i basically have the firm belief that roleplaying can be art and highminded and that is where naturally i try to push things because i'm an IT guy with the heart and sensibilities of an english major
All I can really do is look at the games I know I do like because I've played/run them extensively and try to draw parallels
CofD (especially Mage and Werewolf), The One Ring, Ars Magica, Exalted 3rd ed, L5R 4th ed, Eclipse Phase, Mutants and Masterminds 3rd ed, I think that basically covers most of my shelf for stuff I'd actually consider running again
i basically have the firm belief that roleplaying can be art and highminded and that is where naturally i try to push things because i'm an IT guy with the heart and sensibilities of an english major
I've listened to enough actual play podcasts to absolutely agree that roleplaying can be art. No to say all of them are, but some (or pieces of some) are masterpieces of dramatic or comedic improv.
Tomanta on
+3
Options
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
All I can really do is look at the games I know I do like because I've played/run them extensively and try to draw parallels
CofD (especially Mage and Werewolf), The One Ring, Ars Magica, Exalted 3rd ed, L5R 4th ed, Eclipse Phase, Mutants and Masterminds 3rd ed, I think that basically covers most of my shelf for stuff I'd actually consider running again
I've found that at this point in my life ill play just about anything as long as the group is pretty good. I have my favorites for sure. I liken it to work. It doesn't matter how great the job is if you have shitty co-workers, but a poor job can be made a lot better with good co-workers.
GNS theory has flaws because the idea that there's any sort of unified theory for what is intrinsically an art form is silly.
Posting it made sense because one of the participants (perhaps falsely) asserted they were working off a different definition of what simulationist meant. Given that their definition appears to have shifted, I'm not sure that they're unaware of the more standard definitions of the terms as relate to gaming and not simply being purposefully obtuse.
My feelings tend to be that games lean either narrative or determinant and the "simulation" aspect isn't particularly relevant unless we're specifically discussing something like genre emulation. Moreover, narrative and determinant games will play differently depending on the composure of the group as regards the ~8 types of players.
The key difference between narrative and determinant games is "dramatic importance," i.e. if something is dramatically important to the tone of the game both a narrative and determinant game will have an attribute or characteristic relating to that thing. If something is not dramatically important to the tone of the game a narrative game is far more likely to ignore it. The extent to which these things are true depend on how simulationist the game is.
AD&D is largely determinant but not significantly simulationist. There aren't a lot of rules for things like not making an ass of yourself in a conversation but they all come down to dice rolls when called onto the table.
3.X is largely determinant and significantly simulationist. There are a lot of rules for things like not making an ass of yourself in a conversation. Or teleporting. Or entering a gate. Or throwing a hat. Or changing alignment.
In my experience a good shorthand for how simulationist a game is "how many charts does this game have?" Also useful: "how many skills does this game have?" Compare AD&D with 3.0 and there's virtually no question, using either of those criterion, that 3.X is more simulationist.
There is nothing wrong with simulationist games.
Narrative games tend to be less simulationist because we've learned over the last forty years that you really don't need a lot of dice rolling to arbitrate games if the players are behaving like adults. The GM can usually make a quick assessment of whether the argument presented is logical, account for the character's abilities, and make a quick ruling.
Determinant games tend to be more simulationist because if you're going to roll for most situations where failure could occur you're going to be rolling fairly often and across a broad range of event types. Moreover, a typical feature of determinant games is that the GM isn't really the arbitrator, the dice are, so the dice are almost always rolled more often.
We're into a period where a lot of lessons learned are synthesized into newer games so there are more than a few that will bust whatever diagram you put together to explain games. Often this is entirely on purpose.
I don't know what's stranger, the fact that there was a ten page long conversation about D&D on the RPG thread, that I read and enjoyed all of it, or that no one got an infraction over it.
Speaking of people who still play 3.x. I had moved to Texas two years ago, leaving my best friend without a DM (we had a PF campaign stretching back before 5e was released). Some time after I left, he got back in touch with some of his high school buddies who were trying to figure out how to run 5e because they watched critical role. My friend hadn't DM'd much (maybe a few sessions) so he was constantly texting me on how to handle different stuff. We were both excited when I ended up moving back because hey! D&D time again!
Then I realized I'd have to play pathfinder.
Jesus Christ that game did not age well, swelling to the breaking point with utterly garbage feats and prestige classes. Not to mention all of his other players are the absolute worst murder hobos. One of the players made a rogue/wizard who used still spell+silent spell with a high stealth mod just so he could secretly kill random NPCs. Whenever he meets kings or anything he just drops fireballs all people for shits and giggles. And everyone but me and friendDM thinks it's hilarious.
Ended up making a half-orc with ridiculous saves and I just kill their characters when they act up. Everyone's cool with that because friendDM has given up. 3.x can be fun and engaging and all that, but man I wish there was something in it that stopped random asshattery.
Pages of well thought out posts and banter, but my only take away is...
We can classify RPGs, codify what styles and genres there are, but just like an adventure - no RPG remains unchanged by it's DMs or Players. May as well debate taste buds or music, since RPGs will always have more differences or variables from game to game and group to group.
My copy of Genesys came today. I would be up for playing and possibly could GM in the near future. I just started a new job so still figuring out my new routine.
i basically have the firm belief that roleplaying can be art and highminded and that is where naturally i try to push things because i'm an IT guy with the heart and sensibilities of an english major
RPGs can absolutely be art and high minded. They can also be the setup for 30 solid minutes of lung burningly funny riffing on the joke of "The door is a jar".
RPGs can be anything - that is their power and strength. And weakness.
RPGs are a tax. I visited this thread for the first time in awhile and I end up with Star Trek Adventures, Blades in the Dark, Dracula Dossier, and GeneSys. I am happy to pay this tax.
RPGs are a tax. I visited this thread for the first time in awhile and I end up with Star Trek Adventures, Blades in the Dark, Dracula Dossier, and GeneSys. I am happy to pay this tax.
Yeah, I grabbed Genesys but I'm still lacking the ASoIFRP books. I mean, I have the PDFs but find it harder to retain any of the material. I wonder how easy houses/organizations would be to operate in Genesys compared to SIFRP (I like to carry my acronyms) or Spellbound Kingdoms.
+1
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
RPGs are a tax. I visited this thread for the first time in awhile and I end up with Star Trek Adventures, Blades in the Dark, Dracula Dossier, and GeneSys.
The amazing thing is beyond the opening GM description of "The door is a jar" (we were investigating a prison to find out how a prisoner had escaped), the GMs momentary pause and pained expression as he realises what he had said, darted me a look and started to mouth "don't you dare" and my reaction of "Well there's your problem, it should have been made from planks of oak" no one at that session can remember anything that was said, just that we laughed and joked until our sides hurt.
I'm really hoping when my daughter is old enough, I can get her excited for APQFASOAHS, and by extension the whole world of RPG's.
I can’t express how much it warms my heart to see that game referenced. Perhaps it was a joke, but if you ever consider using it—as is or through as many alterations as you please—do drop me a message.
