Just saw the new Pathfinder 2E kobold design and had to share:
Pretty radical redesign.
I've never liked Kobolds as mini-dragons. Feels like it cheapens them, ironically.
Shitty knock-off goblins, with a vaguely dog/ratlike element will always be Kobolds for me.
They're cool precisely because they aren't. No hints at some greater ancestry or things to come. They're Level 1 junk that gets it's shit together whilst you're not looking by becoming partly genre savvy and partly just because they will organise and that's hard enough.
If you're fighting Dragonlings from the start, and smart ones - then they get no redemption and are just a brutal 1st adventure or you're playing with people who'll expect Kobold nonsense from everything, so they're nothing special. Might as well have squirrelfolk who fight with their newborn young worn as armour against adventurers.
Does anyone have a good tool for personal campaign notes? As a player in a campaign, I would like to keep track of npcs, locales, and outcomes to situations especially political outcomes. Right now I am just writing everything down in a notebook, but I can see that becoming difficult to use and figured there is a decent chance someone has built a tool for just this purpose.
WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
OK, so the guy I'm talking to about co-DM'ing with a PbtA hack is totally down for it, we're hammering out the kinks and details of the system, and it's going great. Turns out, his partner wants to make a character and join up, which means we need to come up with starting move possibilities for her. The two character ideas she has floated so far are: "A gardening gnome" and "a crafty magic user, like a knitter who animates their knitting".
For the first, I'm assuming I should be looking into classes like rangers and druids for move inspiration. For the second, man....what am I looking at here? A summoner with eidolons? A witch with familiars? Just trying to figure out what general class archetype that would fall under in another game, so I can have some inspiration material.
I think both ideas are great, I want to be able to do either one justice.
Does anyone have a good tool for personal campaign notes? As a player in a campaign, I would like to keep track of npcs, locales, and outcomes to situations especially political outcomes. Right now I am just writing everything down in a notebook, but I can see that becoming difficult to use and figured there is a decent chance someone has built a tool for just this purpose.
Honestly OneNote has worked out great for me. Not even using crazy custom templates, though I'm sure those could help.
Just saw the new Pathfinder 2E kobold design and had to share:
Pretty radical redesign.
I've never liked Kobolds as mini-dragons. Feels like it cheapens them, ironically.
Shitty knock-off goblins, with a vaguely dog/ratlike element will always be Kobolds for me.
They're cool precisely because they aren't. No hints at some greater ancestry or things to come. They're Level 1 junk that gets it's shit together whilst you're not looking by becoming partly genre savvy and partly just because they will organise and that's hard enough.
If you're fighting Dragonlings from the start, and smart ones - then they get no redemption and are just a brutal 1st adventure or you're playing with people who'll expect Kobold nonsense from everything, so they're nothing special. Might as well have squirrelfolk who fight with their newborn young worn as armour against adventurers.
I don't particularly care about them being level 1 fodder guys or not but I don't really like the "they're dragonoids" angle either
who came up with that flavor, was it a D&D-originated thing? Something from a particular setting that spread around?
I don't particularly care about them being level 1 fodder guys or not but I don't really like the "they're dragonoids" angle either
who came up with that flavor, was it a D&D-originated thing? Something from a particular setting that spread around?
To the best of my knowledge, it originated in 3E when they started drawing them scaly, but they really leaned super into it in 4E.
In 3E, mostly, they were just scaly and worshiped dragons and served dragons. In 4E, they had draconic descent and dragon powers (one of the first and earliest monsters I remember using in a fight in 4E was the Kobold Dragonshield, who had an elemental attack based on the dragon they served).
I love tiny dragon kobolds, because I love dragons and I like the idea of these tiny little creatures who are distantly related to these huge, regal, monsters.
Except they're small and sly and cunning and only rarely have anything resembling the power of their distant kin, but they make do anyway and sometimes a paragon kobold aspires to be something greater and manages to be
it's fun and cute and I don't really like rat-like kobolds anyway. if I want rat-like creatures I'd go with Warhammer's Skaven or like, ratlings or whatever.
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
you'll do fine! just remember, the players want to play your story, they just don't know they want to play it! so you gotta make em want it!
alternatively, gentle railroading is sometimes warranted. gentleness in this instance is highly subjective.
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
I solve this by giving players nothing but plot hooks
Everybody they speak to has a reason to ask them for help
It helps if you know the characters’ motivations, but that unfortunately is rare in session 1
Or you can start in medias res - they’re not in the tavern drinking or whatever, they’re on the road answering the Call to Adventure and it’s up to them to decide why, but maybe not now because they’ve come across an ambush Roll for Initiative and no, Halfling Rogue, there are no women around to seduce
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
let them wander a little bit, but if they're getting too far, just have an NPC run in screaming for help
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
I've always loved the "called to a hidden meeting by a mysterious and extremely wealthy benefactor" as a plot hook. the mystery is undeniable, and the gold and jewels promised in the note are a motivator that even the most doggedly pragmatic can't ignore.
