Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

Fuck whatever we were playing, let's get ready for some goddamn DARK SUN

1356762

Posts

  • Fire TruckFire Truck You were a house on fire And I could never understand whyRegistered User regular
    Fire Truck wrote: »
    Woo! Ran a session last night for the first time in almost a year.

    It went pretty well. The PCs were tasked with burying the body of a halfling whose family owed a local magistrate a bunch of money. They brought the body safely through a group of hired thugs, figured out how to open the tomb door, and fought off the undead guards of the crypt. Now they have a mysterious job offer from another halfling who wants to move out of sight of the local governor, all while one of my PCs has shown great interest in selling everyone else out to the gubbmint.

    The only big issue we had was that our striker, a barbarian, took the brunt of everything. He was almost killed twice, and spent most of the encounters hovering just above unconsciousness. This wouldn't be a problem, except that everyone else felt like they weren't in danger in comparison. Suggestions?

    On the bright side, our warlord loved using commander strike to turn the barbarian into a constantly damage-dealing engine of destruction.

    Do you have a defender? If so, figure out why enemies weren't incentivised to beat on him, if not, your melee strikers are pretty much going to have to take the brunt of things. Generally speaking though, your melee strikers are going to get hit a bit, but the defenders should be absorbing as many attacks as they can.

    Yeah we had a defender. A warden. I talked with the barbarian player, and I think I convinced him to retrain swift panther rage for macetail rage. That should increase his survivability quite a bit. Also it will get better as the players get a better feel for their characters, I think.

    edit: The warden was doing everything he could, I think. Marking adjacent enemies and all that. It's just that the barbarian kept insisting on charging into the thick of things, and has powers that let him shift a bunch, so the defender couldn't keep up.

    edit2: Any tips on monsters that might make the defender fear for his life?

    dansmith3_zps6f7d5d05.jpg
  • StraightziStraightzi Registered User regular
    Horseshoe wrote: »
    straights, since you're linking forum games and stuff.

    are people still interested in star wars saga edition?

    i've been running a play-by-post over in critical failures for... almost two years now.

    Give me a quick write up and link, post in the brewery thread, and then I'll put it in the OP

  • StraightziStraightzi Registered User regular
    You're the DM bro

    Any monster can make any player fear for his life

    You just gotta have the monster focus on the player

    Which I mean, unintelligent monsters should already be focusing on the defender, because he hits them with his sword every time they try to attack somebody else

    And intelligent monsters get the choice, so, just make them hate that fucking warden for some reason

  • Spectre-xSpectre-x Registered User regular
    Straightzi wrote: »
    You're the DM bro

    Any monster can make any player fear for his life

    You just gotta have the monster focus on the player

    Which I mean, unintelligent monsters should already be focusing on the defender, because he hits them with his sword every time they try to attack somebody else

    And intelligent monsters get the choice, so, just make them hate that fucking warden for some reason

    That warden raped a bear!

    And that bear was THEIR FATHER!

    Sig_link_image.jpg
  • EdcrabEdcrab Registered User
    Flashback to about a decade ago

    An older kid was our DM and he persistently made terrible, terrible DMNPCs and villians and references to other character's pasts

    He had this thing about always having some guy who was responsible for raping or murdering a significant other in someone's backstory, always

    If you were playing an orphan he'd damn well decide to tell why you were an orphan

    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • A Dabble Of TheloniusA Dabble Of Thelonius Registered User regular
    Bit late with this but damn, nice OP Quetz.

    TuckSig.jpg
    Steam - Talon Valdez : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk
  • ArtreusArtreus Registered User regular
    Yeah, I (the warden) was doing my best to mark enemies and get in between people, but the striker kept splitting up and going away from where I could easily do much. Gonna try better to do that stuff in the future though.