For the record my neice’s game ended a fair few months ago. It being the first game she has ever run (with pointers and occasional step-ins when I could visit).
In a climactic battle against the evil Richness Company, one of the queens (her sister) had her sword destroyed and was confronted by the nefarious Banker at gunpoint... but! Just as her sword gave her the right to be queen, as she was a queen, she had a right to a sword! So everyone agreed, and she pulled a sword from nothing and struck them all down with atom-thick slashes of pure space!
The people were freed and mountains of treasure were shared with all!
Anybody out there still play or think about MHRP? I'm looking for the most absurdly difficult encounters out there. Galactic threats, world-ending abominations, Thanos with the fully stocked Infinity Gauntlet. No holds barred, anything you can think of, no such thing as unfair. I need some ideas on how to challenge a few characters that effectively can rewrite reality on a whim.
Generally speaking, anything that can pose a challenge to folk with d12 Mind Control, Shapeshifting, or Transmutation.
Have you seen the Annihilation book? It has Thanos, GotG, and Skrulls, and more. It's hard to find as it was published as a PDF right at the end of the Marvel Heroics run (not sure if DriveThurRPG sells it or not) but it's got what you want.
My next Exalted campaign is months, potentially over a year off
In the meantime, I would like to try GMing one of the other games on my shelf I've been wanting to give a go for ages, The One Ring
My Wednesday group likes a bit of fantasy and some low fantasy with an anglo-saxon feel would be cool, plus the system looks great
Does anyone have any tips for running it? @Jacobkosh I believe you've played or run this before? I'd like to try giving a published adventure a go for once, anyone done that themselves?
Have you seen the Annihilation book? It has Thanos, GotG, and Skrulls, and more. It's hard to find as it was published as a PDF right at the end of the Marvel Heroics run (not sure if DriveThurRPG sells it or not) but it's got what you want.
Thanks GG, I think that'll be a great help - I'll take a look to see if I can find it.
Any thoughts on designing situations challenging for those types of high powered characters?
Have you seen the Annihilation book? It has Thanos, GotG, and Skrulls, and more. It's hard to find as it was published as a PDF right at the end of the Marvel Heroics run (not sure if DriveThurRPG sells it or not) but it's got what you want.
Thanks GG, I think that'll be a great help - I'll take a look to see if I can find it.
Any thoughts on designing situations challenging for those types of high powered characters?
In super hero stories, not all fights are two guys slugging it out. You should force the players to decide if they want to hit Thanos or whatever, or save people, keep a portal open so reenforcements can come over, something. Also, give your bosses ways to heal/reflect damage. I know people like the Hulk can spend Plot Points to ignore physical damage. Also, try to shut down people's powers. Limits are there for a reason, push hard into them. Remember, the fight ends in defeat once you get that Doom Pool to 2d12, so really push that direction, making sure they know that shit is getting bad. The Annihilation book has rules for Time Limits, just to amp up the action, and I think the scenario has a thing where people are on a planet as it's being destroyed. Like, really push the ante and force them to have to make hard choices during the fight.
My next Exalted campaign is months, potentially over a year off
In the meantime, I would like to try GMing one of the other games on my shelf I've been wanting to give a go for ages, The One Ring
My Wednesday group likes a bit of fantasy and some low fantasy with an anglo-saxon feel would be cool, plus the system looks great
Does anyone have any tips for running it? @Jacobkosh I believe you've played or run this before? I'd like to try giving a published adventure a go for once, anyone done that themselves?
I am not @jacobkosh, but I did play in his TOR game. I also own most of the gameline, and have run the 5e-conversion of it (Adventures in Middle-Earth). The game does an excellent job of capturing the low-fantasy feel of Tolkien. Personally, I found TOR's Journey and Encounter rules a bit difficult to fully grasp, and I highly prefer the straightforward versions in AiME. The existing adventures in Tales from Wilderland have some good ideas and a use-able dramatic through-line. However, I would have done heavy re-cutting/editing on them to make them feel more important and more open to player choices had the group decided to proceed with AiME rather than our current game.
Edit - A few examples of the rules differences (it has been awhile since our TOR game, so this is all my recollection):
In TOR, Journeys require rolls from each member of the fellowship. Failed rolls trigger events, which may or may not break out into separate scenes you play out. In AiME, a Journey only technically requires a single roll by the fellowship's guide. The outcome of that roll then determines both the general 'tone' of the group's travel, as well as the number of events. Each event is a scene that requires another member of the fellowship to undergo a test in order to determine the outcome.
In TOR, encounters begin with every member of the fellowship making an introduction roll to see if they get to participate in the scene. Those who fail aren't actually supposed to take part in the ensuing conversation. I am not sure that I recall any specific rules on the difficulty for the party actually getting what they want from the person with whom they sought an audience. In AiME, one member of the group makes an introduction roll for the entire party with the difficulty being set by the target's impression of the introducer's culture. The success/failure doesn't preclude further interaction, but is used to determine the difficulty of the final check. Role-play is then used to determine modifiers for that final roll, which is again done by one member of the party.
I would highly recommend taking a look at Rich H's thread over on the Cubicle 7 forums which addresses some of the concerns I have with Journeys and Encounters. It also has a re-edited version of a couple of the published adventures into something that feels a bit more important in the game world.
My next Exalted campaign is months, potentially over a year off
In the meantime, I would like to try GMing one of the other games on my shelf I've been wanting to give a go for ages, The One Ring
My Wednesday group likes a bit of fantasy and some low fantasy with an anglo-saxon feel would be cool, plus the system looks great
Does anyone have any tips for running it? @Jacobkosh I believe you've played or run this before? I'd like to try giving a published adventure a go for once, anyone done that themselves?
1) Published adventures: there are three books of adventures so far - Tales from Wilderland, The Darkening of Mirkwood, and Ruins of the North. The first and last of these are books of disconnected, one-off adventures; Wilderland is set in games east of the Misty Mountains, around Mirkwood etc, Ruins of the North is set west of the Misty Mountains, in Arnor, with the assumption being that the PCs are based out of Rivendell (although I'm sure they could be based out of Bree as well).
The Darkening of Mirkwood is a full-on campaign that covers something like 35 years of play, with at least one adventure per year and several more seeds. It tells one big story but it's meant to just be the spine of a campaign, not the whole thing - it assumes that you'll be doing at least 2-3 adventures per year, and deliberately leaves some dangling plot threads and unanswered questions, with suggestions for ways to follow up on them with adventures of your own.
There are also a few uncollected one-off adventures floating around the internet from playtests, cons, etc, like "The Marsh Bell" and a couple others whose names I don't remember. They're usually floating around online and are pretty easy to get a hold of.
I run hot and cold on published adventures and that remains the case here. One of the first adventures in Tales from Wilderland is called "Don't Leave the Path," and it's about the party escorting an NPC down a cursed trail through Mirkwood, and if the NPC or a party member strays from the path, bad things happen. And...that's it. That's literally it. There's no sense of escalating stakes and no real climax to speak of - you either reach the end or you don't. On the other hand, there are other adventures in the book that I thought were very good.
