Do these kinds of threads exist? If not they do now
So regardless of system, feel free to collaborate, ask for advice, bitch about things whatever you're looking for
>Thread question to get things started: What mistakes did you make in your first campaign? What do you wish you knew?
Pic somewhat related? Some of these things really helped me.
>What mistakes did you make in your first campaign? What do you wish you knew?
Something I always, always, always follow now. You have to begin every campaign with a premise. "You all meet in a bar" is the shittiest way to start a campaign ever. It leads to a bunch of characters with no motivation and no reason to act on anything except immediate survival interest, which leads to characters who are constantly reacting rather than being proactive.
It is far better to give your players a premise like "you're all part of this bounty hunter group" or "you're all members of this guild" or "you're all in service to this noble" and then instruct them to create characters who have reason to engage with that premise. The benefits of this are three-fold.
First it gives everyone a reason to know and trust eachother right off the bat, rather than being strangers.
Second, it forces players to think of a proactive goal that being in the organization helps them further (maybe someone in the bounty hunter group wants to track down a criminal who wronged them, the person in service to a noble wants to earn a title and become a knight, the party in a guild wants to rise through the ranks of have access to the guild's resources and allies to further some personal aspiration, ect)
Third, the goals of the patron or organization as a whole make for really good early-game plot-hooks that everyone has reason to be invested in, as opposed to the DM having to forcibly string together a bunch of unfocused personal character goals right from the get-go.
Set-up is so very very important to a good story and a good game, and far too many DMs just asspull it or leave it all in the hands of the players without giving them even a hint of direction... and all that ever does is leave you with parties of un-motivated murderhobos who only work together because of the game logic of it being a game, or some convoluted plot-device like being "chosen ones" rather than having real goals.
Does anyone have some advice for kicking off a modern campaign with magic? Assuming the player characters are mostly muggles and they get caught up in a larger world than they knew about, how would you go about getting them all together and introducing their new world?
Wow, this is exactly the kind of thread I was looking for.
What's a fun way to make a boss feel threatening without resorting to trickery? This next boss is supposed to be an honorable swordsman, compared to the dishonorable dog they just fought.
an unknown monster is always a good bet. some urban legend hunting people, and one or more of its victims has a connection to one or more of your PCs. then, have magical stuff kick off by a) connecting the monster to some magic faction and b) having someone in the know going after it as well, either another faction or a specific NPC
Show the PCs a victim of this boss, and/or have them compete in something other than the boss fight but he mops the floor with them (a fencing tournament, say, so they know if he had a real sword and wanted to kill them he has a strong chance of winning.
Save yourself a lot of time by asking all of your players the following list of very specific questions.
Very important : adjust references to your own ! And add intermediate values if it's not clear enough.
A) How much do you want challenge on a scale from 1 to 10 ;
10 = "Civilization V in deity is the only interesting difficulty" (other examples include : a chess tournament. Knowing the rules of chess does not make you a good player)
1 = "I don't actually like numbers and stuff, can I just describe really well what I do ?"
B) How much do you like good plot twist and stories on a scale from 1 to 10
10 = the plot of "Baccano!" (or anything with a surprisingly well written story )
1 = a Micheal Bay movie (every character is beyond retarded)
C) How much do you like internal coherence of a universe on a scale from 1 to 10
10 = include a rigorous and actually working economic model
1 = "there is no such thing as anachronism, my barbarian has a smartphone alright ?"
D) How much do you you want freewill and responsibility on a scale from 1 to 10
10 = the players decide everything, the GM just describes trees and whatnot (sandbox mode)
1 = "please don't force me to make any decision" (read_us_a_book mode)
E) How much do you know the universe of whatever_you_are_playing on a scale from 1 to 10 (for me it's Anima Beyond Fantasy)
And when you realize everyone answered different values, talk about it !
If as a GM you want 9/10 challenge and your players an average of 3/10, you're going to torture them needlessly. If you want 3/10 and They want 9/10, they are definitely going to create their own problems ingame out of boredom.
Also some values are incompatible : you cannot have 10/10 coherence and 10/10 story, because a 10/10 coherence world is going to be as boring as the real world, and a 10/10 story have a very high chance of being illogical.
(cont)
And then go on with questions about the game itself, present some setting ideas : actual policemen ? murderhobos ? a group of thieves in [not_asia] ? a merchant team with zero ethics ? etc
(agree with )
If he's an honorable swordsman, he can be a teacher : he's so good at fighting that he's actually an inspiration for many. Make the PC encounter some of his students first and say that their fighting technique seem to be on par with them.
