tread regularly.
With this, I can ask here and get input from you guys.

I can see your point, it could easily become insular, but so long as we're just trying to help each other make all our games as best they can be I think it's a worthwhile thread

any of you fags know what if anything I should do to emulate program advances in pathfinder? assume I have chips figured out, I just want to know what kind of potency i can add that wont already jank something pretty janky.

Yes, basically anything that's missing post mega link and I'll edit pastebin

Put your opinion in its own thread next time.

Have him feed something unexpected and cool. Have it follow him and for a session and have the npcs gaze in awe.

> (you) not capitalized
raged a little

I'm looking to put together a somewhat simpleish dungeoncrawl adventure taking place in a mountain town and the surrounding valley.

I can pretty much make whatever monsters I want, and right now I'm likely going with goblins(Sort of more tolkienesque rather than that memeshit Pathfinder garbage) and hobgoblins, and some form of cult leader with vague clues towards there being corruption in the local area.

I'm working on putting together a rough idea of how the world itself will come together, mapping that all out, and plotting out trade routes slowly. It's not directly related, but if the dungeoncrawl goes well, I'll expand it out to the rest of the world piece by piece.

Anyone got any advice for a fairly new GM? I've got the system down fairly well mechanically, and I've got some decent experience roleplaying, but I figure there's got to be something I didn't think of yet.

If anyone has any neat dungeon art or things for goblins/forest themed monsters, I'd appreciate it.

I'm probably opposite, if I understand you. My players don't get rerolls for searching, picking etc. And even if the log over the small chasm seems as wide and flat as a sidewalk they roll (basically a crit fail DC). I don't make them roll for walking on a sidewalk mind you, because there are no real consequences (although now I think the next fumbled diplomacy is going to be you trip over your own feet as you approach the bishop).

There are real consequences and until they fall off the log or fail to pick the lock they're not necessarily thinking creatively, plus it gives them incentive to be careful do I don't have to kill them later for making a swim check in lava. Consistency is most important, if they don't fail at the small seemingly unimportant things, they're going to be mad when suddenly they really do fail at an important thing or worse when they clearly and utterly fail but you're only tool is, ah no, don't worry you didn't actually fail, something something. It's just disingenuous I guess.

Besides, unexpected things make for interesting adventures on both sides of the table.

NAY.
I SAY NAY.

There are much better ways to keep the plot flowing even if that particular action spoils one avenue. (Not having only shitty one-trick-pony classes is part of that, sorry DnD)

Chr Level? System?

I've got a goblin led giant horde of really nasty kobolds in mind for my group- like so goblin reject/outcast stumbled on a kobold group, dominated them and then consolidated and expanded tribes. They'll start with a scout or two with a wolf, hit patrols, guards and a main nest to answer the question "why are the kobolds so organized and so nasty lately?"

I plan to make kobolds a recurring theme throughout, and I like the idea of a self made goblin king of the kobolds as one of the possibilities- the unexpected leader changing the nature of the group (could be any group, any unexpected leader)

Actually it's really helpful typing this stuff out because I realize things like I'll probably have the party come across a pathetic goblin outcast very early on and if they take pity and spare her, I've got my plot. If they don't, well there will still be a lot of lot of kobolds.

Level 1, Pathfinder, 3pp stuff allowed, characters are basically meant to be heroes in their first days.

Also don't put so much together that you'll regret it if the party goes "trade? Fucking stupid. Let's go find a Dragon!"