Generally speaking, The Darkening of Mirkwood is excellent and I highly recommend it; the problem is just that it's meant to be a big showpiece campaign and it might be too big if you just want to run the game for a few months. Tales from Wilderland is uneven but has good stuff - the precise mix is probably up to the reader - and Ruins of the North is also uneven but I think its quality level is generally higher, as it was published more recently and I think the studio has gotten better at telling stories with this system.
2) System: The formal nature of the Encounter system tends to throw people, especially people used to D&D "I roll Charm" type stuff. It's meant to represent asking for advice/shelter/a favor from a powerful person, like a chieftain, who maybe doesn't have any reason to trust you and may be straight-up paranoid. So from a GM point of view, I would only bust out the Encounter system when that's actually what's going on; it's not meant to govern all encounters, just the ones where PCs have strong incentive to try to be on their best behavior. You may, as the GM, have to do a bit of explaining to the players to help kind of align their expectations so that they understand that courtesy actually matters in this context.
Also, this is obvious but it bears reminding, be ready for what happens if the Encounter fails. Getting kicked out of Dain Ironfoot's halls should be a setback but not bring the game to a halt.
One thing I try to do, especially with a new group, is to give the NPC some kind of problem - not a quest, but just a mundane problem - that the PCs can maybe help with to improve that NPC's Tolerance rating. For instance, in our very first game session, the party had to consult with Radagast, who was irritable and distracted because he'd lost his pipe. The hobbit's player had the Pipe-Smoker trait and asked if he could use that to look in the most likely spaces, and per the Trait rules I let that auto-succeed, so he found the wizard's pipe between the couch cushions and improved Radagast's attitude. Oh, that's another thing - try to make Tolerance not just an abstract thing, but a tangible thing that comes through in the roleplay. It can feel kind of arbitrary that the players get three chances to say "hello, my name is..." and then the person is like FUCK OFF, GO AWAY, but if you play up that the character is busy, distracted, weary, etc it helps the players kind of make the connection between how the system works and what that means for how their characters should be acting.
I really like the Journey system overall but my big beef with it is that it doesn't give very much guidance for how to actually adjudicate the problems that crop up. It's possible for it to devolve into a bloodless series of die rolls - "okay, everyone roll Travel. Bob, you rolled an eye. There's some kind of problem. Gain 2 fatigue" - with no real story. The Journeys and Maps supplement has some good ideas for how to handle this, but if you don't feel like shelling out for that, I recommend sitting down and making a list of the various terrain types or general regions (North Mirkwood, South Mirkwood, the Iron Hills, etc) and come up with 3-5 incidents that can occur to each of the different jobs (hunter, guide, etc) in that region. Give the incidents a little associated challenge - you get stuck in a marshy bog and must get out, you get lost in the woods, the Anduin is flooded and has to be forded, etc - and the option to either attempt the challenge or pull back and take the long way around for a gain of Fatigue or Shadow. If the players pass the challenge they don't take the bad consequence of failing the travel roll (but, conversely, if they fail the check, let it be more serious than if they'd just eaten the 2 fatigue!).
More generally, outside of Journeys and Encounters, keep an eye on your TNs. Your goal is to make things hard enough that the group (especially a newer group) wants to chew through Hope reasonably frequently, but not so hard that they just get shut down at every turn. If they stress themselves out a little bit, accrue a little Shadow, that's about what you want.
3) Story: The most challenging part of TOR for me is keeping the Tolkien tone and I only ever nailed it in fits and starts. It presents unique challenges: it's a roleplaying game that takes place in a desolate, lonely world where the heroes are often the only sentient beings in a hundred-mile radius. You have to find ways to help the players bring their characters to life during the moments when there's nobody else to talk to but each other. Sometimes you can do this by giving them missions that put stress on their differences - a quest for something that both the dwarves and the Beornings want - other times by giving them choices, even choices as simple as where to go next, that require their characters to come to some kind of agreement with each other.
While PCs can be motivated by fairly selfish concerns like treasure or vengeance, the stories and the world work best when there's a moral dimension to them. PCs should be tempted periodically between an easy way and a right way. NPCs should sometimes be driven by the kind of failings that can afflict otherwise good people, like greed, callousness, short-sightedness, holding pointless grudges over old feuds, etc. The very best conflicts are the kinds that come between basically good people who just don't see eye to eye about something.
Anybody out there still play or think about MHRP? I'm looking for the most absurdly difficult encounters out there. Galactic threats, world-ending abominations, Thanos with the fully stocked Infinity Gauntlet. No holds barred, anything you can think of, no such thing as unfair. I need some ideas on how to challenge a few characters that effectively can rewrite reality on a whim.
Generally speaking, anything that can pose a challenge to folk with d12 Mind Control, Shapeshifting, or Transmutation.
Celestials, Galactus, Skrulls, the Brood, and problems that can't be solved with violence.
On an unrelated note, would folks be interested in a DC Comics CYOA?
My next Exalted campaign is months, potentially over a year off
In the meantime, I would like to try GMing one of the other games on my shelf I've been wanting to give a go for ages, The One Ring
My Wednesday group likes a bit of fantasy and some low fantasy with an anglo-saxon feel would be cool, plus the system looks great
Does anyone have any tips for running it? @Jacobkosh I believe you've played or run this before? I'd like to try giving a published adventure a go for once, anyone done that themselves?
1) Published adventures: there are three books of adventures so far - Tales from Wilderland, The Darkening of Mirkwood, and Ruins of the North. The first and last of these are books of disconnected, one-off adventures; Wilderland is set in games east of the Misty Mountains, around Mirkwood etc, Ruins of the North is set west of the Misty Mountains, in Arnor, with the assumption being that the PCs are based out of Rivendell (although I'm sure they could be based out of Bree as well).
The Darkening of Mirkwood is a full-on campaign that covers something like 35 years of play, with at least one adventure per year and several more seeds. It tells one big story but it's meant to just be the spine of a campaign, not the whole thing - it assumes that you'll be doing at least 2-3 adventures per year, and deliberately leaves some dangling plot threads and unanswered questions, with suggestions for ways to follow up on them with adventures of your own.
There are also a few uncollected one-off adventures floating around the internet from playtests, cons, etc, like "The Marsh Bell" and a couple others whose names I don't remember. They're usually floating around online and are pretty easy to get a hold of.
I run hot and cold on published adventures and that remains the case here. One of the first adventures in Tales from Wilderland is called "Don't Leave the Path," and it's about the party escorting an NPC down a cursed trail through Mirkwood, and if the NPC or a party member strays from the path, bad things happen. And...that's it. That's literally it. There's no sense of escalating stakes and no real climax to speak of - you either reach the end or you don't. On the other hand, there are other adventures in the book that I thought were very good.
