Depending on how simulationist the system is and what sort of genre it is secrets can be fine.
Infinity and Shadowrun as spy thriller and shitty crime dudes specifically can work fine with big secrets provided the group is fine for the PvP aspects they can involve.
I got a little today last night and was half asleep in need but had to get up and write some notes on an rpg campaign idea I had.
Something about a king who had nightmares that manifest as monsters and so his head minister of his court creates a magic lullaby that keeps the king in a timeless dreamless sleep but the nightmares started spreading to the population so they built towers to amplify the song and it covers the entire island nation in a mist that puts most people to sleep except a kind of monastic order dedicated to mythological stories of the great heroes of the land who trained themselves to not sleep and pass down the stories in books until eventually the player characters (who are actually the characters from the mythological stories the monks pass down) wash ashore somehow, near one of the towers, with no memory of how they got there.
I figure the structure of the campaign would be turning off the towers and waking the people back up and mistaking the intentions of the minister for evil and eventually confronting him and waking the king only to have to face the head nightmare when the king wakes up.
I got a little today last night and was half asleep in need but had to get up and write some notes on an rpg campaign idea I had.
Something about a king who had nightmares that manifest as monsters and so his head minister of his court creates a magic lullaby that keeps the king in a timeless dreamless sleep but the nightmares started spreading to the population so they built towers to amplify the song and it covers the entire island nation in a mist that puts most people to sleep except a kind of monastic order dedicated to mythological stories of the great heroes of the land who trained themselves to not sleep and pass down the stories in books until eventually the player characters (who are actually the characters from the mythological stories the monks pass down) wash ashore somehow, near one of the towers, with no memory of how they got there.
Abyss Odyssey is probably something you'd enjoy then because it's pretty much this but with a warlock underneath 19th century Santiago:
I just love watching people talk about D&D and how and why they love it. Is that weird?
0
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Cross Posting from the Painting thread!
My Hero Forge Mini came in! Overall thoughts are that I'm happy, but will certainly do different things on the next one I do. Also XL minis are XL!
changes I would make
1. Don't do different skin tones in the same area to simulate lighting or other effects, the fidelity isn't there.
2. Eye color doesn't seem to matter. As it didn't come through at all.
3. small bits of metal don't come through, though large bits like a sword blade do.
4. It definitely needs a wash and varnish touch up.
So what I'm going to do is touch up some of the gold bits like buckles, his nose ring, etc. And then do a black wash. After that I'm going to hit a few sections with gloss varnish like the blade, jewels, potion and gold bits.
Still though, if this mini is 90% of the way there then I still consider it a win. I think we'll see guides come out how to best select options to optimize the 3d print. I imagine the tech is going to get better too.
I think there can be a lot of value in knowing things that your character doesn't. It's shared storytelling, not each person running a story for their own character. Sometimes knowing something out of character is a great way to have your character set something up for another player - it creates stronger twists and provides dramatic irony.
And yeah, I guess that could be considered metagaming, but if you're not doing it for personal gain or to do better at the game, I don't really see it as a problem?
"Meta-gaming" in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the common parlance of it is understood to be utilizing information you should not be privy to as your character in order to benefit your character in ways that don't have good in-game explanations.
When your starting point for roleplaying games is D&D, it's hard to break out of the patterns you've learned, that the game is a competition and that you can "win" or "lose," rather than TTRPGs being a collaborative story-telling engine.
I think someone can still be a good and enjoyable player to participated in games with if they haven't grasped how to handle meta-knowledge appropriately, but I do think that it is a key and necessary step to becoming a better player. There's simply a point at which you cannot progress further without it.
My Hero Forge Mini came in! Overall thoughts are that I'm happy, but will certainly do different things on the next one I do. Also XL minis are XL!
changes I would make
1. Don't do different skin tones in the same area to simulate lighting or other effects, the fidelity isn't there.
2. Eye color doesn't seem to matter. As it didn't come through at all.
3. small bits of metal don't come through, though large bits like a sword blade do.
4. It definitely needs a wash and varnish touch up.
So what I'm going to do is touch up some of the gold bits like buckles, his nose ring, etc. And then do a black wash. After that I'm going to hit a few sections with gloss varnish like the blade, jewels, potion and gold bits.
Still though, if this mini is 90% of the way there then I still consider it a win. I think we'll see guides come out how to best select options to optimize the 3d print. I imagine the tech is going to get better too.