Have ideas, but don't like cone up with a whole workable economy that would vitally sustain an overland trade route including currency exchange rates. The npcs aren't going to know everything and if they do they aren't going to share their secrets , at least not before you can come up with them. Keep things vague until they're hooked

>you can make a lot of gold on the Kierland-Wantabi trade route
> how much
> a lot
> how much actually
> well my cousins uncle's other brother once heard about a guard tipping some redhead a diamond the size of my fist because he liked her smile.
> whatever let's go
[Okay is three days to Wantabi, how go you want to get there?]
Play out the normal travel until the session is over, then come up with some different hooks and things at the Wantabi end (guard this, join us and ambush that, escort mayor's daughter to a forced marriage for political reasons when you only find out the real story when she stops acting and escapes into the desert three days in- that sort of crap) and keep building outward between sessions as the players interests and direction form. If you keep things generic you can like, have them run into the mayor's escaping daughter after they took the steal that direction but had a falling out with the gang leader.

Mechanic nay, judgement call yay.
I'm all about meaningful failure as a consequence, but there are a lot of ways to have a failure be meaningful and move things forward at the same time. However it doesn't work for every check in every circumstance, at least not without asspulling hard.

O collective gamemasters of Veeky Forums, what are your red flags? What player behaviors or player character traits immediately put you on high alert?

I am eternally in a position of reading pdfs on this board and coming up with a laundry list games I want to play/run, but with few ever interested in it. Life is suffering. Which games have you all wanted to run or play but know you will never sell other people on?

Actions taken without any indication of where the course of action is leading.

>Consistency is most important...

Yeah I get you even as I run blades in the dark I try to keep Consistency up much as possible because like you say I had a few times when a player asked me why they needed to roll for X.

I really want to run degenesis rebirth but I don't think I'm good enough when it comes to NPC's and factions to well.

I found a link from 2014
I can reupload them to mega if you want.

-players who don't pay attention/ don't say anything if they do go afk

-people who play games as I run.

-People who keep trying to talk over others its one thing if you both start talking at the same time but its a other thing if your start talking in the middle of it and you keep going in a way to step over what they was planning to do.

Refusal to give me any hint as to where their train of action is leading. I have one player, great guy overall, who comes up with these convoluted plans to become OP, but when he begins asking me or our other GM if he can do it, he tries to be all sneaky in asking about the first step or two. The other GM gave in because the players plan won't fully come to fruition until like Level 12, and we don't even know if we'll ever get that far. For me, however, if he won't communicate what his end goal is, I shut him down.
Still, it's a bit annoying because some of his plans are hilariously convoluted and I'd love to give him one one of these days.

These. Especially playing games whilst I run. I really hate that but I cannot convince my group to stop it and am constantly being interrupted by 'Check out this (meme, usually, but sometimes something equally useless and off topic)!'

Not knowing basic rules despite having played the game for some time.

Assuming that the third party stuff they find is fine to use and does not even require even a heads up.

Characters that show clear contempt for the party and/or suffer from lone wolf badass syndrome.
This, at least, has the cathartic payoff that character usually dying alone and uncared for, forgotten within a session, except for the player of said character, who always gets shut down as soon as they suggest bringing them back somehow.

Rolling dice without prompt or request, especially on mundane shit.
I have one player I have to keep telling to stop because he'll literally walk up to someone say "Hello", roll dice, tell me the result, and then wait expectantly. The skill is called persuasion, you're not persuading the guy about anything, there is no conflict here, you're just having a conversation. Come on man.

And seconding
9/10 times it's fine, the consequences of the action are immediate and obvious, but it's that last time where not being specific leads to miscommunication.

when the player is/was a DM

HUGE RED FLAG

What's the best intro for a group? Tavern, connected backstory, or mid-action?

Anything works if you want to try something new past the idea onto the players because at the end of the players need to agree on sticking with each over so it might be fun to see what they have in mind.

How do I avoid accidental railroading? How do I give the party a crucial objective or mission while still keeping everything open-ended?

I never hear my players (all new to RPGs) complain about railroading, but I realize I'm doing it
unintentionally sometimes and would complain if I was in their shoes and
just generally want to avoid it. I want to give them a better experience.