There's a lot of ways to do this with fluff, but you gotta also make sure you can back up those claims mechanics-wise. If he's the silent warrior master-type who can supposedly win through sheer skill and strength alone, you have to let the encounter itself mirror that. Nothing more pitiful than a legendary, lone swordsman be defeated by four adventurers dogpiling him.
Make him smart and mobile, but not tricksy. Design an interesting combat environment and let him use that to his advantage. Have him target his opponents strategically, going for the glass-cannons and leaving the meatshields for last. Make his strength awe-inspiring, but not to the point of insta-kills; better yet, have him ruthlessly cripple the heroes with status effects, maybe even sparing them if he does not deem them to be enough of a challenge.
To recap, have others attest to his strength ( sounds like a cool way to do this), but that type of boss doesn't have to necessarily be threatening at first glance, at least until they draw a weapon. Make the threat palpable only when it is too late to go back.
Personally, I tend to go a step further and start the players off in a situation where they need to work together, regardless of background. Burning building, zombie attack, Assassins targeting them. Its slightly less reliable in therms of getting chucklefucks to work together, but some players hate being part of some guild or subject to some kingdom that they have no investment in.
Do you mean once the fight starts, or how to big him up before the fight?
This really assumes players know what they want. Its the rich, dark blend effect.
>Personally, I tend to go a step further and start the players off in a situation where they need to work together, regardless of background. Burning building, zombie attack, Assassins targeting them.
I used to do this, but no longer do. My problem with this sort of setup is, again, it leads to characters who are reacting rather than being proactive. Sure, everyone will cooperate while the zombie hoarde is after them, but once that's been dealt with, they have very little reason not just say "Welp, I'm going back to my regular life now, bye strangers I know nothing about." unless the DM constantly keeps throwing new immediate dangers at them.
I get that. It does kind of rely on having players make 'hero' characters.
>but once that's been dealt with, they have very little reason not just say "Welp, I'm going back to my regular life now, bye strangers I know nothing about."
You do have to make it part of some ongoing mystery that ties into the adventure. Why were assassins after them? Who started the fire? etc.
One thing you can also do to build up his reputation/strength before the encounter even begins is to have him defeat someone the party already knows to be strong.
For example, if they already know (and most importantly - like) the knight retainer of an noble, who is an excellent warrior, but then find out that he was handedly defeated, they'll be impressed at the very least.
You don't have to kill him, just make it clear that he took enough of a beating to consider facing the guy again insanity.
Nothing is ever going to be threatening to the players if they can curbstomp it in their first encounter with no casualties. The only way to make anything ever feel truly threatening is to take something from players, even if that something is just their pride by forcing them to run away and try again later.
>Its the rich, dark blend effect.
?
Everybody knows at least what they Don't want.
>Who started the fire?
Definitely not Billy Joel
>?
When people are asked what kind of coffee they like, the most common answer is that they want "a rich, dark blend". Actual purchases show that people prefer something sugary and milky. People answer what they think they will like, judging by the sound of it, and its not necessarily accurate.
For a more Veeky Forums example, groups often ask for high lethality games, and then get sad when they die. What they mean is "we want to feel in danger and nearly, but not quite, die" which they then conflate with "we want high lethality"
Or is that just what he wants you to think?
>It is far better to give your players a premise like "you're all part of this bounty hunter group" or "you're all members of this guild" or "you're all in service to this noble" and then instruct them to create characters who have reason to engage with that premise.
I always do this now. You are all part of X military group. You are all dwarves of this clan. You are all barbarians of this tribe. That sort of thing.
Then add further restrictions based on what makes sense for the starting point - class and race heavily restricted. And while this goes against the 'no fun' meme that gets tossed around, I'm telling you it works wonders. Both for campaign rational and for encouraging RP.
Later if someone wants to add a different race/class we can talk about it - like a new player or if a character dies. But now I am pretty firm about starting with heavy restrictions.
I don't quite go THAT heavy on the restrictions. I try to go for premises that allow a wide variety of characters rather than a single race or class, but there's merit to both approaches.
Generally my restrictions tend to be more alignment/personality based. No playing a murderhobo or necromancer if you're part of a guild with a good reputation, no playing a thief (unless you're a reformed one) if it's a campaign about being law-bringers, ect.
I just show players a map and let them decide where to go and make characters for such an adventure.
They explore the world, they get invested in it and their characters.
Some players have made ridiculous characters that did not fit in the setting at all and basically just existed, so I can see the appeal of heavy restrictions, but I think don't think I could created their characters for them to the degree of "you're all dwarves in this clan" without running it as that type of game.
One problem I'm having at the moment is that a co-DM is suggesting that there is a chest at the end of every boss battle with a loot table (as written in the DMG, and rolled on by the players) that supersedes the loot from the dungeon. He has suggested this as a way to equalise loot distribution among the players.