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Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
I've found that my players are way more willing to jump on the threads I dangle than I would have assumed. One of my favorite tricks, though (and it's a common one) is to make mental notes of the remarks or suspicions the players voice and then find a way to weave that idea into the plot I had previously sketched out. It's a source of fun ideas and a way to make the players feel clever, and players who feel clever want to stay engaged and keep following the thread that they unwittingly helped write.
We're in media res for sure. I'll spoiler this stuff just in case anyone listens to the show (it's good you should listen to it)
The last episode ended with something approaching a total party wipe, where they were ambushed by Tremere and afflicted with a poison that knocked them out. The leader of the group was the only one left conscious, with 2 hit points remaining. Being that jacked up in Vampire (aggravated damage) means you can only heal those health levels once a night rather than once per turn, so once the coterie wakes up from the poison in a few minutes (poison doesn't work great against vampires) I'm going to find ways to suggest they should chase him down and take him down while he's weak.
They'll also have to deal with the cops showing up to investigate (this attack took place in a major urban area), decide whether to kill or capture a wounded survivor etc. My character took some nasty damage to the throat in the melee, so I'm using that as justification for her not being able to speak during the game, she's going to mostly be sidelined but will be a proponent of a timely revenge. They can get his location from either the prisoner (who'll roll over) or by tracking him with their dogs.
Aside from that (I'm guessing that'll take about half the session if they don't reject it), we can work on the next heist which is at a boatyard. I'm trying to think through the best way of doing that.
My GM said that it was a lot of fun listening to my group take various random bits of background she threw out and weave together a coherent plot and story out of them all. For example, from our last session:
Player characters arrive in a town holding a local festival in the middle of the summer. One player has a necklace they can use to cast light and has a secondary random chance to cast Zone of Truth as something of a gag related to some podcast or another.
We were asked to search the bottom of the well for any signs of a halfling teen who had fallen down earlier that day in the festival, but everyone was too drunk or distracted to help the distraught mother.
Town has been suffering from drought and drying up wells for the past couple of years (the drought/drying up wells is a random bit of flavour the GM threw out, wasn't intended to have any significance).
The party ends up going down the well in the center of the town and discovers a tunnel connecting to an ancient temple to a water goddess (the god's portfolio/background was randomly rolled during the session).
Goblins have taken up residence in the last couple of months in the old temple and have dug some tunnels through the walls to make warrens.
More player questions about where the goblins might have come from and GM throws out a comment that there have been reports of infighting among local goblin tribes and the losers getting forced out of traditional territories (this was to get us to shut up about this and get on with the adventure in the town rather than heading out of town in pursuit of bigger picture).
There is also an underground river flowing through and under different temple levels.
We speculate that there is a connection between the drought and the temple.
We ask townfolk representative with us if there had been any change in the water levels recently and the townsperson says that the main town well has stayed flowing more consistently since it got muddy for a few days several months back (GM playing off our speculations and deciding that the Goblins had dug a tunnel from the underground complex to connect to the well which would provide them access to the town, but the effect of this was to allow some of the water from the temple to flow down into the well.)
Further investigation finds new waterfall/sinkhole in the underground river that meant more water drained away down the fall compared to the old path which flowed much closer to the surface.
It appeared several years old (we were asking if there had been any signs of changes in the water flows in the river and the GM leaped on this prompt).
We also asked a bunch of questions regarding the Goblin signs that had shown up and if there had been any attacks. The GM had originally intended for a simple dungeon crawl where we kill off the goblins like you normally do, but these questions meant that the GM decided to mix things up a bit and say that there had only been some thefts of food and laundry recently.
We explored the caverns and the GM randomly generated the rooms. The first room we check out in the warrens is randomly a goblin nursery.
We go about a non-lethal negotiated approach and one of the characters used their circus performer background and a performance check to try to calm the kids down. Player rolled a 20 + 5 performance check and the GM ruled this flipped the kids from hostile to friendly. This was not how things had been planned to go, but the super high roll and how we RP'd it caused the GM to roll with it.
We go in to the main hall and there are lots of goblins, a crate with an owlbear cub, plus a tied up halfling teen (this was the original encounter design). Rather than attacking, we attempt to parlay.
GM is planning on a big combat, but throws us a bone and sets a DC 22 skill check required to get the goblins to respond to the parley (we didn't know the check). Spokesperson rolls high and with bonuses, and bardic inspirations burned we succeed.
We note among ourselves that the goblins have captured hafling, but not killed her or apparently mistreated her in a significant way. We seize on this as a possible sign that the goblins can be dealt with diplomatically.
Since diplomacy going okay, we ask goblins if we can increase illumination to help reduce chance of misunderstandings. Goblins are okay with this. Player uses their necklace and randomly triggers Zone of Truth.
Lots of RP in the negotiations for the halfing kid. We ask if goblins had been forced off land by recent upheaval in local goblin power structure. Goblins are surprised that we are aware of this and confirm it (thanks to Zone of Truth).