This looks dope af. I love the coppery beard.
+1
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
Thanks!
I love that Hero Forge added the additional posing options, as that includes hair. It made it so I could lay the beard down much more realistically over his chest on the big mini than just kind of having it stick out and clip through a bit on the little one from a couple years ago. Same with his braid.
Especially overly obvious mimics, there's just something adorable about the chest full of teeth totally failing at stealth
Whats fun is that like a day after I got the shipping notification for this guy they introduced the ability to pose and position the base pieces however you want. I would have loved to pull that mimic fully onto the base. Oh well!
Keeping secrets out of character is basically always a stupid move. If your story is so great, it can withstand the scrutiny of other players.
I don't really agree with that.
If you have a shocking twist and all the players know about it then it's a twist to fictional characters, but the people who play them aren't surprised at all, so it's actually not a twist.
Sure! But my thing is, I don't...care if it's a twist? I think twists, by themselves, are interesting because of what it means for the rest of the story moving forward. An ally is now your enemy, the scale or scope of events has changed, etc. Twists for their own sake takes you into bad Twilight Zone episode territory.
I'm not saying surprise should be banned but I think it's very low-hanging fruit and in practice too many GMs and roleplayers, who have taken the wrong lessons from the media they consume, pursue it to the detriment of too many other things. Like the cool idea a novice GM invariably has is something like "oh man we're going to start out playing D&D, right? But then it turns out that they're in the Matrix and I pull out the Shadowrun rulebook!" Bait and switch bullshit.
I also think that in practice the stochasticity of dice and five or six people pulling events different ways adds plenty of surprise just on its own without people having to go the extra mile to pack in more.
+1
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Yah. I don't really do "twists", I have things that are true about the current situation that may be relevant to a PC's background or motivations and will create tension in some way. Those are revealed whenever it makes sense to reveal them. I actually sprung a really dramatic revelation on my group at the very end of last night's session that may've completely changed their motivations for the current scenario, but the only reason it was revealed at such a dramatic moment is because I kept forgetting to have it come up in previous scenes where it would've made sense.
Holding on to your precious secrets is one of my least favorite storytelling tropes.
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
I don't know how much of a "twist" it was, but I had fun introducing my players to some new information last session revealing that their Port Nyanzaru employers were tremendously shitty union-busting oligarchs. I think this may have changed their long-term goals in Chult.
*it's not much of a twist because the signs were all there when they explored the town, but I'm certain they didn't connect the dots until now.
Tynnan on
0
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
All touched up! all said this took about an hour including giving the paints time to dry. I think the wash really makes the mini pop.
Part of the reason I can't seem to get d&d off the ground with my friends online is because I can't for the life of me of how to start with planning anything interesting.
Part of it comes down to combats in 5e d&d being so incredibly dull especially yet incredibly tedious to plan with little to no good guidance from the book.
Then you have even less quality advice on creating interesting out of combat situations. You'd think it'd be helpful to run a campaign setting but I find those stifling because there is just too much cannon setting nonsense to read up on.
Really I don't understand why most people pick 5e as their first or only rpg. It's so incredibly not player or dm friendly mechanically, and it's established canon like alignments and deities and that way classes are named and all instead of feeling like it frees me to think of the cool stuff feels limiting instead.
I wish I could get them to agree to 4e instead even tbh at least 4e combat encounters are easier to build
Tallahasseeriel on
0
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
They pick it because it has a huge cultural footprint
The only secret with my current character is that the DM and I have planned out that she is the daughter of the goddess she follows and doesn't know about it. I'm still not exactly sure what I want to do with that information in the game. It'll help a bit to explain how ridiculously powerful high level characters are, but it should be more than just that.
0
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Part of the reason I can't seem to get d&d off the ground with my friends online is because I can't for the life of me of how to start with planning anything interesting.
Part of it comes down to combats in 5e d&d being so incredibly dull especially yet incredibly tedious to plan with little to no good guidance from the book.
Then you have even less quality advice on creating interesting out of combat situations. You'd think it'd be helpful to run a campaign setting but I find those stifling because there is just too much cannon setting nonsense to read up on.
Really I don't understand why most people pick 5e as their first or only rpg. It's so incredibly not player or dm friendly mechanically, and it's established canon like alignments and deities and that way classes are named and all instead of feeling like it frees me to think of the cool stuff feels limiting instead.