  • Fire TruckFire Truck You were a house on fire And I could never understand whyRegistered User regular
    Edcrab wrote: »
    Flashback to about a decade ago

    An older kid was our DM and he persistently made terrible, terrible DMNPCs and villians and references to other character's pasts

    He had this thing about always having some guy who was responsible for raping or murdering a significant other in someone's backstory, always

    If you were playing an orphan he'd damn well decide to tell why you were an orphan

    I think everyone has had at least one DM who did stupid bullshit like this.

    dansmith3_zps6f7d5d05.jpg
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    Fire Truck wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    Flashback to about a decade ago

    An older kid was our DM and he persistently made terrible, terrible DMNPCs and villians and references to other character's pasts

    He had this thing about always having some guy who was responsible for raping or murdering a significant other in someone's backstory, always

    If you were playing an orphan he'd damn well decide to tell why you were an orphan

    I think everyone has had at least one DM who did stupid bullshit like this.

    ayep

  • Burning OrganBurning Organ Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    Fire Truck wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    Flashback to about a decade ago

    An older kid was our DM and he persistently made terrible, terrible DMNPCs and villians and references to other character's pasts

    He had this thing about always having some guy who was responsible for raping or murdering a significant other in someone's backstory, always

    If you were playing an orphan he'd damn well decide to tell why you were an orphan

    I think everyone has had at least one DM who did stupid bullshit like this.

    ayep

    No

    I've only played with se++ people though, so I don't think I count.

  • A Dabble Of TheloniusA Dabble Of Thelonius Registered User regular
    Organ has the best Warden backstory in our game.

    He killed a guy that was resisting arrest because he didn't know that, as a Warden, he could turn into a huge tree monster. So he got charged with police brutality and kicked out of the city.

    TuckSig.jpg
    Steam - Talon Valdez : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    i am so determined not to have spotlight-hog DMPCs that on the rare occasion the PCs get a DMPC in their party they are such tertiary characters that i have sometimes forgotten they exist

    in mid-combat, even!

  • EdcrabEdcrab Registered User
    The thing is that terrible DM is exactly why everyone pestered me to become a DM in his stead when he somehow got married and left the area

    Yet again he is screwing with my backstory

    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • SquallSquall hap cloud Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    Fire Truck wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    Flashback to about a decade ago

    An older kid was our DM and he persistently made terrible, terrible DMNPCs and villians and references to other character's pasts

    He had this thing about always having some guy who was responsible for raping or murdering a significant other in someone's backstory, always

    If you were playing an orphan he'd damn well decide to tell why you were an orphan

    I think everyone has had at least one DM who did stupid bullshit like this.

    ayep

    One friend I had that DMd when I was first starting out on 3.0 really loved rust monsters. So much so that anyone who played under him didn't want to make any sort of tank or cleric in a can, because as soon as you spent all your starting gold on full plate, it was gone forever after the first dungeon.

  • UtsanomikoUtsanomiko Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    i am so determined not to have spotlight-hog DMPCs that on the rare occasion the PCs get a DMPC in their party they are such tertiary characters that i have sometimes forgotten they exist

    in mid-combat, even!

    This is my mode of operation; the NPCs accompanying the group will express substantially less authority, motivation and initiative than the PCs.

    Although sometimes this can be a challenge.

    hmm.gif
  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    Specially when you have a group who's entire goal is to go around and killing some stuff and maybe get some things.

  • AbracadanielAbracadaniel Greatest Wizard In All of Ooo. Cantrip!Registered User regular
    I once put together a Forgotten Realms campaign. After each PC threw together a few bits of backstory I privately emailed each one with additional details to set the tone of their adventures. One PC was a member of a disgraced family that had been nearly wiped out, aside from him and a few other extended family. A villain from Zhentil Keep found him and was blackmailing him to head north to Silverymoon to spy on a member of the Harpers.
    Spoiler:

    I miss DMing :(

  • StraightziStraightzi Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    i am so determined not to have spotlight-hog DMPCs that on the rare occasion the PCs get a DMPC in their party they are such tertiary characters that i have sometimes forgotten they exist

    in mid-combat, even!

    First game I ever ran was also the first game I ever played

    It was a travesty for a lot of reasons, but my DMPC was a big one of those

    And because of that I've kinda grown like this

    I'm going to have to have a DMPC that I've been playing up as a rocking dude (and he is a rocking dude, admittedly) in on of my upcoming M&M games, we'll see how that goes.

  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    The first time i played dnd the dm hat some super npc made, he did well on keeping him out of the way during important things but outside of that he was in charge of making sure we got around to doing exactly what the dm wanted doing.