More Zone of Truth aided negotiations, final deal ends up being the goblins provide water to the town via the magical water generating portals/traps in the temple as well as scouts for the town's watch/defenses. In return if the goblins follow the laws they will be allowed to stay and provided with food/opportunities to integrate.
A lot of this was because of the players discussing among themselves our thoughts about this being a less violent group of goblins, probably because they were led by a matriarch and there were a higher number of female goblins in the grouping as a result of the recent power struggles. We speculated this meant that the younger male goblins who tended to be more violent and malevolent were not with this group and that provided us an opportunity to deal with the goblins in a non-violent way. The GM told us afterwards that she pretty much threw out the rest of the adventure she had planned when she heard this and went with our speculations provided we could make the various checks.
The end result was basically the GM took the ideas we bounced around and the explanations we came up with it and springboarded off them to rewrite the adventure on the fly. When there were inconsistencies, the players would take it to mean we were missing some key information, would speculate on what that info was, and come up with an explanation for how they fit together. The GM would then nod and tell us that we were very clever.
Infinity released it's newest mini-campaign: An investigation into a smuggling ring for illegal alien tech that escalates to involve hacker collectives, CEO's and ends in a James Bond secret jungle lair.
The first session also featured the first time one of my players seemed actually intimidated by a combat encounter. Turns out thermo-optic camo on a shape shifting alien with near infinite agility makes people flinch.
Also it features Fusilier Angus: The joke tutorial man from the wargame whose role in examples of play is to always be in imminent danger. He was very fun to voice for an NPC.
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
Hmm, kinda want to make kobolds out of cobalt, who are refugees from the world’s core or the plane of earth, who are mining upwards rather than down like the other underground races.
To carry the kobold/cobalt theme I guess they utilise dyed blue glass, basic batteries, heat resistant alloys, and some dangerously amateur alchemy.
I reckon they could be little guys with barely featured faces, like the ore equivalent of snowmen almost, wearing proto-gas-masks or maybe plague doctor masks.
All they want to do is survive, so they try to assimilate with whatever strong person or society they mine into, so they’re as likely to become minions of a paladin as a dark lord. No morality beyond ‘act like that guy that can defend us.’
The only time they become remotely scary is the speed they can switch sides if their current boss shows weakness.
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
I'm mainly worried about it because it's streamed, so I'm not able to call it if I get completely out of my depth. That's evened out by the fact that the table are also aware that it's streamed and are much less likely to try and fuck me over.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
I love the advice in the book Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master he recommends preparing for the following.
Review the player characters. What are they likely to want from this session today? Can you include any of their backstory.
Create a strong start, this is just defining what they want to do this session and make sure they can do it.
Outline some potential scenes and locations. As Rank just said, these might end up being not used. But remember you can literally reskin any encounter you want to use and throw it somewhere else and they will never know, treat these scenes and locations like the Truman show, everyone is waiting around the corner until it isn't.
Outline important NPCs, remember, most of these have legs, so they can walk to places, so don't be stressed if they don't visit the NPC's house, and like scenes and locations they can be recycled.
Outline some possible combat opportunities.
Outline some rewards ie. gold/items/magic/favours
And remember at most during a session players can only do like six things, be it combat, talking to people, going to a new place, so you really don't need a lot of content to cover everything. (also the book is like 25 dollars so pick it up as well if you can afford it, it breaks all of these points down a bit more and it is very easy to read)
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
I'm mainly worried about it because it's streamed, so I'm not able to call it if I get completely out of my depth. That's evened out by the fact that the table are also aware that it's streamed and are much less likely to try and fuck me over.
I think my thoughts towards an emergency "They're not biting on any hooks" would be to have a significant NPC take a big action. Probably something that at least one player, if not all of them, will not be pleased with. I'm very much in favor of the PCs being the ones to provoke changes but if they're not going to give the narrative forward movement then have one of the NPCs give it a shove.
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
I'm mainly worried about it because it's streamed, so I'm not able to call it if I get completely out of my depth. That's evened out by the fact that the table are also aware that it's streamed and are much less likely to try and fuck me over.
I think my thoughts towards an emergency "They're not biting on any hooks" would be to have a significant NPC take a big action. Probably something that at least one player, if not all of them, will not be pleased with. I'm very much in favor of the PCs being the ones to provoke changes but if they're not going to give the narrative forward movement then have one of the NPCs give it a shove.
Back when encounter tables were a thing I enjoyed making I'd just look through to whatever half-developed ideas I'd penciled in for the unlikely rolls and fire one up if my group was taking too long dithering or showed up and went "We don't even know, you're running the game."
Could be a street riot, a giant rolling through looking for something to eat, or whatever else makes sense in the setting.
Auralynx on
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Infinity released it's newest mini-campaign: An investigation into a smuggling ring for illegal alien tech that escalates to involve hacker collectives, CEO's and ends in a James Bond secret jungle lair.
The first session also featured the first time one of my players seemed actually intimidated by a combat encounter. Turns out thermo-optic camo on a shape shifting alien with near infinite agility makes people flinch.
Also it features Fusilier Angus: The joke tutorial man from the wargame whose role in examples of play is to always be in imminent danger. He was very fun to voice for an NPC.