Generally speaking, The Darkening of Mirkwood is excellent and I highly recommend it; the problem is just that it's meant to be a big showpiece campaign and it might be too big if you just want to run the game for a few months. Tales from Wilderland is uneven but has good stuff - the precise mix is probably up to the reader - and Ruins of the North is also uneven but I think its quality level is generally higher, as it was published more recently and I think the studio has gotten better at telling stories with this system.
2) System: The formal nature of the Encounter system tends to throw people, especially people used to D&D "I roll Charm" type stuff. It's meant to represent asking for advice/shelter/a favor from a powerful person, like a chieftain, who maybe doesn't have any reason to trust you and may be straight-up paranoid. So from a GM point of view, I would only bust out the Encounter system when that's actually what's going on; it's not meant to govern all encounters, just the ones where PCs have strong incentive to try to be on their best behavior. You may, as the GM, have to do a bit of explaining to the players to help kind of align their expectations so that they understand that courtesy actually matters in this context.
Also, this is obvious but it bears reminding, be ready for what happens if the Encounter fails. Getting kicked out of Dain Ironfoot's halls should be a setback but not bring the game to a halt.
One thing I try to do, especially with a new group, is to give the NPC some kind of problem - not a quest, but just a mundane problem - that the PCs can maybe help with to improve that NPC's Tolerance rating. For instance, in our very first game session, the party had to consult with Radagast, who was irritable and distracted because he'd lost his pipe. The hobbit's player had the Pipe-Smoker trait and asked if he could use that to look in the most likely spaces, and per the Trait rules I let that auto-succeed, so he found the wizard's pipe between the couch cushions and improved Radagast's attitude. Oh, that's another thing - try to make Tolerance not just an abstract thing, but a tangible thing that comes through in the roleplay. It can feel kind of arbitrary that the players get three chances to say "hello, my name is..." and then the person is like FUCK OFF, GO AWAY, but if you play up that the character is busy, distracted, weary, etc it helps the players kind of make the connection between how the system works and what that means for how their characters should be acting.
I really like the Journey system overall but my big beef with it is that it doesn't give very much guidance for how to actually adjudicate the problems that crop up. It's possible for it to devolve into a bloodless series of die rolls - "okay, everyone roll Travel. Bob, you rolled an eye. There's some kind of problem. Gain 2 fatigue" - with no real story. The Journeys and Maps supplement has some good ideas for how to handle this, but if you don't feel like shelling out for that, I recommend sitting down and making a list of the various terrain types or general regions (North Mirkwood, South Mirkwood, the Iron Hills, etc) and come up with 3-5 incidents that can occur to each of the different jobs (hunter, guide, etc) in that region. Give the incidents a little associated challenge - you get stuck in a marshy bog and must get out, you get lost in the woods, the Anduin is flooded and has to be forded, etc - and the option to either attempt the challenge or pull back and take the long way around for a gain of Fatigue or Shadow. If the players pass the challenge they don't take the bad consequence of failing the travel roll (but, conversely, if they fail the check, let it be more serious than if they'd just eaten the 2 fatigue!).
More generally, outside of Journeys and Encounters, keep an eye on your TNs. Your goal is to make things hard enough that the group (especially a newer group) wants to chew through Hope reasonably frequently, but not so hard that they just get shut down at every turn. If they stress themselves out a little bit, accrue a little Shadow, that's about what you want.
3) Story: The most challenging part of TOR for me is keeping the Tolkien tone and I only ever nailed it in fits and starts. It presents unique challenges: it's a roleplaying game that takes place in a desolate, lonely world where the heroes are often the only sentient beings in a hundred-mile radius. You have to find ways to help the players bring their characters to life during the moments when there's nobody else to talk to but each other. Sometimes you can do this by giving them missions that put stress on their differences - a quest for something that both the dwarves and the Beornings want - other times by giving them choices, even choices as simple as where to go next, that require their characters to come to some kind of agreement with each other.
While PCs can be motivated by fairly selfish concerns like treasure or vengeance, the stories and the world work best when there's a moral dimension to them. PCs should be tempted periodically between an easy way and a right way. NPCs should sometimes be driven by the kind of failings that can afflict otherwise good people, like greed, callousness, short-sightedness, holding pointless grudges over old feuds, etc. The very best conflicts are the kinds that come between basically good people who just don't see eye to eye about something.
Yeah, the lack of examples for journey roll outcomes definitely makes it more difficult to fully understand the rules. Ironically, the example tables in the AiME Loremaster’s guide—along with the customized ones in the converted version of Tales From Wilderland—are some of the best supplemental material for running journeys in TOR.
Anybody out there still play or think about MHRP? I'm looking for the most absurdly difficult encounters out there. Galactic threats, world-ending abominations, Thanos with the fully stocked Infinity Gauntlet. No holds barred, anything you can think of, no such thing as unfair. I need some ideas on how to challenge a few characters that effectively can rewrite reality on a whim.
Generally speaking, anything that can pose a challenge to folk with d12 Mind Control, Shapeshifting, or Transmutation.
Galactus, Annihilus, Shuma-Gorath, the Beyonder, Apocalypse in his full glory with four Horsemen and his Celestial spaceship. The Magus. The Molecule Man. D'Ken, the evil brother of Lilandra, with the M'Kraan Crystal and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. The Squadron Sinister. The Phoenix Force. Cthon. The Maestro. Obnoxio the Clown.
Willie Lumpkin with a Cosmic Cube.
Jacobkosh on
+3
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
My next Exalted campaign is months, potentially over a year off
In the meantime, I would like to try GMing one of the other games on my shelf I've been wanting to give a go for ages, The One Ring
My Wednesday group likes a bit of fantasy and some low fantasy with an anglo-saxon feel would be cool, plus the system looks great
Does anyone have any tips for running it? @Jacobkosh I believe you've played or run this before? I'd like to try giving a published adventure a go for once, anyone done that themselves?
1) Published adventures: there are three books of adventures so far - Tales from Wilderland, The Darkening of Mirkwood, and Ruins of the North. The first and last of these are books of disconnected, one-off adventures; Wilderland is set in games east of the Misty Mountains, around Mirkwood etc, Ruins of the North is set west of the Misty Mountains, in Arnor, with the assumption being that the PCs are based out of Rivendell (although I'm sure they could be based out of Bree as well).
The Darkening of Mirkwood is a full-on campaign that covers something like 35 years of play, with at least one adventure per year and several more seeds. It tells one big story but it's meant to just be the spine of a campaign, not the whole thing - it assumes that you'll be doing at least 2-3 adventures per year, and deliberately leaves some dangling plot threads and unanswered questions, with suggestions for ways to follow up on them with adventures of your own.
There are also a few uncollected one-off adventures floating around the internet from playtests, cons, etc, like "The Marsh Bell" and a couple others whose names I don't remember. They're usually floating around online and are pretty easy to get a hold of.