  • ArtreusArtreus Registered User regular
    When I ran that maptools and vent game monday, one of the guys didn't show up. Just some lurker guy, half-orc ranger, so I made his token a picture of aragorn with green scribbles all over his face and orc teeth drawn in. I didn't want to give away story or anything, so I just made it a drooling idiot they had to watch out for.

    One of the traps I'd made was really out of nowhere, just a small golden statue on the middle of a small island surrounded by waterfalls, you had to pass through the water to get to it. Well they were really suspicious, because I'd said I would have a lot of traps, and their perception check had revealed that something was off with the statue, but they weren't sure yet, so after a lot of debating, they were going to leave it alone. Well I wasn''t going to have this, so I made the drooling idiot run after the statue and pick it up. Everyone in the party shouted out at him, telling him to stop... nothing happened. So smart hero told him to toss the statue to him, it exploded into flames the second it touched the water.

    Didn't do a ton of damage though. I was going to have it only hurt the half orc until he asked for the statue. Also they completely avoided one trap I was really looking forward to.

    During combat the half orc was incredibly useless, missing left and right and left. He eventually missed so much I just said the attack him himself in the foot, I rolled for 1d8 damage. It did 8. That would have almost killed him though so I changed my mind, but damn that guy.

  • AbracadanielAbracadaniel Greatest Wizard In All of Ooo. Cantrip!Registered User regular
    Hahaha, I enjoyed Lobwick the Mentally Handicapped Half-Orc.

  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    "Do you guys know where you are form? You shouldn't"
    "Well, i know where ever we are from, they have mute stunned half orcs"

  • AbracadanielAbracadaniel Greatest Wizard In All of Ooo. Cantrip!Registered User regular
    I just loved tackling a t-rex and murdering it's face off

  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    That was pretty bad ass, though the wizard did help you with that.

  • AbracadanielAbracadaniel Greatest Wizard In All of Ooo. Cantrip!Registered User regular
    True, it would have been a much harder fight if it weren't distracted by illusory meat.

  • ProbadProbad Registered User regular
    Artreus wrote: »
    When I ran that maptools and vent game monday, one of the guys didn't show up. Just some lurker guy, half-orc ranger, so I made his token a picture of aragorn with green scribbles all over his face and orc teeth drawn in. I didn't want to give away story or anything, so I just made it a drooling idiot they had to watch out for.

    One of the traps I'd made was really out of nowhere, just a small golden statue on the middle of a small island surrounded by waterfalls, you had to pass through the water to get to it. Well they were really suspicious, because I'd said I would have a lot of traps, and their perception check had revealed that something was off with the statue, but they weren't sure yet, so after a lot of debating, they were going to leave it alone. Well I wasn''t going to have this, so I made the drooling idiot run after the statue and pick it up. Everyone in the party shouted out at him, telling him to stop... nothing happened. So smart hero told him to toss the statue to him, it exploded into flames the second it touched the water.

    Didn't do a ton of damage though. I was going to have it only hurt the half orc until he asked for the statue. Also they completely avoided one trap I was really looking forward to.

    During combat the half orc was incredibly useless, missing left and right and left. He eventually missed so much I just said the attack him himself in the foot, I rolled for 1d8 damage. It did 8. That would have almost killed him though so I changed my mind, but damn that guy.

    Thinking about that huge ass bridge in the middle of the map with nothing but traps on it, I wonder if something like that might work as a big skill challenge, with failures resulting in various trap effects and a complete failure setting off whatever huge nasty trap we didn't see. It might have helped to speed up that section of the map a little.

    Also, I think I saved Lodwilk's token because it was so fantastic.

    U7CHA.jpg
  • EdcrabEdcrab Registered User
    Smart Hero wrote: »
    True, it would have been a much harder fight if it weren't distracted by illusory meat.

    Is

    Is your meat entirely illusory, Hero?

    I have been lied to

    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • AbracadanielAbracadaniel Greatest Wizard In All of Ooo. Cantrip!Registered User regular
    I think the greater question is "Who's been talking about my meat?"