Bump

1. don't railroad

Haha, that simple! But it's actually hard to recognize in our own work, and giving the party a plot hook and having them beeline to the big reward/bbeg might feel like railroading (and it might be if you put literally nothing but that in your world) but the problem is really you're doing too linear, no or not compelling side quests.

honestly, type up a little high level greentext of what they've done or what you're planning because it's really hard to guess what to suggest besides #1

...

Don't plan the answers to obstacles, plan what comes after
Don't shoe-horn in an encounter unless it's vital to the plot/mission/quest/whatever
Always use "No, but" rather than just "No"
And most importantly
Don't worry about railroading so long as you give your players even a hint of choice. They'll rarely know the difference, and as long as they feel like they're going their own way, they'll have fun, even if all the outcomes are predetermined.

>Characters that show clear contempt for the party and/or suffer from lone wolf badass syndrome
So I'm going to go out on a limp ask this.

what counts as too far when it comes to this kind of thing? For example if one player may not like 1-2pc's in the party for IC reasons but won't harm them and will still help but will act bitchy is that ok? When it comes to the lone wolf stuff this is a bit harder (to me) I rather not have a PC run off on who own and try to have his own thing but what if during char gen 4 out of the 5 players ending up making pc's that put the last player as a outsider? Should the player in question scrap what they had in mind and do something else?.

I'm asking this because I had something like this happen to me a long time ago and I'm doing my best to not give that many details

>Should the player in question scrap what they had in mind and do something else?
Depends on how disruptive their current character would end up being. I really don't think that's the kind of question where you can give a general answer and then claim that it always applies.

True. sorry

All my NPCs are
>Hello I'm [person described only by their trade or other major characteristic] and I'm here to tell you about [not subtle guidance to advance the plot or dump information]
Guys, help me make better NPC encounters

>when this is my problem too

I have a real hard time RPing npc's outside just giving the pc's info or small help. What I was planning to do next game was to start with one npc and give them 1-2 traits "likes to drink/wants to rob bill from two houses" and have him go off on that and depending on how the PC's act I will think of something that would make sense from his POV if they don't mess around with him I just think or roll a set of dice to see how things worked out with bill and the house.

Its not a great idea I think I have a hard time handling or acting out more then on NPC is what I'm the weakest at so starting with one and working around that might be a good way to build up.

Found this laying around

>Try voice games
>Try text games
>Combat is always slow and people are always talking over each other in both

What do I do? Institute a timer for turns? Build more macros? My last group did not like that I prerolled attack and damage rolls before the game.

>Combat is always slow and people are always talking over each other in both
Tell them to cut this shit out and let others fucking speak when its there turn. If they have a idea or a suggestion sure but they still need to cut it out. Tex games are going to be slow because everybody doesn't type the same speed and some may type more then others or throws out too many questions for the GM but they might be good to use for RP during games to help to cut down on people talking over each other but this only works if everybody is paying attention to chat.

Macros are always helpful because it saves time on rolls and keeps things moving. What are you running and what macros do you have?

AFMBE

I had macros for attacks and skill checks for tokens

I only played one game for that I was for some reason removed from before it even started. but outside of the attack macros and skill macros you could setup the attack macros to auto roll what ever defense test is needed when they target the monster or bad guy in question. But I don't know if the roll20 AFMBE sheet will allow that unless you sit down and rewrite the sheets.

My next question is in combat how many bad guys do they have to handle? I don't mind prerolling init in the gm mode but if you at some point have to preroll attack and damage that sounds like they are fighting too many at once in weak numbers.

if druids are a thing in game, have them discover the group because of the player, or conversly ha e the group "saved" by them.

example: local forrest is known to be dangerous to travel due to latent magics, (caused by an 'evil' druid who believes the local villagers are assholes) but the player's actions show the druid population that nature can be befriended and tamed/ people still hug trees.

or some cool animal is fed and follows party. griffon pet is best.

2-2.5x their number. They don't have to kill every thing, but they often try anyway to "clear the area"

I've stopped having fighting attract more zombies because that just slows things down further. I thought to throw tougher zeds at them but that does not feel like it would solve the issue of sessions moving slowly.