To be fair, that session went pretty much like:
Haha, that guy is such a train wreck of a human being.
Haha, we're getting in a bar fight as super spies, hilarious.
Haha, these officials think they can do shit when our credentials are top tier.
Haha, guess we're getting some exposition from this NPC an-
What do you mean they just went invisible?
Why do you have all those dice?
Oh no.
So it went from comedy to survival horror pretty quick. And then the combat furry eventually pulls the offender's head off with their bare hands and all was well again. That shape shifting alien did not pick a good fight and the Combined Army should review their doctrine re: wolf people with deep-seated anger issues.
Marshmallow on
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
I mean its one thing to emulate the Predator, its another thing to emulate the thematic arc of the Predator being a dumb coolguy action movie for the better part of an hour before shit starts going bad.
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
I'm mainly worried about it because it's streamed, so I'm not able to call it if I get completely out of my depth. That's evened out by the fact that the table are also aware that it's streamed and are much less likely to try and fuck me over.
Your plot hooks aren't just dangling out there, though. If the players refuse to grab on to any of them, just narrate what would happen if nobody intervened and then try dangling another couple of hooks in front of them. Remember, inasmuch as actions have consequences, inaction has consequences too.
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
edited March 2019
This is my current update for my campaign setting's cosmology.
Governed by the God of Good
-- Borealis (Realm of Air)
-- Celestia (Realm of the Angels)
-- Nirvana (Realm of Good)
Governed by the God of Death/Time
-- Hades (Realm of Death)
-- The Shadowlands (Realm of Shadows)
-- Stonemire (Realm of Earth)
Governed by the God of Evil
-- The Abyss (Realm of Evil)
-- Mechanus (Realm of Order)
-- Muspelheim (Realm of Fire)
Governed by the God of Magic
-- Dal Quor (Realm of the Dreams/Mind)
-- Limbo (Realm of Chaos)
-- Oceanus (Realm of Water)
Governed by the God of Nature
-- The Beastlands (Realm of the Beasts)
-- Jotunheim (Realm of Dragons & Giants)
-- The Twilight Forest (Realm of the Fey)
Equally governed by all five of the elder gods
-- Elysium (Realm of the Gods)
-- Glyth (Realm of Crossroads)
-- Primus (Realm of Mortals)
It's still a rough idea but it's something I can start to play around with a bit more.
Infinity released it's newest mini-campaign: An investigation into a smuggling ring for illegal alien tech that escalates to involve hacker collectives, CEO's and ends in a James Bond secret jungle lair.
The first session also featured the first time one of my players seemed actually intimidated by a combat encounter. Turns out thermo-optic camo on a shape shifting alien with near infinite agility makes people flinch.
Also it features Fusilier Angus: The joke tutorial man from the wargame whose role in examples of play is to always be in imminent danger. He was very fun to voice for an NPC.
To be fair, that session went pretty much like:
Haha, that guy is such a train wreck of a human being.
Haha, we're getting in a bar fight as super spies, hilarious.
Haha, these officials think they can do shit when our credentials are top tier.
Haha, guess we're getting some exposition from this NPC an-
What do you mean they just went invisible?
Why do you have all those dice?
Oh no.
So it went from comedy to survival horror pretty quick. And then the combat furry eventually pulls the offender's head off with their bare hands and all was well again. That shape shifting alien did not pick a good fight and the Combined Army should review their doctrine re: wolf people with deep-seated anger issues.
And I still barely scratched you folk.
I swear whenever I get around to running that lower scale mercenaries campaign I'm going to accidentally kill so many PC's because I'm used to super high end Nemesis opponents only being able to wound one person in combat before getting mugged.
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RankenphilePassersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderatormod
I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
I'm mainly worried about it because it's streamed, so I'm not able to call it if I get completely out of my depth. That's evened out by the fact that the table are also aware that it's streamed and are much less likely to try and fuck me over.
Your plot hooks aren't just dangling out there, though. If the players refuse to grab on to any of them, just narrate what would happen if nobody intervened and then try dangling another couple of hooks in front of them. Remember, inasmuch as actions have consequences, inaction has consequences too.
A buddy was asking me for advice on his campaign recently where the party he was running a game for spent an entire session, during the climax of the campaign, just watching everything unfold instead of trying to step in and try to interrupt. We’re talking cultists in a summoning ritual, big obvious problem with thousands of lives on the line, and they waited to see what would happen.
There’s two things to remember at times like that — you need to provide calls to action or else folks like to watch things unfold, but it’s okay to punish players for not participating, because inaction has consequences.