I run hot and cold on published adventures and that remains the case here. One of the first adventures in Tales from Wilderland is called "Don't Leave the Path," and it's about the party escorting an NPC down a cursed trail through Mirkwood, and if the NPC or a party member strays from the path, bad things happen. And...that's it. That's literally it. There's no sense of escalating stakes and no real climax to speak of - you either reach the end or you don't. On the other hand, there are other adventures in the book that I thought were very good.
Generally speaking, The Darkening of Mirkwood is excellent and I highly recommend it; the problem is just that it's meant to be a big showpiece campaign and it might be too big if you just want to run the game for a few months. Tales from Wilderland is uneven but has good stuff - the precise mix is probably up to the reader - and Ruins of the North is also uneven but I think its quality level is generally higher, as it was published more recently and I think the studio has gotten better at telling stories with this system.
2) System: The formal nature of the Encounter system tends to throw people, especially people used to D&D "I roll Charm" type stuff. It's meant to represent asking for advice/shelter/a favor from a powerful person, like a chieftain, who maybe doesn't have any reason to trust you and may be straight-up paranoid. So from a GM point of view, I would only bust out the Encounter system when that's actually what's going on; it's not meant to govern all encounters, just the ones where PCs have strong incentive to try to be on their best behavior. You may, as the GM, have to do a bit of explaining to the players to help kind of align their expectations so that they understand that courtesy actually matters in this context.
Also, this is obvious but it bears reminding, be ready for what happens if the Encounter fails. Getting kicked out of Dain Ironfoot's halls should be a setback but not bring the game to a halt.
One thing I try to do, especially with a new group, is to give the NPC some kind of problem - not a quest, but just a mundane problem - that the PCs can maybe help with to improve that NPC's Tolerance rating. For instance, in our very first game session, the party had to consult with Radagast, who was irritable and distracted because he'd lost his pipe. The hobbit's player had the Pipe-Smoker trait and asked if he could use that to look in the most likely spaces, and per the Trait rules I let that auto-succeed, so he found the wizard's pipe between the couch cushions and improved Radagast's attitude. Oh, that's another thing - try to make Tolerance not just an abstract thing, but a tangible thing that comes through in the roleplay. It can feel kind of arbitrary that the players get three chances to say "hello, my name is..." and then the person is like FUCK OFF, GO AWAY, but if you play up that the character is busy, distracted, weary, etc it helps the players kind of make the connection between how the system works and what that means for how their characters should be acting.
I really like the Journey system overall but my big beef with it is that it doesn't give very much guidance for how to actually adjudicate the problems that crop up. It's possible for it to devolve into a bloodless series of die rolls - "okay, everyone roll Travel. Bob, you rolled an eye. There's some kind of problem. Gain 2 fatigue" - with no real story. The Journeys and Maps supplement has some good ideas for how to handle this, but if you don't feel like shelling out for that, I recommend sitting down and making a list of the various terrain types or general regions (North Mirkwood, South Mirkwood, the Iron Hills, etc) and come up with 3-5 incidents that can occur to each of the different jobs (hunter, guide, etc) in that region. Give the incidents a little associated challenge - you get stuck in a marshy bog and must get out, you get lost in the woods, the Anduin is flooded and has to be forded, etc - and the option to either attempt the challenge or pull back and take the long way around for a gain of Fatigue or Shadow. If the players pass the challenge they don't take the bad consequence of failing the travel roll (but, conversely, if they fail the check, let it be more serious than if they'd just eaten the 2 fatigue!).
More generally, outside of Journeys and Encounters, keep an eye on your TNs. Your goal is to make things hard enough that the group (especially a newer group) wants to chew through Hope reasonably frequently, but not so hard that they just get shut down at every turn. If they stress themselves out a little bit, accrue a little Shadow, that's about what you want.
3) Story: The most challenging part of TOR for me is keeping the Tolkien tone and I only ever nailed it in fits and starts. It presents unique challenges: it's a roleplaying game that takes place in a desolate, lonely world where the heroes are often the only sentient beings in a hundred-mile radius. You have to find ways to help the players bring their characters to life during the moments when there's nobody else to talk to but each other. Sometimes you can do this by giving them missions that put stress on their differences - a quest for something that both the dwarves and the Beornings want - other times by giving them choices, even choices as simple as where to go next, that require their characters to come to some kind of agreement with each other.
While PCs can be motivated by fairly selfish concerns like treasure or vengeance, the stories and the world work best when there's a moral dimension to them. PCs should be tempted periodically between an easy way and a right way. NPCs should sometimes be driven by the kind of failings that can afflict otherwise good people, like greed, callousness, short-sightedness, holding pointless grudges over old feuds, etc. The very best conflicts are the kinds that come between basically good people who just don't see eye to eye about something.
Yeah, the lack of examples for journey roll outcomes definitely makes it more difficult to fully understand the rules. Ironically, the example tables in the AiME Loremaster’s guide—along with the customized ones in the converted version of Tales From Wilderland—are some of the best supplemental material for running journeys in TOR.
I really need to pick those up, then. TOR is in that weird space where I love it but I really wish there was just more concrete guidance out there for it and it sounds like for whatever reason that guidance has ended up in AiME.
+2
Options
dresdenphileWatch out for snakes!Registered Userregular
Anybody out there still play or think about MHRP? I'm looking for the most absurdly difficult encounters out there. Galactic threats, world-ending abominations, Thanos with the fully stocked Infinity Gauntlet. No holds barred, anything you can think of, no such thing as unfair. I need some ideas on how to challenge a few characters that effectively can rewrite reality on a whim.
Generally speaking, anything that can pose a challenge to folk with d12 Mind Control, Shapeshifting, or Transmutation.
An Exiles-style team comprised of alternate King Hyperions, each with an appropriate Marvel MacGuffin?
The problem isn't that we're too good at violence.
It's that our tools are so broadly applicable and insanely flexible that violence is the comic relief between scenes of us rewiring reality in our own image.
Anybody out there still play or think about MHRP? I'm looking for the most absurdly difficult encounters out there. Galactic threats, world-ending abominations, Thanos with the fully stocked Infinity Gauntlet. No holds barred, anything you can think of, no such thing as unfair. I need some ideas on how to challenge a few characters that effectively can rewrite reality on a whim.
Generally speaking, anything that can pose a challenge to folk with d12 Mind Control, Shapeshifting, or Transmutation.
do a classic comic book move and have them fight themselves from another dimension
Anybody out there still play or think about MHRP? I'm looking for the most absurdly difficult encounters out there. Galactic threats, world-ending abominations, Thanos with the fully stocked Infinity Gauntlet. No holds barred, anything you can think of, no such thing as unfair. I need some ideas on how to challenge a few characters that effectively can rewrite reality on a whim.
Generally speaking, anything that can pose a challenge to folk with d12 Mind Control, Shapeshifting, or Transmutation.
do a classic comic book move and have them fight themselves from another dimension
Make them fight their DC counterparts in an insanely amazing crossover event!
Thanks guys! I am definitely wanting to give ToR a serious go as it were, test it's capabilities, rather than use the 5e conversion. I think it looks like a more enjoyable core system than DnD for me.