I wish I could get them to agree to 4e instead even tbh at least 4e combat encounters are easier to build
You can completely skip the built in lore. I've successfully ran campaigns in D&D that never touch on it. There's no reading up required. Hell I've played in a lot of campaign settings where the greater world doesn't ever come up.
Yeah, like I like 5e because it feels fairly simple, cultural footprint as Straightzi mentions, and because it's highly amenable to me picking up and hucking anything I don't like from it.
Like, alignment! I really don't like that for a variety of reasons! Boom, it's a smoking crater for the setting I'm working on. Deities? Smoted. Etc
Perhaps a more helpful question is: what's interesting combats to you, Uriel? What's an interesting out of combat encounter - when you say these, what are you envisioning?
I dunno. I think maybe I just need to look up more dm advice on starting games.
Then again I just wrote a short series of notes that I think could setup a neat mystery adventure based on my ideas from up the page, just need to add a combat at the end of it.
0
#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
I am still trying to wrangle my brain around 5e combat being dull and tedious to plan but 4e being your preferred alternative
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
5e has way more varied and interesting effects during combat from both monsters and PCs. 4e was just a bunch of stuff that did damage in slightly different ways.
0
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
In regards to player secrets, I've had multiple characters before who had large significant parts to their background that just didn't come up in the course of the campaign. Like, use it to inform the decisions they make, but not actually relevant or pertinent for the other PCs at the table, so it just never came up. Or throw out a hook or two for the DM, but if they aren't ever used, they just lay there dormant.
In my current campaign, we were all supposed to share rumours about our characters, to give depth and character knowledge to other players, and I wrote up some true 'secrets' regarding my PC littered with half-truths and lies. They were supposed to be doled out by the DM, so everyone would know a little something about the other PCs in the group.
But not everyone did this, so as far as I am aware the DM is still waiting and no one has any of the background information - true or false - of any of the other characters and we're about a dozen sessions in now.
But a big part of that came from how homogeneous everything was. Monsters rarely felt especially unique or special in terms of what they were actually doing. It was just different flavors of "does damage to the PCs" with an occasional status effect thrown in.
0
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
5e has way more varied and interesting effects during combat from both monsters and PCs. 4e was just a bunch of stuff that did damage in slightly different ways.
Man I gotta disagree there, at least in regards to Monster Manuals 2 & 3. Combats were WAY more fun in 4e with all the status effects and movement abilities. The downfall of 4e combat was random encounters. 4e is best suited to set piece encounters and important story fights. Rando goblin combat #3 didn't work.
I dunno. I think maybe I just need to look up more dm advice on starting games.
Then again I just wrote a short series of notes that I think could setup a neat mystery adventure based on my ideas from up the page, just need to add a combat at the end of it.
But a big part of that came from how homogeneous everything was. Monsters rarely felt especially unique or special in terms of what they were actually doing. It was just different flavors of "does damage to the PCs" with an occasional status effect thrown in.
It's D&D, all that matters is HP gains and losses and status effects that amount to "No actions for you". Though 4e's early monster are really kind of boring. Look at the Vaults and some of the later campaign settings for more varied monsters. Some of them are even sharks that bring you cookies!
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
I once had the party go to find the old King's former court sorceress advisor who withdrew from court under a cloud of suspicion following his mysterious death. Her isle was now haunted and filled with wandering beasts, but political factions were forming and wanted to know if the sorceress was involved.
They fought their way in, only to find a beleaguered mother of a newborn - the sorceress was the King's secret mistress & lover, and after he was assassinated she fled fearing if whoever killed him also decided to kill his bastard. Pregnancy and solo motherhood had fucked with her concentration and she hadn't been able to keep her magic and tower wards up, hence all the damn monsters roaming her isle.
All she really needed was a few nights sleep, so the party became the literal babysitters of a royal bastard for 2-3 days while she got some damned rest.
Wacky hijinks ensued. Do you realise how hard it is to fight a mob of demons in a cluttered entry hall without waking:
A) a sleeping baby the baby's sleeping mass-fireball weilding mother?
Surely there's a D&D thread where we can argue about whether 4E or 5E has more boring combat.
It was amazing the internet wasn't torn asunder when 4e came out!
It had to survive, survive to experience the Star Wars sequels.