Put plainly, Heroes Don’t Watch. Heroes Act. His cataclysm ended up being stopped by a rival to the party, and the rival ended up collecting the rewards for doing so, and my buddy made sure the players got to see it. Their enemy was stronger, they were publicly embarrassed and made to look incompetent, and then he provided two hooks from different NPCs that offered to help humiliate the rival or expose him as a fraud.
my roll20 group has been super good about cooperating with the GM, while simultaneously roleplaying a reluctant hero
when you get those weird situations where a group absolutely refuses to take the delicious and prominent adventuring bait
I think a lot of it is forgetting that the GM is part of the group - they're also there to have fun, and playing along with their plot is one of the best ways to enable it in most circumstances
there's definitely something to be said for flexibility, and there are those times that a party will miss something that's completely obvious to the storyteller
those things happen, and that's okay too
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I'm prepping for my first ever DM'd game and I'm having minor freak outs about the possibility that the party reject all of my plot hooks and I can't think on my feet fast enough.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
I'm mainly worried about it because it's streamed, so I'm not able to call it if I get completely out of my depth. That's evened out by the fact that the table are also aware that it's streamed and are much less likely to try and fuck me over.
Your plot hooks aren't just dangling out there, though. If the players refuse to grab on to any of them, just narrate what would happen if nobody intervened and then try dangling another couple of hooks in front of them. Remember, inasmuch as actions have consequences, inaction has consequences too.
A buddy was asking me for advice on his campaign recently where the party he was running a game for spent an entire session, during the climax of the campaign, just watching everything unfold instead of trying to step in and try to interrupt. We’re talking cultists in a summoning ritual, big obvious problem with thousands of lives on the line, and they waited to see what would happen.
There’s two things to remember at times like that — you need to provide calls to action or else folks like to watch things unfold, but it’s okay to punish players for not participating, because inaction has consequences.
Put plainly, Heroes Don’t Watch. Heroes Act. His cataclysm ended up being stopped by a rival to the party, and the rival ended up collecting the rewards for doing so, and my buddy made sure the players got to see it. Their enemy was stronger, they were publicly embarrassed and made to look incompetent, and then he provided two hooks from different NPCs that offered to help humiliate the rival or expose him as a fraud.
Yup. During our last fantasy hero campaign the assassin murdered a local lord because, and I quote, "he's a fraud and doesn't deserve to rule." While the assassin was lurking in the castle he discovered a group of cultists attempting to bring a demon into the prime plane. Instead of just noping out of there and heading for the hills, the assassin went and found the rest of the group, brought them back, and they fought the demon while he killed the cultists. This generated a ton of really awkward questions for the assassin (who, prior to, the group thought was just a herbalist with a very deep knowledge of poisons), but he bluffed his way through.
If he hadn't done that, that barony would have been destroyed. That was, frankly, my plan for it from the outset. As an object lesson in inaction for the group given that they'd almost let their inaction doom a town earlier in the campaign.
you know, just thinking here but Paladin and ranger i think are the closest to being my favourite non wizard/sorcerer class that it annoys me that ranger is not very good in 5e, and often gets relegated to weird ideas people have about what a ranger should be, same with paladin, but paladin is often still a solid class even when you have to be lawgood.
Now i don't want to start a debate about what you think a ranger or paladin should be, we do that a lot and it just kind of goes in circles with people giving ideas as a solution or talking about what they want them to be divorced out dnd and i'm not feeling that right now.
But instead, what do you want for a class? both in flavour and mechanics. a class that doesn't exist. Like i want an arcane caster with heavy armour. kind of like a bladesinger with a focus on spell and blade working in tandem. not like eldritch knight where you got a fighter who can throw a weak fireball but really you're just casting shield a lot. flavourwise i see it as dwarves seeing bladesinger and going "yeah, that's great if you're a twig of an elf, but what if we put some heft behind those swings"
you know, just thinking here but Paladin and ranger i think are the closest to being my favourite non wizard/sorcerer class that it annoys me that ranger is not very good in 5e, and often gets relegated to weird ideas people have about what a ranger should be, same with paladin, but paladin is often still a solid class even when you have to be lawgood.
Now i don't want to start a debate about what you think a ranger or paladin should be, we do that a lot and it just kind of goes in circles with people giving ideas as a solution or talking about what they want them to be divorced out dnd and i'm not feeling that right now.
But instead, what do you want for a class? both in flavour and mechanics. a class that doesn't exist. Like i want an arcane caster with heavy armour. kind of like a bladesinger with a focus on spell and blade working in tandem. not like eldritch knight where you got a fighter who can throw a weak fireball but really you're just casting shield a lot. flavourwise i see it as dwarves seeing bladesinger and going "yeah, that's great if you're a twig of an elf, but what if we put some heft behind those swings"
A Strength-primary unarmed brawler would really hit the spot for me. And I have no idea what it would actually look like, but I crave an Intelligence-primary class that has nothing to do with Arcane Magic.
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
The Magus in Pathfinder gets close, but just doesn't really do it for me fully in terms of either mechanics or theme. Eldritch Knight for 5e fighter is cool, but also just a bit too limited and minor for me
I really dislike slow spell progression classes, so it'd have to have at least similar progression or a Sorcerer at the slowest. Just give me less spells per day or a more limited spell list or whatever
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I've never liked Kobolds as mini-dragons. Feels like it cheapens them, ironically.
Shitty knock-off goblins, with a vaguely dog/ratlike element will always be Kobolds for me.