In most cases players unless told OOC or somehow IC they will always try to fight till one of them get killed hard or they see something in terms of dice showing they fucked up. my suggestion would be is to have tougher zeds but have them come in a lower number maybe 1.5x and 2x if you want to push for them to run or hide what you could also do is make the zeds tougher but lower how much HP they have and up the damage they deal to make combat cut throat.

That would be my suggestion because I plan to run a zombie game and I know that having a high number of bad guys they try to fight get very boring very fast unless something changes situation as whole.

I'll try just cranking up the damage. If they die, they die.

So, I'm having trouble conveying ideas to some of my players. Last night I ran a Halloween one-shot for some friends where they were trapped in a haunted castle and slowly replaced by dopplegangers until only 2 "real" people were left, culminating in a battle against themselves where nobody really knew who was the real them or who was a doppleganger. Anyway, I put a gauntlet in the wine cellar that was pretty obviously cursed. In spite of detecting evil on it, the Paladin decides to put it on anyway. So I pass him a note that says it begins to slowly crush his hand and will hurt him with every turn of an hourglass. I put the hourglass on the table as he reads the note and he spends the first minute rereading the note and saying "I feel like there should be more to this!" Basically he sits frozen, staring at the note while the other characters are trying to think of a solution. The Rogue has only one hairpin, but the Barbarian wants to just chop his arm off, so everyone is arguing about the best course of action as the hourglass is flipped again. By now the Paladin has taken 4 damage from the gauntlet and hasn't roleplayed anything or made any decisions. I tell him he can feel the small bones in his hand being crushed and ask him his reaction. He doesn't say he screams, or asks companions for help, he just keeps flipping the note over like the back is supposed to tell him what to do. Finally, the rogue unhinges the mechanism constricting the gauntlet and they remove it, the barbarian laments not being able to cut off the Pally's arm, and the Pally just asks me how much damage he took overall.

Later, during a piss break, one of the doppleganger-replaced players asks me what his motivation is as a doppleganger. The thing is is the note that I passed him read "Because you were alone, you've been replaced by a doppleganger. Seperate the others if you can, but do not give yourself away."

Is this a fault in my description? What did I do wrong?

It looks like your notes was clear but they just wanted more detail

Remind them what kind of theme your trying to give for the game. Sometimes if a player doesn't see a way out they got back to trying to fight it so ask at some point if they have a hard time running away/hiding.

The real problem was I underestimated their capabilities. The rest of the survivors they have met are played straight, pretty helpless and hide or run when shit goes down. They, on the other hand, tear through everything with a mix of chaos and luck.

Made up a game for my kids.

Fantasy dodgeball

make them have relationships with two other characters at the table (one if only three players)

at least I've heard that I'm trying my first crack at this in an upcoming sesh0

Do you think that...
>false start
>ambush setup
>actual start, enslavement with RAPID access to items and a jailbreak

Would be TOO railroady for a group of folks utterly new to D&D? I'm inclined to think yes but I also think I've pulled off similar before to decent effect...

>I rather not have a PC run off on who own

If you can have a conversation about this OOC.
>Look maybe BalthazaralracaZak wants to go off on his own, it's affecting the party so maybe he goes off and you roll a new character.
Also
>everybody else how do you feel about this is it working?

If not give him his own encounters, CR adjusted to the party. Because the real problem is probably that you coddle your players' characters and won't kill them for being fucking stupid cunts which leads to this kind of crap.

If I was a character I'd talk to the DM then next time Ballsack tried to ditch us I'd be like
>Look Ballsack, if you leave fine, but don't come back. If you come back I'm not even going to say anything I'm just going to straight up ( ice you | shoot you in the eye | cast magic missile up your butt )"

I will have to check this out with more care

noreplies.jpg
oh well, guess i'll just throw darts untill they stick.