+9
WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
What's the accepted concensus on what a PC can do so they can learn/remember the properties (immunities/vulnerabilities) a monster has? Free relevant Int check during their turn (alongside scenario relevant advantage/disadvantage/modifiers), have them disseminate the info in 6-second phrases to teammates within earshot?
Surely there's a D&D thread where we can argue about whether 4E or 5E has more boring combat.
We were talking about encounter building, and anyone who says that it's easier to assemble encounters for 5e than for 4e is either delusional or works for WotC.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
If folks are really delaying I think it's fair game to shoo them, either by saying something like "you have 30 seconds to commit to an action before I skip your turn" or "I'm going to start rolling for random wandering monsters if you don't keep moving."
+1
#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
What's the accepted concensus on what a PC can do so they can learn/remember the properties (immunities/vulnerabilities) a monster has? Free relevant Int check during their turn (alongside scenario relevant advantage/disadvantage/modifiers), have them disseminate the info in 6-second phrases to teammates within earshot?
Remembering details about a creature is usually a nature check in my experience. You can ramp the information they remember based on the DC of the roll
10+ they remember the name of the creature and a basic idea of how tough they are
15+ they remember 1 vague tactical fact about it like "doesn't like fire"
20+ they remember 1 or several specific strengths/weaknesses
Also the nature check takes an action so if they do that they don't get to attack.
Posts
Infinity and Shadowrun as spy thriller and shitty crime dudes specifically can work fine with big secrets provided the group is fine for the PvP aspects they can involve.
I figure the structure of the campaign would be turning off the towers and waking the people back up and mistaking the intentions of the minister for evil and eventually confronting him and waking the king only to have to face the head nightmare when the king wakes up.
Abyss Odyssey is probably something you'd enjoy then because it's pretty much this but with a warlock underneath 19th century Santiago:
I just love watching people talk about D&D and how and why they love it. Is that weird?
My Hero Forge Mini came in! Overall thoughts are that I'm happy, but will certainly do different things on the next one I do. Also XL minis are XL!
changes I would make
1. Don't do different skin tones in the same area to simulate lighting or other effects, the fidelity isn't there.
2. Eye color doesn't seem to matter. As it didn't come through at all.
3. small bits of metal don't come through, though large bits like a sword blade do.
4. It definitely needs a wash and varnish touch up.
So what I'm going to do is touch up some of the gold bits like buckles, his nose ring, etc. And then do a black wash. After that I'm going to hit a few sections with gloss varnish like the blade, jewels, potion and gold bits.
Still though, if this mini is 90% of the way there then I still consider it a win. I think we'll see guides come out how to best select options to optimize the 3d print. I imagine the tech is going to get better too.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
"Meta-gaming" in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the common parlance of it is understood to be utilizing information you should not be privy to as your character in order to benefit your character in ways that don't have good in-game explanations.
When your starting point for roleplaying games is D&D, it's hard to break out of the patterns you've learned, that the game is a competition and that you can "win" or "lose," rather than TTRPGs being a collaborative story-telling engine.
I think someone can still be a good and enjoyable player to participated in games with if they haven't grasped how to handle meta-knowledge appropriately, but I do think that it is a key and necessary step to becoming a better player. There's simply a point at which you cannot progress further without it.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This looks dope af. I love the coppery beard.
I love that Hero Forge added the additional posing options, as that includes hair. It made it so I could lay the beard down much more realistically over his chest on the big mini than just kind of having it stick out and clip through a bit on the little one from a couple years ago. Same with his braid.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Especially overly obvious mimics, there's just something adorable about the chest full of teeth totally failing at stealth
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Whats fun is that like a day after I got the shipping notification for this guy they introduced the ability to pose and position the base pieces however you want. I would have loved to pull that mimic fully onto the base. Oh well!
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Sure! But my thing is, I don't...care if it's a twist? I think twists, by themselves, are interesting because of what it means for the rest of the story moving forward. An ally is now your enemy, the scale or scope of events has changed, etc. Twists for their own sake takes you into bad Twilight Zone episode territory.
I'm not saying surprise should be banned but I think it's very low-hanging fruit and in practice too many GMs and roleplayers, who have taken the wrong lessons from the media they consume, pursue it to the detriment of too many other things. Like the cool idea a novice GM invariably has is something like "oh man we're going to start out playing D&D, right? But then it turns out that they're in the Matrix and I pull out the Shadowrun rulebook!" Bait and switch bullshit.