They're cool precisely because they aren't. No hints at some greater ancestry or things to come. They're Level 1 junk that gets it's shit together whilst you're not looking by becoming partly genre savvy and partly just because they will organise and that's hard enough.
If you're fighting Dragonlings from the start, and smart ones - then they get no redemption and are just a brutal 1st adventure or you're playing with people who'll expect Kobold nonsense from everything, so they're nothing special. Might as well have squirrelfolk who fight with their newborn young worn as armour against adventurers.
Squeeeeeee!!
For the first, I'm assuming I should be looking into classes like rangers and druids for move inspiration. For the second, man....what am I looking at here? A summoner with eidolons? A witch with familiars? Just trying to figure out what general class archetype that would fall under in another game, so I can have some inspiration material.
I think both ideas are great, I want to be able to do either one justice.
Honestly OneNote has worked out great for me. Not even using crazy custom templates, though I'm sure those could help.
I don't particularly care about them being level 1 fodder guys or not but I don't really like the "they're dragonoids" angle either
who came up with that flavor, was it a D&D-originated thing? Something from a particular setting that spread around?
To the best of my knowledge, it originated in 3E when they started drawing them scaly, but they really leaned super into it in 4E.
In 3E, mostly, they were just scaly and worshiped dragons and served dragons. In 4E, they had draconic descent and dragon powers (one of the first and earliest monsters I remember using in a fight in 4E was the Kobold Dragonshield, who had an elemental attack based on the dragon they served).
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Except they're small and sly and cunning and only rarely have anything resembling the power of their distant kin, but they make do anyway and sometimes a paragon kobold aspires to be something greater and manages to be
it's fun and cute and I don't really like rat-like kobolds anyway. if I want rat-like creatures I'd go with Warhammer's Skaven or like, ratlings or whatever.
Just ordered all these yesterday.
Plus I've been making a lot on Heroforge that a friend of mine is gonna print off for me.
alternatively, gentle railroading is sometimes warranted. gentleness in this instance is highly subjective.
I solve this by giving players nothing but plot hooks
Everybody they speak to has a reason to ask them for help
It helps if you know the characters’ motivations, but that unfortunately is rare in session 1
Or you can start in medias res - they’re not in the tavern drinking or whatever, they’re on the road answering the Call to Adventure and it’s up to them to decide why, but maybe not now because they’ve come across an ambush Roll for Initiative and no, Halfling Rogue, there are no women around to seduce
let them wander a little bit, but if they're getting too far, just have an NPC run in screaming for help
I've found that my players are way more willing to jump on the threads I dangle than I would have assumed. One of my favorite tricks, though (and it's a common one) is to make mental notes of the remarks or suspicions the players voice and then find a way to weave that idea into the plot I had previously sketched out. It's a source of fun ideas and a way to make the players feel clever, and players who feel clever want to stay engaged and keep following the thread that they unwittingly helped write.
They'll also have to deal with the cops showing up to investigate (this attack took place in a major urban area), decide whether to kill or capture a wounded survivor etc. My character took some nasty damage to the throat in the melee, so I'm using that as justification for her not being able to speak during the game, she's going to mostly be sidelined but will be a proponent of a timely revenge. They can get his location from either the prisoner (who'll roll over) or by tracking him with their dogs.
Aside from that (I'm guessing that'll take about half the session if they don't reject it), we can work on the next heist which is at a boatyard. I'm trying to think through the best way of doing that.
Player characters arrive in a town holding a local festival in the middle of the summer. One player has a necklace they can use to cast light and has a secondary random chance to cast Zone of Truth as something of a gag related to some podcast or another.
We were asked to search the bottom of the well for any signs of a halfling teen who had fallen down earlier that day in the festival, but everyone was too drunk or distracted to help the distraught mother.
Town has been suffering from drought and drying up wells for the past couple of years (the drought/drying up wells is a random bit of flavour the GM threw out, wasn't intended to have any significance).
The party ends up going down the well in the center of the town and discovers a tunnel connecting to an ancient temple to a water goddess (the god's portfolio/background was randomly rolled during the session).
Goblins have taken up residence in the last couple of months in the old temple and have dug some tunnels through the walls to make warrens.
More player questions about where the goblins might have come from and GM throws out a comment that there have been reports of infighting among local goblin tribes and the losers getting forced out of traditional territories (this was to get us to shut up about this and get on with the adventure in the town rather than heading out of town in pursuit of bigger picture).
There is also an underground river flowing through and under different temple levels.
We speculate that there is a connection between the drought and the temple.
We ask townfolk representative with us if there had been any change in the water levels recently and the townsperson says that the main town well has stayed flowing more consistently since it got muddy for a few days several months back (GM playing off our speculations and deciding that the Goblins had dug a tunnel from the underground complex to connect to the well which would provide them access to the town, but the effect of this was to allow some of the water from the temple to flow down into the well.)
Further investigation finds new waterfall/sinkhole in the underground river that meant more water drained away down the fall compared to the old path which flowed much closer to the surface.