Y'all need to go a bit crazy. If you're around other people put some headphones on first so you don't get cuckoo nested.

Then spend your free time talking to yourself, or rather play acting under your breath. Be thee a shakesperian faget. Git th'self dunn Sou' like unt be da maid. Be a valley girl, like, reacting to, like, stuff.

Just go insane and put on whatever character occurs- walking across the quad being a cowboy, an ogre, a pansy, noble, imitate your old teachers at the copy machine, have your cubemates questioning your sanity.

In other words PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. Because if you belly-flop up to the table and try this shit cold turkey for the first time you are damn well gonna fall flat you git what I'm sayin' here son? well do ya?

>What did I do wrong?
I don't like the timer thing, I mean you've introduced real world time into a game resolved in overlapping 6 second increments. Also he took 4hp damage but not to his hand? Unless you're playing a system with called shots or specific limb damage I'd be confused too.

I don't think you did anything WRONG per se, but you were obviously expecting a certain reaction to both the doppelgänger and the gauntlet and you didn't get it.

Also what did you tell the player their motivation was? Because I'm curious and I'm guessing you couldn't and that would illustrate a greater failure in general, even if the only symptom you observed was the very obvious wtf conversation during the break.

>did not like that I prerolled attack and damage rolls
YOU TOLD THEM!?!

>YOU TOLD THEM
They got suspicious when I hammered out the NPC and zombie attacks in ~16 seconds

yes.

put them in the small town of Bakers Bern, the sun just rose and nothing is going on. There are four roads out of town. Brigands operating in the area down the north and west road, a real problem for the town. East is an old mine. South is where they came from and is idyllic fields without much going on. The town wants help with the brigands. North is heavy forest, dark, twisting road and goes into some hard mountain terrain. Not a lot of travelers but there have been a few bandit problems (the bandit camp is that direction). West is heavily traveled. It goes to several towns, Fowler, Eks, Malik and Buttre then branches at Ophen to points beyond. Between Bakers Bern and Eks travelers have been reported missing, along with many bandit sightings. The road is clear and well travelled, as was the road you came in on but lately seems more dangerous than the north road which traditionally was always the "bad" one.

If they go North or West, ambush them with an overwhelming force of kidnappers and tpk them with non-leathal attacks, they wake up in jail/cart/cage/boat hold on their way to slavery. You have to play out the kidnapping battle, not just handwave. And don't tell them they're getting non-leathal, just play whatever death mechanic if you can like it's real.

If they take the mine road scrap the whole thing because they just want some dungeon crawl, not a story- or kidnap/enslave them with the goblins therein.

Last if they go South just say "FML I shouldn't DM because I can't drop a plot hook for crap".

I need some ideas for monsters that can be encountered in a heavily polluted land stripped of resources. I'm developing encounter tables for each major region of my game, and this region was once a lush foresty area before a fallen star crashed and the denizens of the forest were changed and compelled to build. Now there is like a hive city of mechanisms surrounded by wasteland pitted with mines and scattered with impoverished villages.

I get that point maybe I should be more clear. A few weeks back I was in a AW game where 3 of the pc's started up a band and ended up playing someone outside of that the 3 players band (well honestly 2 of the 3 one of them was the bodyguard.) I wanted to do research and check stuff out about the past and word where the 2 of the 3 did band stuff and the last one just acted as a bodyguard. Due to this the MC/GM payed more attention to two players in the band till one of the two in the band would get hour scene's more then once a session when this was brought up I was told this was because I was playing a loner and wasn't doing anything with the band.

Now the thing is during all of this I did have a idea they was going to make a band but at no point the MC told me that I should do something and when I came to talk to him about it the only thing got back was "you should try stay/live with the others" But didn't do anything during the game to push that even when I asked about any ideas he was more or less blank so it felt like I was either being forced to make a new PC or just do something I kinda didn't want to do. I know this is a bit off topic but I'm worried if I was really in the wrong or just things didn't work out.

never played PF so I can't really help at all

way way too pendantic and autistic

I mean I like the idea of an NPC cheatsheet but that's way too detailed to be helpful- you can't get anything meaningful with a glance and if you played to that strict of criteria I'd think all your NPCs would be wooden.