I also think that in practice the stochasticity of dice and five or six people pulling events different ways adds plenty of surprise just on its own without people having to go the extra mile to pack in more.
Holding on to your precious secrets is one of my least favorite storytelling tropes.
*it's not much of a twist because the signs were all there when they explored the town, but I'm certain they didn't connect the dots until now.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Part of the reason I can't seem to get d&d off the ground with my friends online is because I can't for the life of me of how to start with planning anything interesting.
Part of it comes down to combats in 5e d&d being so incredibly dull especially yet incredibly tedious to plan with little to no good guidance from the book.
Then you have even less quality advice on creating interesting out of combat situations. You'd think it'd be helpful to run a campaign setting but I find those stifling because there is just too much cannon setting nonsense to read up on.
Really I don't understand why most people pick 5e as their first or only rpg. It's so incredibly not player or dm friendly mechanically, and it's established canon like alignments and deities and that way classes are named and all instead of feeling like it frees me to think of the cool stuff feels limiting instead.
I wish I could get them to agree to 4e instead even tbh at least 4e combat encounters are easier to build
That's the whole deal
You can completely skip the built in lore. I've successfully ran campaigns in D&D that never touch on it. There's no reading up required. Hell I've played in a lot of campaign settings where the greater world doesn't ever come up.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Like, alignment! I really don't like that for a variety of reasons! Boom, it's a smoking crater for the setting I'm working on. Deities? Smoted. Etc
Perhaps a more helpful question is: what's interesting combats to you, Uriel? What's an interesting out of combat encounter - when you say these, what are you envisioning?
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Then again I just wrote a short series of notes that I think could setup a neat mystery adventure based on my ideas from up the page, just need to add a combat at the end of it.
That is a wild take
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
5e is to willy-nilly and assumes you'll do all the extra work to make up for it.
The monster manual was also just... Formatted better? It was easier to find a good variety of monsters even on short notice.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
In my current campaign, we were all supposed to share rumours about our characters, to give depth and character knowledge to other players, and I wrote up some true 'secrets' regarding my PC littered with half-truths and lies. They were supposed to be doled out by the DM, so everyone would know a little something about the other PCs in the group.
But not everyone did this, so as far as I am aware the DM is still waiting and no one has any of the background information - true or false - of any of the other characters and we're about a dozen sessions in now.
But a big part of that came from how homogeneous everything was. Monsters rarely felt especially unique or special in terms of what they were actually doing. It was just different flavors of "does damage to the PCs" with an occasional status effect thrown in.
Man I gotta disagree there, at least in regards to Monster Manuals 2 & 3. Combats were WAY more fun in 4e with all the status effects and movement abilities. The downfall of 4e combat was random encounters. 4e is best suited to set piece encounters and important story fights. Rando goblin combat #3 didn't work.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Here’s a bunch of adventure hooks:
It's D&D, all that matters is HP gains and losses and status effects that amount to "No actions for you". Though 4e's early monster are really kind of boring. Look at the Vaults and some of the later campaign settings for more varied monsters. Some of them are even sharks that bring you cookies!
They fought their way in, only to find a beleaguered mother of a newborn - the sorceress was the King's secret mistress & lover, and after he was assassinated she fled fearing if whoever killed him also decided to kill his bastard. Pregnancy and solo motherhood had fucked with her concentration and she hadn't been able to keep her magic and tower wards up, hence all the damn monsters roaming her isle.
All she really needed was a few nights sleep, so the party became the literal babysitters of a royal bastard for 2-3 days while she got some damned rest.
Wacky hijinks ensued. Do you realise how hard it is to fight a mob of demons in a cluttered entry hall without waking:
A) a sleeping baby
It was amazing the internet wasn't torn asunder when 4e came out!
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It had to survive, survive to experience the Star Wars sequels.
We were talking about encounter building, and anyone who says that it's easier to assemble encounters for 5e than for 4e is either delusional or works for WotC.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Remembering details about a creature is usually a nature check in my experience. You can ramp the information they remember based on the DC of the roll
10+ they remember the name of the creature and a basic idea of how tough they are
15+ they remember 1 vague tactical fact about it like "doesn't like fire"
20+ they remember 1 or several specific strengths/weaknesses
Also the nature check takes an action so if they do that they don't get to attack.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.