It appeared several years old (we were asking if there had been any signs of changes in the water flows in the river and the GM leaped on this prompt).
We also asked a bunch of questions regarding the Goblin signs that had shown up and if there had been any attacks. The GM had originally intended for a simple dungeon crawl where we kill off the goblins like you normally do, but these questions meant that the GM decided to mix things up a bit and say that there had only been some thefts of food and laundry recently.
We explored the caverns and the GM randomly generated the rooms. The first room we check out in the warrens is randomly a goblin nursery.
We go about a non-lethal negotiated approach and one of the characters used their circus performer background and a performance check to try to calm the kids down. Player rolled a 20 + 5 performance check and the GM ruled this flipped the kids from hostile to friendly. This was not how things had been planned to go, but the super high roll and how we RP'd it caused the GM to roll with it.
We go in to the main hall and there are lots of goblins, a crate with an owlbear cub, plus a tied up halfling teen (this was the original encounter design). Rather than attacking, we attempt to parlay.
GM is planning on a big combat, but throws us a bone and sets a DC 22 skill check required to get the goblins to respond to the parley (we didn't know the check). Spokesperson rolls high and with bonuses, and bardic inspirations burned we succeed.
We note among ourselves that the goblins have captured hafling, but not killed her or apparently mistreated her in a significant way. We seize on this as a possible sign that the goblins can be dealt with diplomatically.
Since diplomacy going okay, we ask goblins if we can increase illumination to help reduce chance of misunderstandings. Goblins are okay with this. Player uses their necklace and randomly triggers Zone of Truth.
Lots of RP in the negotiations for the halfing kid. We ask if goblins had been forced off land by recent upheaval in local goblin power structure. Goblins are surprised that we are aware of this and confirm it (thanks to Zone of Truth).
More Zone of Truth aided negotiations, final deal ends up being the goblins provide water to the town via the magical water generating portals/traps in the temple as well as scouts for the town's watch/defenses. In return if the goblins follow the laws they will be allowed to stay and provided with food/opportunities to integrate.
A lot of this was because of the players discussing among themselves our thoughts about this being a less violent group of goblins, probably because they were led by a matriarch and there were a higher number of female goblins in the grouping as a result of the recent power struggles. We speculated this meant that the younger male goblins who tended to be more violent and malevolent were not with this group and that provided us an opportunity to deal with the goblins in a non-violent way. The GM told us afterwards that she pretty much threw out the rest of the adventure she had planned when she heard this and went with our speculations provided we could make the various checks.
The end result was basically the GM took the ideas we bounced around and the explanations we came up with it and springboarded off them to rewrite the adventure on the fly. When there were inconsistencies, the players would take it to mean we were missing some key information, would speculate on what that info was, and come up with an explanation for how they fit together. The GM would then nod and tell us that we were very clever.
The first session also featured the first time one of my players seemed actually intimidated by a combat encounter. Turns out thermo-optic camo on a shape shifting alien with near infinite agility makes people flinch.
Also it features Fusilier Angus: The joke tutorial man from the wargame whose role in examples of play is to always be in imminent danger. He was very fun to voice for an NPC.
oh man, that's where the best shit happens
I was running Dragon Heist last weekend and the party literally followed the trail of an NPC they were hired to find who pretty obviously had been kidnapped or otherwise brought to a warehouse for bad things to happen to them
They met multiple NPCs, one of which I had to compeltely make up on the spot, then literally put their ear on the door, heard voices on the other side, and decided they'd come back tomorrow after they've had a chance to get in a long rest and level up
I was devestated and so frustrated, but what can you do? We called the game and it gave me time to come up with my next steps, which have already drastically deviated from the book itself. The campaign book basically puts you through three consecutive hoops to jump through before it opens up the world and lets you play in the sandbox. They jumped through the first one, saw the second one and were all "man, jumping sucks, let's take a hard left and just take a nap".
To carry the kobold/cobalt theme I guess they utilise dyed blue glass, basic batteries, heat resistant alloys, and some dangerously amateur alchemy.
I reckon they could be little guys with barely featured faces, like the ore equivalent of snowmen almost, wearing proto-gas-masks or maybe plague doctor masks.
All they want to do is survive, so they try to assimilate with whatever strong person or society they mine into, so they’re as likely to become minions of a paladin as a dark lord. No morality beyond ‘act like that guy that can defend us.’
The only time they become remotely scary is the speed they can switch sides if their current boss shows weakness.
I'm mainly worried about it because it's streamed, so I'm not able to call it if I get completely out of my depth. That's evened out by the fact that the table are also aware that it's streamed and are much less likely to try and fuck me over.
I love the advice in the book Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master he recommends preparing for the following.
And remember at most during a session players can only do like six things, be it combat, talking to people, going to a new place, so you really don't need a lot of content to cover everything. (also the book is like 25 dollars so pick it up as well if you can afford it, it breaks all of these points down a bit more and it is very easy to read)
Satans..... hints.....