I was reading the initial adventure for Tales of the Wilderland and yeah it's very vanilla. I like the Ruins of the North initial one a bit more, because it feels quite dark and foreboding which is cool, but that campaign seems to draw you into doing loads of stuff with Elrond, Gandalf etc and I'd rather actually do a campaign which is a bit less tied into those big powerful magical figures in the setting on a regular basis.
Really what I might do is take an adventure from somewhere in those books that suits my fancy, ideally in the Wilderland, and just start with that. The one where there's the Hobbit Inn and they are hired to rescue the proprietors brother looks quite good, ideally the cultures I want them to be interacting with are the tough cultures of the Men of the North, feels like there's more to explore there and potentially I can take them right up into the cold, dark mountains for some darker stuff too.
But your comments are very helpful, I will probably limit the use of the Encounter system to more important NPCs for sure, and I'll take time to plan out the consequences of various outcomes of what happens when they go travelling in order to keep that interesting. That definitely seems like it's something important to nail the Tolkien feel, that idea of travelling across great wild spaces with ancient history hidden away under lonely ruined watchtowers and such, and I think incorporating that into the travel roll seems good.
What I might do is when they succeed, rather than being like "nothing happens" instead I'll break them from the meta-narrative of "you're travelling" and just roleplay them coming across the aforementioned lonely watchtower, let them make some rolls to maybe determine it's history and fate, perhaps some rolls to tell poems and tales around the campfire. So then the travelling feels like a very alive and important part of the game, even when it's relatively uneventful, and I think that's very Tolkien IMO.
My kids (ages 16, 12, 10, and 7) have talked me into running a 4e game for them. I'm starting them out at level 6 and, after a quick intro adventure, plan to run them through Gardmore Abbey. My wife may also be joining us from time to time.
My question is: how much XP is it appropriate to bribe my kids with to get them to do their weekly chores without complaining?
When I was driving once I saw this painted on a bridge:
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
My kids (ages 16, 12, 10, and 7) have talked me into running a 4e game for them. I'm starting them out at level 6 and, after a quick intro adventure, plan to run them through Gardmore Abbey. My wife may also be joining us from time to time.
My question is: how much XP is it appropriate to bribe my kids with to get them to do their weekly chores without complaining?
none
chores themselves are the reward, since they are free from their cages to prove themselves valuable to the household
My kids (ages 16, 12, 10, and 7) have talked me into running a 4e game for them. I'm starting them out at level 6 and, after a quick intro adventure, plan to run them through Gardmore Abbey. My wife may also be joining us from time to time.
My question is: how much XP is it appropriate to bribe my kids with to get them to do their weekly chores without complaining?
The question you should be asking them is, if they want to play 4e so bad why aren't they doing their weekly chores without complaining?
My kids (ages 16, 12, 10, and 7) have talked me into running a 4e game for them. I'm starting them out at level 6 and, after a quick intro adventure, plan to run them through Gardmore Abbey. My wife may also be joining us from time to time.
My question is: how much XP is it appropriate to bribe my kids with to get them to do their weekly chores without complaining?
The question you should be asking them is, if they want to play 4e so bad why aren't they doing their weekly chores without complaining?
"If I'm busy doing all the thing you were supposed to do, how am I supposed to prepare a dungeon for you?"
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Posts
All I can really do is look at the games I know I do like because I've played/run them extensively and try to draw parallels
CofD (especially Mage and Werewolf), The One Ring, Ars Magica, Exalted 3rd ed, L5R 4th ed, Eclipse Phase, Mutants and Masterminds 3rd ed, I think that basically covers most of my shelf for stuff I'd actually consider running again
I've listened to enough actual play podcasts to absolutely agree that roleplaying can be art. No to say all of them are, but some (or pieces of some) are masterpieces of dramatic or comedic improv.
I've found that at this point in my life ill play just about anything as long as the group is pretty good. I have my favorites for sure. I liken it to work. It doesn't matter how great the job is if you have shitty co-workers, but a poor job can be made a lot better with good co-workers.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Posting it made sense because one of the participants (perhaps falsely) asserted they were working off a different definition of what simulationist meant. Given that their definition appears to have shifted, I'm not sure that they're unaware of the more standard definitions of the terms as relate to gaming and not simply being purposefully obtuse.
My feelings tend to be that games lean either narrative or determinant and the "simulation" aspect isn't particularly relevant unless we're specifically discussing something like genre emulation. Moreover, narrative and determinant games will play differently depending on the composure of the group as regards the ~8 types of players.
The key difference between narrative and determinant games is "dramatic importance," i.e. if something is dramatically important to the tone of the game both a narrative and determinant game will have an attribute or characteristic relating to that thing. If something is not dramatically important to the tone of the game a narrative game is far more likely to ignore it. The extent to which these things are true depend on how simulationist the game is.
AD&D is largely determinant but not significantly simulationist. There aren't a lot of rules for things like not making an ass of yourself in a conversation but they all come down to dice rolls when called onto the table.
3.X is largely determinant and significantly simulationist. There are a lot of rules for things like not making an ass of yourself in a conversation. Or teleporting. Or entering a gate. Or throwing a hat. Or changing alignment.
In my experience a good shorthand for how simulationist a game is "how many charts does this game have?" Also useful: "how many skills does this game have?" Compare AD&D with 3.0 and there's virtually no question, using either of those criterion, that 3.X is more simulationist.
There is nothing wrong with simulationist games.
Narrative games tend to be less simulationist because we've learned over the last forty years that you really don't need a lot of dice rolling to arbitrate games if the players are behaving like adults. The GM can usually make a quick assessment of whether the argument presented is logical, account for the character's abilities, and make a quick ruling.
Determinant games tend to be more simulationist because if you're going to roll for most situations where failure could occur you're going to be rolling fairly often and across a broad range of event types. Moreover, a typical feature of determinant games is that the GM isn't really the arbitrator, the dice are, so the dice are almost always rolled more often.
We're into a period where a lot of lessons learned are synthesized into newer games so there are more than a few that will bust whatever diagram you put together to explain games. Often this is entirely on purpose.
D&D will never be one of these games.
Speaking of people who still play 3.x. I had moved to Texas two years ago, leaving my best friend without a DM (we had a PF campaign stretching back before 5e was released). Some time after I left, he got back in touch with some of his high school buddies who were trying to figure out how to run 5e because they watched critical role. My friend hadn't DM'd much (maybe a few sessions) so he was constantly texting me on how to handle different stuff. We were both excited when I ended up moving back because hey! D&D time again!
Then I realized I'd have to play pathfinder.
Jesus Christ that game did not age well, swelling to the breaking point with utterly garbage feats and prestige classes. Not to mention all of his other players are the absolute worst murder hobos. One of the players made a rogue/wizard who used still spell+silent spell with a high stealth mod just so he could secretly kill random NPCs. Whenever he meets kings or anything he just drops fireballs all people for shits and giggles. And everyone but me and friendDM thinks it's hilarious.