- I can't even understand this.
>One problem I'm having at the moment is that a co-DM is suggesting that there is a chest at the end of every boss battle with a loot table (as written in the DMG, and rolled on by the players) that supersedes the loot from the dungeon. He has suggested this as a way to equalise loot distribution among the players.
This is flawed in so many ways it hurts my head to even think about.
1. How does rolling on a RANDOM table equalize anything? You might as well just send the party in after some intrinsically worthless bauble than an eccentric wizard wants and then just have him pay everyone an equal amount of gold for retrieving it.
2. What's the point of making only the last chest matter? We already established that it doesn't equalize anything, so all it does is encourage a mad-dash to the boss room. Why explore anywhere else in the dungeon, hidden treasure troves and such won't matter. Why fight anything except the boss, you're not allowed to loot it. Why dare to try diplomacy or non-violent solutions in the bigger picture if it's just about beating the boss for a loot box at the end? I'm not saying beating a boss can't be rewarding, but it shouldn't be the ONLY path to rewards. What the party doesn't get in an end-dungeon loot box can be made up elsewhere. If they talk the dragon into releasing the fair maidens rather than killing him, I'm sure the townsfolk can scrape together something to show their gratitude regardless.
3. DMG loot guides are dubious at best, and may not fit the kind of game you want to play. They're geared towards very high-power high-fantasy types of campaigns, and will quickly lead to the party having tons of magic items and more money than they know what to do with. For some games this is fine, it's what everyone wants, but for more grounded moderate games, it's cancer.
Tell your DM that it's not a shitty videogame, and no, the party doesn't wana run the heroic version of the dragon strike 50 times in a row until they get an exotic engram from the boss chest.
Thank you.
This idea was so alien to me that I couldn't rationise it to the point of being able to articulate my concerns.
I guess ... given this type of idea has surfaced so early on, I'm concerned that he's got a very different direction of how the game should be played.
I don't know if I have time to hold his hand and I'm worried that I wont be able to fix or integrate the outcomes of his side of the campaign.
What steps can I take, proactively and retroactively, in this situation?
One of my players (let's call him "Player 1") revealed to me the other night that every time he narrated that his character was wrting in his journal, he the player has actually been writing an in-chararacter journal throughout the course of the game. I think this is the coolest shit ever, except it turns out the journal is one big elaborate ruse to frame the other player character (we'll call him "Player 2") for all of Player 1's crimes.
Player 2 is not the brightest crayon in the box and has unwittingly also been given several pieces of evidence that would frame him.
How the fuck would you all handle this? I want to reward Player 1 for his ingenuity, but not punish Player 2 for it.
To elaborate on why he would want to even do this- Player 2 had his first character die early on in the campaign, and rerolled a character that we agreed would be a reincarnation of the first. This new character has amnesia, and is seriously the perfect target for the asshole Player 1 is playing as. This added reason for me not wanting to punish Player 2- he's played his new character a LOT more intelligently and I don't want him to be discouraged, especially when he's playing his new character straight.
It's a game, just do what you expect to be the most fun thing for them, don't try to fall into "punishment/reward" mechanics just because you are the DM and they are the players.
Also, player 1 seems to be signaling to you that he wants you to create the adequate environment for the big reveal. So indirectly he is giving you power over how it should happen and when, and although I have no idea of the exact story behind this, a good way to do this is to start dropping clues that something is wrong with player 1 and the rest of the party or player 2 has to do something about it.
If they are clever enough to solve only by their own, let player 1 still carry his plan and adapt to the situation for he has to be clever too.
If they never get it, let player 1 do what he pleases and if player 2 complains point out the many times you subetly told him, for the worst case scenario analize player 1 diary and exploit the faults in his plan to still give an oportunity to player 2 to turn things back.
And if SHTF, have a plan C for a deus ex machina with a DMPC solving stuff, is not pretty but if fun cannot be achieved cohesion is the next best thing.
That is excellent advice. Thanks man.
I would ask Player 1 to talk to Player 2 about it. That betrayal could potentially be a very cool moment in the game for both players, but if Player 2’s game is ruined by Player 1, it’s going to be a shitshow. Honestly telling Player 2 might “ruin the surprise” but giving him a chance to veto this will be better in the long run.
As for ways to resolve this without punishing Player 2 too much, Maybe Player 2’s current character is temporarily arrested, absolving Player 1 of his crimes. Then Player 2’s next character can be someone investigating his previous character’s sentence, and their character arc involves them attempting to prove Player 1’s character was guilty of the crimes. Alternatively maybe Player 1’s character successfully frames Player 2’s character but then Player 2 is given a chance to escape punishment or an opportunity to absolve himself of punishment through retribution.