I think my thoughts towards an emergency "They're not biting on any hooks" would be to have a significant NPC take a big action. Probably something that at least one player, if not all of them, will not be pleased with. I'm very much in favor of the PCs being the ones to provoke changes but if they're not going to give the narrative forward movement then have one of the NPCs give it a shove.
Back when encounter tables were a thing I enjoyed making I'd just look through to whatever half-developed ideas I'd penciled in for the unlikely rolls and fire one up if my group was taking too long dithering or showed up and went "We don't even know, you're running the game."
Could be a street riot, a giant rolling through looking for something to eat, or whatever else makes sense in the setting.
Satans..... hints.....
To be fair, that session went pretty much like:
Haha, that guy is such a train wreck of a human being.
Haha, we're getting in a bar fight as super spies, hilarious.
Haha, these officials think they can do shit when our credentials are top tier.
Haha, guess we're getting some exposition from this NPC an-
What do you mean they just went invisible?
Why do you have all those dice?
Oh no.
So it went from comedy to survival horror pretty quick. And then the combat furry eventually pulls the offender's head off with their bare hands and all was well again. That shape shifting alien did not pick a good fight and the Combined Army should review their doctrine re: wolf people with deep-seated anger issues.
Governed by the God of Good
-- Borealis (Realm of Air)
-- Celestia (Realm of the Angels)
-- Nirvana (Realm of Good)
Governed by the God of Death/Time
-- Hades (Realm of Death)
-- The Shadowlands (Realm of Shadows)
-- Stonemire (Realm of Earth)
Governed by the God of Evil
-- The Abyss (Realm of Evil)
-- Mechanus (Realm of Order)
-- Muspelheim (Realm of Fire)
Governed by the God of Magic
-- Dal Quor (Realm of the Dreams/Mind)
-- Limbo (Realm of Chaos)
-- Oceanus (Realm of Water)
Governed by the God of Nature
-- The Beastlands (Realm of the Beasts)
-- Jotunheim (Realm of Dragons & Giants)
-- The Twilight Forest (Realm of the Fey)
Equally governed by all five of the elder gods
-- Elysium (Realm of the Gods)
-- Glyth (Realm of Crossroads)
-- Primus (Realm of Mortals)
It's still a rough idea but it's something I can start to play around with a bit more.
wow Blake I am shocked you'd recommend something from a site called kobold.club
And I still barely scratched you folk.
I swear whenever I get around to running that lower scale mercenaries campaign I'm going to accidentally kill so many PC's because I'm used to super high end Nemesis opponents only being able to wound one person in combat before getting mugged.
A buddy was asking me for advice on his campaign recently where the party he was running a game for spent an entire session, during the climax of the campaign, just watching everything unfold instead of trying to step in and try to interrupt. We’re talking cultists in a summoning ritual, big obvious problem with thousands of lives on the line, and they waited to see what would happen.
There’s two things to remember at times like that — you need to provide calls to action or else folks like to watch things unfold, but it’s okay to punish players for not participating, because inaction has consequences.
Put plainly, Heroes Don’t Watch. Heroes Act. His cataclysm ended up being stopped by a rival to the party, and the rival ended up collecting the rewards for doing so, and my buddy made sure the players got to see it. Their enemy was stronger, they were publicly embarrassed and made to look incompetent, and then he provided two hooks from different NPCs that offered to help humiliate the rival or expose him as a fraud.
when you get those weird situations where a group absolutely refuses to take the delicious and prominent adventuring bait
I think a lot of it is forgetting that the GM is part of the group - they're also there to have fun, and playing along with their plot is one of the best ways to enable it in most circumstances
there's definitely something to be said for flexibility, and there are those times that a party will miss something that's completely obvious to the storyteller
those things happen, and that's okay too
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If he hadn't done that, that barony would have been destroyed. That was, frankly, my plan for it from the outset. As an object lesson in inaction for the group given that they'd almost let their inaction doom a town earlier in the campaign.
Now i don't want to start a debate about what you think a ranger or paladin should be, we do that a lot and it just kind of goes in circles with people giving ideas as a solution or talking about what they want them to be divorced out dnd and i'm not feeling that right now.
But instead, what do you want for a class? both in flavour and mechanics. a class that doesn't exist. Like i want an arcane caster with heavy armour. kind of like a bladesinger with a focus on spell and blade working in tandem. not like eldritch knight where you got a fighter who can throw a weak fireball but really you're just casting shield a lot. flavourwise i see it as dwarves seeing bladesinger and going "yeah, that's great if you're a twig of an elf, but what if we put some heft behind those swings"
A Strength-primary unarmed brawler would really hit the spot for me. And I have no idea what it would actually look like, but I crave an Intelligence-primary class that has nothing to do with Arcane Magic.
The Magus in Pathfinder gets close, but just doesn't really do it for me fully in terms of either mechanics or theme. Eldritch Knight for 5e fighter is cool, but also just a bit too limited and minor for me
I really dislike slow spell progression classes, so it'd have to have at least similar progression or a Sorcerer at the slowest. Just give me less spells per day or a more limited spell list or whatever
but let me spell and fight or spell or fight