>one interesting feature (streak of white hair over eye scar)
>one secret (killed his wife)
>one odd mannerism (won't look you in the eye)

Something like that, or a matrix of those things would be a lot more helpful to me.

that's actually funny. but yeah it shouldn't matter, it makes the game smoother, it doesn't change anything.

No. People way overthink campaign starts. Everyone knows session 1 has to end with the PCs together. As long as you accomplish that, how you got there isn't really important. It's everything after that makes these characters interesting, that forges their relationships.

Waste monsters from the has been corrupted from the star? maybe a construct that the the people or star made to protect things?

I think things just didn't work out. I mean you off doing research doesn't seem like much fun, roleplaying one on one in the library?

Still the GM could have played it solo, had you find something terribly relevant to The Band in order to re-involve you.

Hindsight and "well I would have" being a lot easier than being in the chair in the moment. Still it feels like the GM let you/your involvement fall apart because it was more fun to play with The Band. The fact that you/your character didn't want to fuck off with the band is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. It's different than a lone wolf who purposefully goes tangentially to the party at every opportunity. I had a dwarf cleric who
>never healed anyone
>walked off from camp and went to sleep across the map at 3pm without telling anyone IC
>refused to go into any establishment with the rest of the party
>informed me she could hear from the street when I was like bish, no you don't get to participate in the conversation

It was constant. IC she woudln't even give her name, but OOC got mad at me when I didn't pronounce it CLARR-AH or blew up at me for using her name instead of saying CLARR-AH. Players actually asked me wtf was wrong with her IRL.

OTOH, I left a game once because the DM always played to his buddy and their character. At one point several sessions in there was some artifact or something we'd picked up and suddenly it was being lifted from the buddy and the rest of the table was like, hold up, wait a damn minute - nobody ever agreed or said HE was carrying it. But instead of discussing it, letting us decide he just said, "nope [buddy] had it and that's it". I didn't quite table flip but I didn't go back for another session either.

Thanks for the feedback. during the game I did start to look for the bands bodyguard for work but that was the last session because the gm did more or less give the other two players 3 hours of screen time. So after that I just left.

Do you think it'd be appropriate to include 1920s in a pre WW1 environment, without the advent of mass production that highlighted the decade? Because some of the stuffy wear before the Great War (like corsets) isn't all that appealing to me. Would a mixture of the two times be appropriate?

Yes because you want it to be so.

>Yes because you want it to be so
That's a lot of power user.

Make sure to use it wisely.

I'll try to GM responsibly. Also, one other thing. I'm thinking about using a pathcrawling system in my game
(detectmagic.blogspot.com/2014/04/pathcrawl.html?m=0) but I'm having trouble implementing it. I'm wondering how many roads and railways to put in when the country's geography is basically Great Britain's but the size of India. Not to mention the ratio of servicable roads for autos (sett roads, roman roads, cobblestone roads) and rural country roads (unpaved dirt) and whether or not I should include different incentives for different modes of transportation.

that and klingons.

klingons with space lasers.

um, never mind?

Don't think I be much of a help (if any) on this but I give it shot.

The first thing that comes to mind is I don't think you need to have 10+ roads if the players don't plan to go back or rather don't plan to hang around for a pretty long time but having a rail station and railways that they can pay for seems to be a fine idea for them getting around faster for money same for cars seeing how the trains don't go or stop everywhere think up how much gas/money it would cost for them drive it to X. where for just walking is OFC cheaper but comes with the risk of being mugged having to sleep outside unless they stick to the nicer roads that should lead to towns.

Hopefully that helped