>I don't quite go THAT heavy on the restrictions.
Oh I hear you. I was really nervous at first, afraid of pushback. But everyone really took to it.
I think that many people, while wanting to be special snowflakes themselves, really want coherency in a setting as well.
Sort of like user above suggested that people will say they want one thing but often choose something else.
Now keep in mind, I'm not suggesting they don't create their own characters. Or that personality isn't under their control, freedom of action, etc.
But I no longer do the 'make a random character and show up, whatever you want' and then try to make this mess work for myself, the campaign, and the players.
Instead I create a setting and say 'these are the classes/races that make sense for this area'. Restrictions aren't there just to be restrictions, it is about what makes sense for the area. I'm willing to allow one player to play the 'odd' guy that doesn't fit. But I'm not willing to do that for everyone any more.
So if the setting were a wood elf campaign, then everyone starts off as a wood elf. I then lay out the various classes that are favored by wood elves in my campaign, which ones may show up but will need to be explained (or hidden) and which ones just aren't going to be there (but multiclass later on is possible). One of the players wants to be something other than wood elf, we can talk about that.
>without running it as that type of game.
Just to be clear here, I am one of the guys that advocates this, this is exactly what you do. It has to be 'that kind of game'. The campaign has to be oriented around that idea.
If you are going to do a very large sandbox of 'yeah, pick a spot on a map and go there' with no campaign plot then I'm not sure I would go with a heavy restriction. Heck, for that I just might do 'random guys hook up in a tavern'.
But for a heavy restriction campaign it needs to be about that. If you are doing an all dwarf party then it needs to be a dwarf campaign, at least at the start. I wouldn't just have them roll up dwarves and then run a normal random module campaign. That isn't what I am advocating here at all.
Run a separate campaign. Or change it all together. One of you has to give on this or you should run separate things.
Heck, run an anime 'you are in an RPG' game if you like. Could be fun while players try to figure out just exactly why things work the way they do. Random monster spawns, quest NPC's, the whole works.
Have the players run into a group of renowned sworsdmen that just had their asses kicked by this guy.
Or have some random peasants talking about his exploits.
>But I no longer do the 'make a random character and show up, whatever you want' and then try to make this mess work for myself, the campaign, and the players.
You don't work with the player to introduce their character organically?
Thanks for the feedback too. I think the last thing I want to do is spoil things for Player 1 because he's worked so hard to keep this a secret.
I've decided I'll drop plenty of hints to Player 2 that Player 1 is a backstabbing asshole, and if he never picks up on it, he'll be made aware that he's being investigated by the detective NPC he befriended and has talked with throughout the campaign.
If ALL of that doesn't work, he'll be arrested and tried with Player 1's evidence against him. Maybe by then Player 1 will have a change of heart and fight to prove him innocent, or break him out. No matter what, Player 2 will have a chance to defend himself and/or break himself out and redeem his name.
>tfw you love your PCs
Yes, I do. Here are the character types, race/class that make sense for the setting and location. Here is some more guidance about how you start. Let's make up characters.
Of course, character concepts in general need to work and I work with players if they offer something that doesn't work or make suggestions and fill in blanks they may not know about as a player (yet) in regards to the campaign.
But if you are asking if I am going to 'work with the players' to figure out how six random race/class/etc happened to be in the same area with one being a secret assassin, the other the kings secret son, a third being some sort of whatever, and so on...no, I do not do that any more.
How do I help players with social anxiety get more involved in the plot without pushing them and making them uncomfortable?
>What kind of mistake did you make
Playing with the group with a dmpc. Never did that again, athough it took me two or three years before I dmed something again. Thanks to copious amounts of Veeky Forums advice, i've since then had one great but short lived campaign in a Bloodborn setting and my current ungoing campaign which is my longuest running so far (around 7 months now)
As for general advice that you may not hear often, you need a solid bunch of skills and tools to be a good and great DM and those can get pretty far from the job description. Sorting hundreds of musics to determine which are suitable to a ttrpg and which aren't, photo/image edits for online stuff, how to make music extensions, etc... All of these can be pretty handy if you already can already handle map creation and worldbuilding
For Instance, in this campaign I make a card like this for every weapon or piece of equipment that the players create. It does take some time, but it speeds up the game itself by an important degree when the only thing they have to do is to have it open in a window as opposed to "I'm searching DM, I think I forgot it at home DM" or any equivalent
I also created an "Album" for all of the music I've used since the beginning of the campaign and gifted it to the players on Christmas, that was a pretty neat idea
is that a homestuck? looks neat i might do this myself.