Ended up making a half-orc with ridiculous saves and I just kill their characters when they act up. Everyone's cool with that because friendDM has given up. 3.x can be fun and engaging and all that, but man I wish there was something in it that stopped random asshattery.
We can classify RPGs, codify what styles and genres there are, but just like an adventure - no RPG remains unchanged by it's DMs or Players. May as well debate taste buds or music, since RPGs will always have more differences or variables from game to game and group to group.
RPGs can absolutely be art and high minded. They can also be the setup for 30 solid minutes of lung burningly funny riffing on the joke of "The door is a jar".
RPGs can be anything - that is their power and strength. And weakness.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
Yeah, I grabbed Genesys but I'm still lacking the ASoIFRP books. I mean, I have the PDFs but find it harder to retain any of the material. I wonder how easy houses/organizations would be to operate in Genesys compared to SIFRP (I like to carry my acronyms) or Spellbound Kingdoms.
Shit man I bought RPGs in my time that I've never even come close to running or playing
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I can’t express how much it warms my heart to see that game referenced. Perhaps it was a joke, but if you ever consider using it—as is or through as many alterations as you please—do drop me a message.
For the record my neice’s game ended a fair few months ago. It being the first game she has ever run (with pointers and occasional step-ins when I could visit).
In a climactic battle against the evil Richness Company, one of the queens (her sister) had her sword destroyed and was confronted by the nefarious Banker at gunpoint... but! Just as her sword gave her the right to be queen, as she was a queen, she had a right to a sword! So everyone agreed, and she pulled a sword from nothing and struck them all down with atom-thick slashes of pure space!
The people were freed and mountains of treasure were shared with all!
...
But mostly taken by the queens.
Generally speaking, anything that can pose a challenge to folk with d12 Mind Control, Shapeshifting, or Transmutation.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
In the meantime, I would like to try GMing one of the other games on my shelf I've been wanting to give a go for ages, The One Ring
My Wednesday group likes a bit of fantasy and some low fantasy with an anglo-saxon feel would be cool, plus the system looks great
Does anyone have any tips for running it? @Jacobkosh I believe you've played or run this before? I'd like to try giving a published adventure a go for once, anyone done that themselves?
Any thoughts on designing situations challenging for those types of high powered characters?
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
In super hero stories, not all fights are two guys slugging it out. You should force the players to decide if they want to hit Thanos or whatever, or save people, keep a portal open so reenforcements can come over, something. Also, give your bosses ways to heal/reflect damage. I know people like the Hulk can spend Plot Points to ignore physical damage. Also, try to shut down people's powers. Limits are there for a reason, push hard into them. Remember, the fight ends in defeat once you get that Doom Pool to 2d12, so really push that direction, making sure they know that shit is getting bad. The Annihilation book has rules for Time Limits, just to amp up the action, and I think the scenario has a thing where people are on a planet as it's being destroyed. Like, really push the ante and force them to have to make hard choices during the fight.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
We can't defeat that.
Hence the problem.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I am not @jacobkosh, but I did play in his TOR game. I also own most of the gameline, and have run the 5e-conversion of it (Adventures in Middle-Earth). The game does an excellent job of capturing the low-fantasy feel of Tolkien. Personally, I found TOR's Journey and Encounter rules a bit difficult to fully grasp, and I highly prefer the straightforward versions in AiME. The existing adventures in Tales from Wilderland have some good ideas and a use-able dramatic through-line. However, I would have done heavy re-cutting/editing on them to make them feel more important and more open to player choices had the group decided to proceed with AiME rather than our current game.
Edit - A few examples of the rules differences (it has been awhile since our TOR game, so this is all my recollection):
In TOR, Journeys require rolls from each member of the fellowship. Failed rolls trigger events, which may or may not break out into separate scenes you play out. In AiME, a Journey only technically requires a single roll by the fellowship's guide. The outcome of that roll then determines both the general 'tone' of the group's travel, as well as the number of events. Each event is a scene that requires another member of the fellowship to undergo a test in order to determine the outcome.
In TOR, encounters begin with every member of the fellowship making an introduction roll to see if they get to participate in the scene. Those who fail aren't actually supposed to take part in the ensuing conversation. I am not sure that I recall any specific rules on the difficulty for the party actually getting what they want from the person with whom they sought an audience. In AiME, one member of the group makes an introduction roll for the entire party with the difficulty being set by the target's impression of the introducer's culture. The success/failure doesn't preclude further interaction, but is used to determine the difficulty of the final check. Role-play is then used to determine modifiers for that final roll, which is again done by one member of the party.
I would highly recommend taking a look at Rich H's thread over on the Cubicle 7 forums which addresses some of the concerns I have with Journeys and Encounters. It also has a re-edited version of a couple of the published adventures into something that feels a bit more important in the game world.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
@Solar you bet!
Ok, let's see. Lemme organize my thoughts.
1) Published adventures: there are three books of adventures so far - Tales from Wilderland, The Darkening of Mirkwood, and Ruins of the North. The first and last of these are books of disconnected, one-off adventures; Wilderland is set in games east of the Misty Mountains, around Mirkwood etc, Ruins of the North is set west of the Misty Mountains, in Arnor, with the assumption being that the PCs are based out of Rivendell (although I'm sure they could be based out of Bree as well).
The Darkening of Mirkwood is a full-on campaign that covers something like 35 years of play, with at least one adventure per year and several more seeds. It tells one big story but it's meant to just be the spine of a campaign, not the whole thing - it assumes that you'll be doing at least 2-3 adventures per year, and deliberately leaves some dangling plot threads and unanswered questions, with suggestions for ways to follow up on them with adventures of your own.
There are also a few uncollected one-off adventures floating around the internet from playtests, cons, etc, like "The Marsh Bell" and a couple others whose names I don't remember. They're usually floating around online and are pretty easy to get a hold of.
I run hot and cold on published adventures and that remains the case here. One of the first adventures in Tales from Wilderland is called "Don't Leave the Path," and it's about the party escorting an NPC down a cursed trail through Mirkwood, and if the NPC or a party member strays from the path, bad things happen. And...that's it. That's literally it. There's no sense of escalating stakes and no real climax to speak of - you either reach the end or you don't. On the other hand, there are other adventures in the book that I thought were very good.
Generally speaking, The Darkening of Mirkwood is excellent and I highly recommend it; the problem is just that it's meant to be a big showpiece campaign and it might be too big if you just want to run the game for a few months. Tales from Wilderland is uneven but has good stuff - the precise mix is probably up to the reader - and Ruins of the North is also uneven but I think its quality level is generally higher, as it was published more recently and I think the studio has gotten better at telling stories with this system.
2) System: The formal nature of the Encounter system tends to throw people, especially people used to D&D "I roll Charm" type stuff. It's meant to represent asking for advice/shelter/a favor from a powerful person, like a chieftain, who maybe doesn't have any reason to trust you and may be straight-up paranoid. So from a GM point of view, I would only bust out the Encounter system when that's actually what's going on; it's not meant to govern all encounters, just the ones where PCs have strong incentive to try to be on their best behavior. You may, as the GM, have to do a bit of explaining to the players to help kind of align their expectations so that they understand that courtesy actually matters in this context.