  • EdcrabEdcrab Registered User
    Good question, Hero

    Roll for Diplomacy and see if the tramp tells you

    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • ArtreusArtreus Registered User regular
    Melding wrote: »
    "Do you guys know where you are form? You shouldn't"
    "Well, i know where ever we are from, they have mute stunned half orcs"

    The shouldn't was because I hit enter too early, I was saying "you shouldn't be here, why are you here?" type thing.

    And yes, I was disappointed when you knocked my t rex onto its fucking back by stabbing it in the face from the hill you were on.

  • AbracadanielAbracadaniel Greatest Wizard In All of Ooo. Cantrip!Registered User regular
    Edcrab wrote: »
    Good question, Hero

    Roll for Diplomacy and see if the tramp tells you

    okay I got a 22

  • ArtreusArtreus Registered User regular
    Probad wrote: »
    Artreus wrote: »
    When I ran that maptools and vent game monday, one of the guys didn't show up. Just some lurker guy, half-orc ranger, so I made his token a picture of aragorn with green scribbles all over his face and orc teeth drawn in. I didn't want to give away story or anything, so I just made it a drooling idiot they had to watch out for.

    One of the traps I'd made was really out of nowhere, just a small golden statue on the middle of a small island surrounded by waterfalls, you had to pass through the water to get to it. Well they were really suspicious, because I'd said I would have a lot of traps, and their perception check had revealed that something was off with the statue, but they weren't sure yet, so after a lot of debating, they were going to leave it alone. Well I wasn''t going to have this, so I made the drooling idiot run after the statue and pick it up. Everyone in the party shouted out at him, telling him to stop... nothing happened. So smart hero told him to toss the statue to him, it exploded into flames the second it touched the water.

    Didn't do a ton of damage though. I was going to have it only hurt the half orc until he asked for the statue. Also they completely avoided one trap I was really looking forward to.

    During combat the half orc was incredibly useless, missing left and right and left. He eventually missed so much I just said the attack him himself in the foot, I rolled for 1d8 damage. It did 8. That would have almost killed him though so I changed my mind, but damn that guy.

    Thinking about that huge ass bridge in the middle of the map with nothing but traps on it, I wonder if something like that might work as a big skill challenge, with failures resulting in various trap effects and a complete failure setting off whatever huge nasty trap we didn't see. It might have helped to speed up that section of the map a little.

    Also, I think I saved Lodwilk's token because it was so fantastic.

    Yeah, I was so unsure of maptools and how to use traps, that all of my grandiose ideas got shoved to the way-side. I was going to throw much more creative traps at you, but I didn't even open maptools until maybe 3 hours before the game started, so everything was incredibly rushed. Also the bridge was so long because I had no idea how long it would be in relation to you guys. I might want to finish it up sometime, actually finishing the macros and putting better stuff in.

  • EdcrabEdcrab Registered User
    Smart Hero wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    Good question, Hero

    Roll for Diplomacy and see if the tramp tells you

    okay I got a 22

    The tramp ignores you, and instead slowly shuffles across to the paladin known as ANTVGM and asks him if he wants some oral relief.

    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    oh, so where we supposed to be able to remember how we got there?

  • ArtreusArtreus Registered User regular
    Melding wrote: »
    oh, so where we supposed to be able to remember how we got there?

    Er. Well not that either. I was mainly trying to say as the DM that you are just in some room, no idea how you got there, you are just all there together. Then the guy bursts in and provides motivation for getting the hell out of there.

    Also in retrospect, putting the Retriever at 999999 hp was a bad idea.

  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    it was.

  • DixonDixon Registered User regular
    Shit, Shit That rabbit hole goes a little to far down for me :P

    26fc6af3297009c3.png
  • UtsanomikoUtsanomiko Registered User regular
    On one hand, I think it would be hilarious to run Wuthering Heights the Roleplaying game, especially over Vent.

    On the other hand, I don't want to have to read any more frickin' Victorian literature for source material.

    I guess I'll go despair over the predicament a while longer.

    hmm.gif
  • Tommy2HandsTommy2Hands what is this where am i Registered User regular
    I would want to do that sooooo badly

  • Metzger MeisterMetzger Meister Registered User regular
    Spoiler:

    how's that look?

    www.facebook.com/itgetsworseska
    Spoiler:
This discussion has been closed.