Also, this is obvious but it bears reminding, be ready for what happens if the Encounter fails. Getting kicked out of Dain Ironfoot's halls should be a setback but not bring the game to a halt.
One thing I try to do, especially with a new group, is to give the NPC some kind of problem - not a quest, but just a mundane problem - that the PCs can maybe help with to improve that NPC's Tolerance rating. For instance, in our very first game session, the party had to consult with Radagast, who was irritable and distracted because he'd lost his pipe. The hobbit's player had the Pipe-Smoker trait and asked if he could use that to look in the most likely spaces, and per the Trait rules I let that auto-succeed, so he found the wizard's pipe between the couch cushions and improved Radagast's attitude. Oh, that's another thing - try to make Tolerance not just an abstract thing, but a tangible thing that comes through in the roleplay. It can feel kind of arbitrary that the players get three chances to say "hello, my name is..." and then the person is like FUCK OFF, GO AWAY, but if you play up that the character is busy, distracted, weary, etc it helps the players kind of make the connection between how the system works and what that means for how their characters should be acting.
I really like the Journey system overall but my big beef with it is that it doesn't give very much guidance for how to actually adjudicate the problems that crop up. It's possible for it to devolve into a bloodless series of die rolls - "okay, everyone roll Travel. Bob, you rolled an eye. There's some kind of problem. Gain 2 fatigue" - with no real story. The Journeys and Maps supplement has some good ideas for how to handle this, but if you don't feel like shelling out for that, I recommend sitting down and making a list of the various terrain types or general regions (North Mirkwood, South Mirkwood, the Iron Hills, etc) and come up with 3-5 incidents that can occur to each of the different jobs (hunter, guide, etc) in that region. Give the incidents a little associated challenge - you get stuck in a marshy bog and must get out, you get lost in the woods, the Anduin is flooded and has to be forded, etc - and the option to either attempt the challenge or pull back and take the long way around for a gain of Fatigue or Shadow. If the players pass the challenge they don't take the bad consequence of failing the travel roll (but, conversely, if they fail the check, let it be more serious than if they'd just eaten the 2 fatigue!).
More generally, outside of Journeys and Encounters, keep an eye on your TNs. Your goal is to make things hard enough that the group (especially a newer group) wants to chew through Hope reasonably frequently, but not so hard that they just get shut down at every turn. If they stress themselves out a little bit, accrue a little Shadow, that's about what you want.
3) Story: The most challenging part of TOR for me is keeping the Tolkien tone and I only ever nailed it in fits and starts. It presents unique challenges: it's a roleplaying game that takes place in a desolate, lonely world where the heroes are often the only sentient beings in a hundred-mile radius. You have to find ways to help the players bring their characters to life during the moments when there's nobody else to talk to but each other. Sometimes you can do this by giving them missions that put stress on their differences - a quest for something that both the dwarves and the Beornings want - other times by giving them choices, even choices as simple as where to go next, that require their characters to come to some kind of agreement with each other.
While PCs can be motivated by fairly selfish concerns like treasure or vengeance, the stories and the world work best when there's a moral dimension to them. PCs should be tempted periodically between an easy way and a right way. NPCs should sometimes be driven by the kind of failings that can afflict otherwise good people, like greed, callousness, short-sightedness, holding pointless grudges over old feuds, etc. The very best conflicts are the kinds that come between basically good people who just don't see eye to eye about something.
Celestials, Galactus, Skrulls, the Brood, and problems that can't be solved with violence.
On an unrelated note, would folks be interested in a DC Comics CYOA?
Yeah, the lack of examples for journey roll outcomes definitely makes it more difficult to fully understand the rules. Ironically, the example tables in the AiME Loremaster’s guide—along with the customized ones in the converted version of Tales From Wilderland—are some of the best supplemental material for running journeys in TOR.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Galactus, Annihilus, Shuma-Gorath, the Beyonder, Apocalypse in his full glory with four Horsemen and his Celestial spaceship. The Magus. The Molecule Man. D'Ken, the evil brother of Lilandra, with the M'Kraan Crystal and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. The Squadron Sinister. The Phoenix Force. Cthon. The Maestro. Obnoxio the Clown.
Willie Lumpkin with a Cosmic Cube.
I really need to pick those up, then. TOR is in that weird space where I love it but I really wish there was just more concrete guidance out there for it and it sounds like for whatever reason that guidance has ended up in AiME.
An Exiles-style team comprised of alternate King Hyperions, each with an appropriate Marvel MacGuffin?
It's that our tools are so broadly applicable and insanely flexible that violence is the comic relief between scenes of us rewiring reality in our own image.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
do a classic comic book move and have them fight themselves from another dimension
Make them fight their DC counterparts in an insanely amazing crossover event!
Remember that Access is still around. But if he wasn't...
I was reading the initial adventure for Tales of the Wilderland and yeah it's very vanilla. I like the Ruins of the North initial one a bit more, because it feels quite dark and foreboding which is cool, but that campaign seems to draw you into doing loads of stuff with Elrond, Gandalf etc and I'd rather actually do a campaign which is a bit less tied into those big powerful magical figures in the setting on a regular basis.
Really what I might do is take an adventure from somewhere in those books that suits my fancy, ideally in the Wilderland, and just start with that. The one where there's the Hobbit Inn and they are hired to rescue the proprietors brother looks quite good, ideally the cultures I want them to be interacting with are the tough cultures of the Men of the North, feels like there's more to explore there and potentially I can take them right up into the cold, dark mountains for some darker stuff too.
But your comments are very helpful, I will probably limit the use of the Encounter system to more important NPCs for sure, and I'll take time to plan out the consequences of various outcomes of what happens when they go travelling in order to keep that interesting. That definitely seems like it's something important to nail the Tolkien feel, that idea of travelling across great wild spaces with ancient history hidden away under lonely ruined watchtowers and such, and I think incorporating that into the travel roll seems good.
What I might do is when they succeed, rather than being like "nothing happens" instead I'll break them from the meta-narrative of "you're travelling" and just roleplay them coming across the aforementioned lonely watchtower, let them make some rolls to maybe determine it's history and fate, perhaps some rolls to tell poems and tales around the campfire. So then the travelling feels like a very alive and important part of the game, even when it's relatively uneventful, and I think that's very Tolkien IMO.
My question is: how much XP is it appropriate to bribe my kids with to get them to do their weekly chores without complaining?
"I don't want the world, I just want your half"
none
chores themselves are the reward, since they are free from their cages to prove themselves valuable to the household
The question you should be asking them is, if they want to play 4e so bad why aren't they doing their weekly chores without complaining?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
"If I'm busy doing all the thing you were supposed to do, how am I supposed to prepare a dungeon for you?"
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain