webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Im always low key worried that I haven't prepped enough for the session so if the players faf about for a half hour on some weird thing between themselves with minimal input from me? I love it.
thats his character in my game by the way, I'm going through and equipping everyone's things and they can tinker with it if they want. Also put in containers so I can look at their character and see what they actually have on them and whats in their bags of holding
I've really been liking Foundry, it's just a pain to set up but once it gets going like
In town the players can literally browse merchants and only bring up the RP of it once they've looked through the items, so a shopping episode doesn't take forever. they can also just go to a general store or whatever and hit the "buy now" button transferring items to their inventory and subtracting the required currency
player names redacted
I can also literally just convert creatures to loot sheets and let them see what they had on them by clicking the dead or incapacitated creature, and they can take items as they see fit. Most creatures are parsed or set up correctly, so like, a goblin isn't a monster with a bow attack, it's a creature with a statblock that has a shortbow in its inventory
I've heard before (throught some articles / multiple reports) that it's entirely possible to do a whole session without combat. How would you prepare your adventure for such a thing without somehow forcing it (it needs to be organic / throught the players' actions that it become a noncombat encounter )?
Is it really just the same as hashing out a regular adventure session, but just reduce pure combat encounters and add more social / skill check encounters? (I'm preparing the Black Market for the Artificer and her buddies).
Well... a lot depends on your players and the adventure. If you’re currently in a dungeon I would not think you’re likely to have low combat.
But when you have a mystery to solve as an example if you’re prepared for the party to find solutions without beating people up over it then it could be relatively easy.
But in general you will need
1) a central or immediate conflict that is best not resolved via combat
2) no or low “random encounters” that are to be solved by combat.
E.G. You can make encounters that are semi-combat and kind of fluff like. Maybe the party gets mugged and then the muggers realize that the party is going to wreck their shit and so runs. Maybe the muggers were mooks of a big bad and the party can glean info from them.
This does kind of limit the non-combat aspects to three types of sessions
I don’t like prep sessions in general and travel sessions are the hardest so let’s focus on those for a bit. Plus, travel has, by default, an immediate conflict that cannot be resolved by combat. You cannot punch your way to the next town. So now all we need is the second part of the equation.
In DnD there are roughly two types of stories we can tell. Stories about the players characters and stories about the world. Stories about the world are important because they help to inform players as to how they should shape their characters stories. But they also help invoke invoke the right mindset and people like them. Plus, it’s harder to tell those stories during plot or dungeon relevant sections. And we want to get those stories out early so that players feel their place in the world.
So the best way for travel to be used is to tell those stories and the a good way to tell those stories is to travel. To do that we’re going to steal a page from video games and steal the environmental story telling from open world games like fallout and Skyrim. With the exception that instead of people coming across this organically we are going to place them as players travel.
So we design a short event for a location. Propose that it has already happened and place the aftermath in the players way. Leaving goodies for players to find is also nice (gives players an incentive to interact with the stories). Combat can, but does not have to happen at these locations.
We can also use these type of events/locations to introduce villains or other characters the players will interact with later.
Started a new campaign! I will put things in spoilers here because Chanus and ppups are both playing.
The arc from 1-6 goes:
I have a tendency to stay too conventional for D&D I think, so I'm trying to branch out from that and into some conflicts that are a lot more magical and interesting. Here is the setup.
Hundreds of years ago, an Evil Guy cursed a series of otherwise mundane books in order to create powerful evil henchmen to do his bidding. His idea was that those who survived the transformations and afflictions would be compelled to join him, and those who did not were irrelevant.
No one knows the result of this plot, but as time went on the books were lost and scattered, taking on a life of their own and appearing in various places according to their individual character.
Fast forward to today - the books are surfacing again.
Our initial NPC is Fela Isarr, a warlock or sorcerer woman who has read some pages from one of the books. An ancestor in her family was previously afflicted by the curse, which is where she got the first taste. It is slowly turning her into a being composed of icy mist who can channel elemental ice and transform illusionary creatures into frost-monsters with the shape of the illusion and Some Frost Attacks. She has commissioned the PCs to collect the rest of the pages of the book so that she can complete her transformation. She has a companion, perhaps her lover, who acts on her behalf and has collected the PCs into a group because they all have the sort of essential curiosity that she needs to send them off questing for cursed books and handing them over to her.
Her story is that her family has been afflicted by this curse down through the generations, and needs the PCs to help break it once and for all.
Over 8 adventures, the PCs will:
- collect parts of the book
- encounter three other books with more minor curses, all "found" by Fela's Agent and requested ostensibly so she can learn more about the creator of the curse.
- encounter two other groups, both attempting to collect the books.
- - one of these is notably evil in intent, with the goal of assembling the books and recreating the (largely unknown) original intent of the collection
- - one of these is attempting to neutralize their power. Perhaps they are Harpers!
- deal with the effects of these curses on the areas where they live
Eventually they will discover that Fela is out for herself and doesn't intent to break the curse, but instead embody it. She doesn't have any specifically evil intent so they might want to side with her or not, feel betrayed or not, idk how it will go!
Current books I've described:
Travels through the Misted Waste
This is the main book of the early plot, an extensive travelogue of at least 50 pages, written in 1st person by an unknown naturalist of some sort. It describes his daily experiences as he and his companions cross an expanse of boggy moor over two weeks, during an unseasonably chill autumn. It has been torn apart and scattered by persons unknown, many decades or even centuries ago.
It transforms the reader into a being of elemental icy mist. Pages of the book, while they are unsuppressed, boil with freezing mist clouds like infinite dry ice. The farther into the book one reads, the more complete the transformation. Without the complete destruction of the book, the curse cannot be removed or altered. The mist can, when interacting with illusions, convert them into frost-based actual objects or creatures.
Wilderness Guide to the Northern Reaches
A short pamphlet describing firestarting techniques and other suggestions for survival while traversing northern glaciers, using materials typically found in the area. This book surfaces once every century, granting the first reader various fire-based effects that dim when not used. Anyone else the owner allows to read the book will be consumed via spontaneous combustion within 2 days, further powering the owner's fire abilities. The owner is compelled, as though addicted, to seek ever greater "fuel" for their abilities. Eventually the book itself begins to destroy its environment, culminating in a great conflagration that transforms the book's owner into a fire creature under the command of the curse's author.
Tasty Recipes From Your Youth
This book surfaces every 50 years in a moderately sized village and slowly infects the local residents with a hunger curse, causing them to consume all their available food, wildlife, organic materials, and eventually one another in a desperate attempt to sate their intense feelings of starvation. Anyone who dies in the is way rises as a minor ghost under the thrall of the remaining villagers. These ghosts can drain the CON (inflicting starvation) on living beings but do no other damage. When only one person remains, the book reveals itself to the sole survivor, who can control the throng as he is compelled to travel toward the location of the curse's author, devastating everything in his path.
the quest giver Fela's potential heel turn. I haven't done one of these to a group before and I'm really concerned about undermining trust in NPCs and in me as a GM.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
the quest giver Fela's potential heel turn. I haven't done one of these to a group before and I'm really concerned about undermining trust in NPCs and in me as a GM.
The thing that's gonna need at least a passing explanation here is how / why Fela concluded that hijacking the curse was a good idea (or even possible), and her motivation for trying. IME, players will tend to decide that it is they who should get the super-powers in that kind of situation, so you're going to want to be able to provide enough context to make it unattractive or at least worth actually thinking about in character.
There's an opportunity for some foreshadowing / mirroring here with the enemy groups, as well - the Bag Guy one can have someone who's been curse-Hulked to the max, and the good-guy one can perhaps provide some of the above-mentioned context.
It's not really so bad to have a "It was Fela all along!" moment, but it's going to need some setup and foreshadowing or it'll land with a thud (and savvy players will know it's coming). If there's tension on the point, or Fela's reasons for wanting to do this seem at least sound, it'll work better - even if her reason is just "a bigger badguy".
Ugh. My CoS DM is now enforcing out of combat turn by turn movement as we explore Arganvolthost, as practice for when we splunk Castle Ravenloft. This is going to be such a slog.
Its a new medium for him to DM in (Roll20) and I guess he feels like us moving our tokens around willynilly when not in combat is frustrating?
This is a same guy, mind you, who summarily dismissed 4e when I brought it to the group because of its reliance on the grid and how boardgamey it felt. And now he wants to use the grid outside of combat? Yuck.
I prefer to use the narrative/theatre of mind to handle exploration and the grid only for combat. But! Im just the player this time and I need to work on keeping my DM mouth shut when I'm not the DM. Its harder than you would think.
I ran my first session in over a month yesterday. I'm not 100% happy with how it turned out (I both bit off more than I could chew with the concept and have had much more limited time to think about D&D than I did when I started the campaign). I wanted to have a "trial" that ended up more like a town hall meeting. Oh well, I can try again later.
I'll also admit I'm a tiny bit annoyed that a certain player who likes to roleplay (on occasion taking a minute or so to explain something to NPCs) also has very limited patience for listening to an NPC say anything that takes more than two sentences. I had typed something out I wanted one NPC to say and he pretty much shut the character/me down after about a sentence and a half.
Ugh. My CoS DM is now enforcing out of combat turn by turn movement as we explore Arganvolthost, as practice for when we splunk Castle Ravenloft. This is going to be such a slog.
Its a new medium for him to DM in (Roll20) and I guess he feels like us moving our tokens around willynilly when not in combat is frustrating?
This is a same guy, mind you, who summarily dismissed 4e when I brought it to the group because of its reliance on the grid and how boardgamey it felt. And now he wants to use the grid outside of combat? Yuck.
I prefer to use the narrative/theatre of mind to handle exploration and the grid only for combat. But! Im just the player this time and I need to work on keeping my DM mouth shut when I'm not the DM. Its harder than you would think.
So, I did that for Death House in my CoS campaign and for a murder mystery dinner in another campaign. HOWEVER, I did not enforce turn by turn movement. I let the players freely explore and they just moved their tokens around as they explored death house or searching for clues to the murder. It was just a way for me to keep track of which rooms they were in so I knew which notes to refer to.
Grid movement on a map can be quite nice for out of combat movement especially when dealing with traps and such. @Steelhawk
You might introduce a semi-coherent ruleset that blends things so that the DM is happy with dealing with players and players get a bit more "freedom"
1) Players act in charisma initiative order. Leaders tend to do things first. The person whose initiative it is is considered "the leader". They may delay their turn if they wish.
2) On any persons turn anyone who has not acted yet can follow the person whose initiative it is and forgo their turn later in the round.
3) On a turn anyone currently engaged can move with the leader and maintain a reasonable distance from the leader as they do their thing. The leader may move any distance in increments of their speed(and followers may move to any position within their speed of the leader) until the DM says to stop(for whatever reason) after which point everyone on that turn has to place their character in relation to the leader(within their speed unless the DM says "not there")
4) Turns take about 5 to 10 minutes to do. Anyone in the group may assist or aid in any reasonable way within the time frame. Anyone not in the group may not.
The big thing this does is add structure for the DM. When you're in a digital map space players moving into things you're not ready for is a huge pain because it will happen a lot when you're trying to do something else with a character that is "doing something" and then you've got a bunch of moving parts to deal with.
Session 3 of my CoS campaign went pretty well. The party is already pretty protective of Ireena and several of them have personnel hooks to travel to Vallaki. The session ended in the middle of Strahd laying siege to Ireena and Ismark's manor to get to the party cleric, the Tatyana reincarnation. However, the party is still convinced the siege is for Ireena and have her barricaded in a bedroom.
I did run into a hiccup I was not expecting. Father Donavich gave each player a written copy of a Morninglord eulogy to be given during the funeral and asked each person in attendance to read a line. Turned out our druid player is coming to terms with a conservative/religious upbringing and was not feeling comfortable with the situation. Thankfully, rather than not say anything, she sent me a PM and I was able to nix the eulogy completely. The rest of the session went well (unless the rogue and paladin conspiring to knock out Father Donavich and kill Duro behind the party's back counts as not well...) and we had a talk about boundaries and whether she would be ok with the plan I had of her character being connected to a nature goddess Strahd stole power from. But, of all the potential triggering topics and situations in CoS, that is amongst the last I thought would cause issues haha.
Ugh. My CoS DM is now enforcing out of combat turn by turn movement as we explore Arganvolthost, as practice for when we splunk Castle Ravenloft. This is going to be such a slog.
Its a new medium for him to DM in (Roll20) and I guess he feels like us moving our tokens around willynilly when not in combat is frustrating?
This is a same guy, mind you, who summarily dismissed 4e when I brought it to the group because of its reliance on the grid and how boardgamey it felt. And now he wants to use the grid outside of combat? Yuck.
I prefer to use the narrative/theatre of mind to handle exploration and the grid only for combat. But! Im just the player this time and I need to work on keeping my DM mouth shut when I'm not the DM. Its harder than you would think.
So, I did that for Death House in my CoS campaign and for a murder mystery dinner in another campaign. HOWEVER, I did not enforce turn by turn movement. I let the players freely explore and they just moved their tokens around as they explored death house or searching for clues to the murder. It was just a way for me to keep track of which rooms they were in so I knew which notes to refer to.
Yeah, that's more in line with how I do it too. I present the map on Roll20 andbuse their tokens to give a vague idea of location. And then once a combat/trap scenario starts, I would tell the party to place themselves on the map where they would have been given the narrative so far.
How I've made the transition to the VTT style of play is that token location doesn't really matter until it does. And the border between the two is very obvious.
Grid movement on a map can be quite nice for out of combat movement especially when dealing with traps and such. @Steelhawk
You might introduce a semi-coherent ruleset that blends things so that the DM is happy with dealing with players and players get a bit more "freedom"
1) Players act in charisma initiative order. Leaders tend to do things first. The person whose initiative it is is considered "the leader". They may delay their turn if they wish.
2) On any persons turn anyone who has not acted yet can follow the person whose initiative it is and forgo their turn later in the round.
3) On a turn anyone currently engaged can move with the leader and maintain a reasonable distance from the leader as they do their thing. The leader may move any distance in increments of their speed(and followers may move to any position within their speed of the leader) until the DM says to stop(for whatever reason) after which point everyone on that turn has to place their character in relation to the leader(within their speed unless the DM says "not there")
4) Turns take about 5 to 10 minutes to do. Anyone in the group may assist or aid in any reasonable way within the time frame. Anyone not in the group may not.
The big thing this does is add structure for the DM. When you're in a digital map space players moving into things you're not ready for is a huge pain because it will happen a lot when you're trying to do something else with a character that is "doing something" and then you've got a bunch of moving parts to deal with.
These are all great points and things to consider. I tried to bring my DM to my way of thinking for a hot second there and it was soundly rejected and not appreciated. Hence my comment before about needing to learn to keep my DM trap shut when not the DM.
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Grid movement on a map can be quite nice for out of combat movement especially when dealing with traps and such. @Steelhawk
You might introduce a semi-coherent ruleset that blends things so that the DM is happy with dealing with players and players get a bit more "freedom"
1) Players act in charisma initiative order. Leaders tend to do things first. The person whose initiative it is is considered "the leader". They may delay their turn if they wish.
2) On any persons turn anyone who has not acted yet can follow the person whose initiative it is and forgo their turn later in the round.
3) On a turn anyone currently engaged can move with the leader and maintain a reasonable distance from the leader as they do their thing. The leader may move any distance in increments of their speed(and followers may move to any position within their speed of the leader) until the DM says to stop(for whatever reason) after which point everyone on that turn has to place their character in relation to the leader(within their speed unless the DM says "not there")
4) Turns take about 5 to 10 minutes to do. Anyone in the group may assist or aid in any reasonable way within the time frame. Anyone not in the group may not.
The big thing this does is add structure for the DM. When you're in a digital map space players moving into things you're not ready for is a huge pain because it will happen a lot when you're trying to do something else with a character that is "doing something" and then you've got a bunch of moving parts to deal with.
I think I need to steal this. Any feedback on how it works/issues that arise on using this?
Grid movement on a map can be quite nice for out of combat movement especially when dealing with traps and such.
You might introduce a semi-coherent ruleset that blends things so that the DM is happy with dealing with players and players get a bit more "freedom"
1) Players act in charisma initiative order. Leaders tend to do things first. The person whose initiative it is is considered "the leader". They may delay their turn if they wish.
2) On any persons turn anyone who has not acted yet can follow the person whose initiative it is and forgo their turn later in the round.
3) On a turn anyone currently engaged can move with the leader and maintain a reasonable distance from the leader as they do their thing. The leader may move any distance in increments of their speed(and followers may move to any position within their speed of the leader) until the DM says to stop(for whatever reason) after which point everyone on that turn has to place their character in relation to the leader(within their speed unless the DM says "not there")
4) Turns take about 5 to 10 minutes to do. Anyone in the group may assist or aid in any reasonable way within the time frame. Anyone not in the group may not.
The big thing this does is add structure for the DM. When you're in a digital map space players moving into things you're not ready for is a huge pain because it will happen a lot when you're trying to do something else with a character that is "doing something" and then you've got a bunch of moving parts to deal with.
These are all great points and things to consider. I tried to bring my DM to my way of thinking for a hot second there and it was soundly rejected and not appreciated. Hence my comment before about needing to learn to keep my DM trap shut when not the DM.
Imagine you've set up a super cool dungeon for your players. You made it out of blocks and have everything set up and you've got enemies and traps and the works and its wonderful. Anyway you cover it up with hand towels so your players cannot see into the fog of war. And then one player just gets there and is like "i move here" and takes the towel off. And then before you figure out what is going on with another character who is interacting with something they say "i move here" and take the towel off.
This is what it feels like to have your players move their tokens willy nilly in a digital environement
I've been using owlbear.rodeo to run digital games. Doesn't matter if my players move their tokens around because I have absolute control over the fog.
Grid movement on a map can be quite nice for out of combat movement especially when dealing with traps and such.
You might introduce a semi-coherent ruleset that blends things so that the DM is happy with dealing with players and players get a bit more "freedom"
1) Players act in charisma initiative order. Leaders tend to do things first. The person whose initiative it is is considered "the leader". They may delay their turn if they wish.
2) On any persons turn anyone who has not acted yet can follow the person whose initiative it is and forgo their turn later in the round.
3) On a turn anyone currently engaged can move with the leader and maintain a reasonable distance from the leader as they do their thing. The leader may move any distance in increments of their speed(and followers may move to any position within their speed of the leader) until the DM says to stop(for whatever reason) after which point everyone on that turn has to place their character in relation to the leader(within their speed unless the DM says "not there")
4) Turns take about 5 to 10 minutes to do. Anyone in the group may assist or aid in any reasonable way within the time frame. Anyone not in the group may not.
The big thing this does is add structure for the DM. When you're in a digital map space players moving into things you're not ready for is a huge pain because it will happen a lot when you're trying to do something else with a character that is "doing something" and then you've got a bunch of moving parts to deal with.
These are all great points and things to consider. I tried to bring my DM to my way of thinking for a hot second there and it was soundly rejected and not appreciated. Hence my comment before about needing to learn to keep my DM trap shut when not the DM.
Imagine you've set up a super cool dungeon for your players. You made it out of blocks and have everything set up and you've got enemies and traps and the works and its wonderful. Anyway you cover it up with hand towels so your players cannot see into the fog of war. And then one player just gets there and is like "i move here" and takes the towel off. And then before you figure out what is going on with another character who is interacting with something they say "i move here" and take the towel off.
This is what it feels like to have your players move their tokens willy nilly in a digital environement
Yes. I get that. I should clarify my position. I did not mean to say that i would allow players to move tokens all over the entire map. Just the environs that they are exploring in the narrative.
We're using Roll20. When I DM, I have been setting the fog of war and I reveal only the areas where the party is in at that point in the narrative (edit: and where they've been previously). I usually ping an area that the players can move their tokens to. Once within that "room" and exploring via the narrative. My players are usually free to move around. If a trigger for something takes place "I want to open that chest" I tell everyone to hold it and say that the rogue is going to open the chest and to place your tokens where you want them for such an event. Its not foolproof, but it strikes a good balance between moving at the speed of the narrrative and still allowing for precise token location when the situatuon calls for it. To use your analogy.... I'm the one who pulls off the hand towel off and then the players can explore within those limits until something triggers a combat/trap/etc. scenario and then positioning becomes very important.
Contrast that to turn by turn movement for the whole dungeon using dynamic lighting. We can't simply "move to the door and check it for traps." Five players, all counting out 6-ish squares of movement, or 12 if we're being reckless. All having to account for move, attack and bonus actions, one after the other, to make out way down a 50' hallway. For the entire dungeon. With dynamic lighting keyed only to your token, the player who moves through the door gets the description read out while the rest of us are starting at a blacked out screen. It sets a ponderous pace of play and takes players out of the moment by using a visual medium and leaving them with no visuals to enjoy. And then someone is going to be that guy who was a at the back of the marching order finally getting to peek at the room and then once again starting the barrage of questions like, "Whats's this thing? The chest? OK. How about that? Oh, right you mentioned a curtain on the far wall, that must be it." Its just.... not fun to me.
I completely understand the desire for the DM to have some control and create structure around when and where the players can move. Turn by turn exploration on a grid map provides just that, but on the the far end of the willy-nilly spectrum. I would prefer and try to present a balance between player agency, narrative flow/pace of play and DM control.
the quest giver Fela's potential heel turn. I haven't done one of these to a group before and I'm really concerned about undermining trust in NPCs and in me as a GM.
You could also, instead of Fela being out for herself, actually believe she can break the curse with the books and actually has good intentions. Instead, it doesn't work out and she becomes corrupted by the books and then turns against the party.
the quest giver Fela's potential heel turn. I haven't done one of these to a group before and I'm really concerned about undermining trust in NPCs and in me as a GM.
You could also, instead of Fela being out for herself, actually believe she can break the curse with the books and actually has good intentions. Instead, it doesn't work out and she becomes corrupted by the books and then turns against the party.
oooh this could work out really well! Players know that they have to reassemble the book to break the curse, and they are going to learn that an assembled book also manifests the ultimate version of the curse. They would either have to convince her to give up everything she’s done so far and leave the entire curse in the PCs hands, or else risk fighting her in order to have any chance of curing her at all
I hit new on AI dungeon, selected Peasant, and asked the nearest peasant what a typical elf name is and he said "Tych Flog" which sounds like an elven porn name
oh also guess what I forgot to do in prep for this game?
Give the 2nd most important NPC a name. Of course they asked and I choked so hard on coming up with an elf name in the moment...
rip
Having run into the same obstacle, the elves in my setting had a language that is like Welsh but even worse/harder to pronounce. So that's why (honest!) many elves you meet have really generic names.
This elf is called Oakwind? Well really he is "The wind that shakes the mighty oak upon the changing of the seasons, but does not break him" or at least that is as close as a translation as you're going to get into common, but even that misses a lot of the connotations that this particular wind has as far as references to history and religion, not to mention the metaphors and simple wordplay that comes in.
He's "Ygwyntsy'n Ysgwyderwerthol Newidorri Y Tymhorau" to another elf, but non-elves have very little chance of getting the pronunciation right, let alone the right posture during the address, so "Lord Oakwind" will do. Perhaps "Gwyntsy" if they really want to piss him off. But of course the first time they meet an elf, they will give their real name, and by the time they have tried to write that down, you've had time to come up with 'uh...Silverbow'.
Also has let me leave some notes as puzzles (or clues), as older versions of elvish aren't very precise in their meaning and assumes the reader understands the context. Thus a translation of an inscription on a coin could read as "Dragon's reward, a Tyrant's price or a Lesson from the Passing of the Day" and you might just learn that it was found on a coin of dullish sheen, if the historian hasn't bothered to record where they actually found the coin.
I do much the same thing when I'm playing a Grung. I have a longwinded description of my Grung throwing her head back and inflating a vibrating throat sack and trilling an intricate sound, that, if you took out all the nuance and warmth and depth of the musical trill, crammed the remains into the letters of the default common tongue, you might write down on paper as "Reek't".
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
When he says the second most important NPC, that's out of two. We met two people and he named the first one and then he froze, motionless on video, when asked the second name.
I'm ashamed/not-ashamed that the majority of my random NPC's that the party asks about who I already know have no bearing on the plot are usually named Bob.
Othertimes I'm caught offguard and I name them on the fly and then rely on my players notetaking to remind me of then. (ie: That dwarven guard captain, what was his name again? Right! Bilvan Brawnanvil! He's the one to greet you when you announce yourselves at Citadel Felbarr and escorts you in.)
Steelhawk on
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Discord is a godsend for throwaway info that might come back later. Just leave it floating in a text channel like it was your notepad, and then everyone can reference as needed.
1) a rule: players may only be killed by NPC with names. This prevents them from asking everyone’s name
2) someone who doesn’t have a name, when asked, will probably get a response of “they have a name but it’s not important” said from the DM and not the NPC
1) a rule: players may only be killed by NPC with names. This prevents them from asking everyone’s name
2) someone who doesn’t have a name, when asked, will probably get a response of “they have a name but it’s not important” said from the DM and not the NPC
- I am... the Nameless One.
- It's okay, gang, this overpowered lich bent on world domination won't be a problem for us!
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
1) a rule: players may only be killed by NPC with names. This prevents them from asking everyone’s name
2) someone who doesn’t have a name, when asked, will probably get a response of “they have a name but it’s not important” said from the DM and not the NPC
DM: You're rushed by six goblins!
Players: No problem!
DM: Their names are Gob, Rorg-
Players: ... big problem
I wish I was organized like matt mercer with a binder of characters with entire personalities and voices in notes that he just pulls out when they talk to a random NPC and writes a note under the npc once its been introduced so he can keep track of where/when they met them
Long story short it's going to be The Cube with four players, it leads in to Strahd, two players are one off evil peeps because their mains are already in the campaign
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IMO having something like that makes it a lot easier to remember the stuff on my person, much more than just a list of a bunch of items does.
In town the players can literally browse merchants and only bring up the RP of it once they've looked through the items, so a shopping episode doesn't take forever. they can also just go to a general store or whatever and hit the "buy now" button transferring items to their inventory and subtracting the required currency
player names redacted
I can also literally just convert creatures to loot sheets and let them see what they had on them by clicking the dead or incapacitated creature, and they can take items as they see fit. Most creatures are parsed or set up correctly, so like, a goblin isn't a monster with a bow attack, it's a creature with a statblock that has a shortbow in its inventory
Well... a lot depends on your players and the adventure. If you’re currently in a dungeon I would not think you’re likely to have low combat.
But when you have a mystery to solve as an example if you’re prepared for the party to find solutions without beating people up over it then it could be relatively easy.
But in general you will need
1) a central or immediate conflict that is best not resolved via combat
2) no or low “random encounters” that are to be solved by combat.
E.G. You can make encounters that are semi-combat and kind of fluff like. Maybe the party gets mugged and then the muggers realize that the party is going to wreck their shit and so runs. Maybe the muggers were mooks of a big bad and the party can glean info from them.
This does kind of limit the non-combat aspects to three types of sessions
1) social/town sessions
2) prep sessions
3) travel sessions
I don’t like prep sessions in general and travel sessions are the hardest so let’s focus on those for a bit. Plus, travel has, by default, an immediate conflict that cannot be resolved by combat. You cannot punch your way to the next town. So now all we need is the second part of the equation.
In DnD there are roughly two types of stories we can tell. Stories about the players characters and stories about the world. Stories about the world are important because they help to inform players as to how they should shape their characters stories. But they also help invoke invoke the right mindset and people like them. Plus, it’s harder to tell those stories during plot or dungeon relevant sections. And we want to get those stories out early so that players feel their place in the world.
So the best way for travel to be used is to tell those stories and the a good way to tell those stories is to travel. To do that we’re going to steal a page from video games and steal the environmental story telling from open world games like fallout and Skyrim. With the exception that instead of people coming across this organically we are going to place them as players travel.
So we design a short event for a location. Propose that it has already happened and place the aftermath in the players way. Leaving goodies for players to find is also nice (gives players an incentive to interact with the stories). Combat can, but does not have to happen at these locations.
We can also use these type of events/locations to introduce villains or other characters the players will interact with later.
I have a tendency to stay too conventional for D&D I think, so I'm trying to branch out from that and into some conflicts that are a lot more magical and interesting. Here is the setup.
Hundreds of years ago, an Evil Guy cursed a series of otherwise mundane books in order to create powerful evil henchmen to do his bidding. His idea was that those who survived the transformations and afflictions would be compelled to join him, and those who did not were irrelevant.
No one knows the result of this plot, but as time went on the books were lost and scattered, taking on a life of their own and appearing in various places according to their individual character.
Fast forward to today - the books are surfacing again.
Our initial NPC is Fela Isarr, a warlock or sorcerer woman who has read some pages from one of the books. An ancestor in her family was previously afflicted by the curse, which is where she got the first taste. It is slowly turning her into a being composed of icy mist who can channel elemental ice and transform illusionary creatures into frost-monsters with the shape of the illusion and Some Frost Attacks. She has commissioned the PCs to collect the rest of the pages of the book so that she can complete her transformation. She has a companion, perhaps her lover, who acts on her behalf and has collected the PCs into a group because they all have the sort of essential curiosity that she needs to send them off questing for cursed books and handing them over to her.
Her story is that her family has been afflicted by this curse down through the generations, and needs the PCs to help break it once and for all.
Over 8 adventures, the PCs will:
- collect parts of the book
- encounter three other books with more minor curses, all "found" by Fela's Agent and requested ostensibly so she can learn more about the creator of the curse.
- encounter two other groups, both attempting to collect the books.
- - one of these is notably evil in intent, with the goal of assembling the books and recreating the (largely unknown) original intent of the collection
- - one of these is attempting to neutralize their power. Perhaps they are Harpers!
- deal with the effects of these curses on the areas where they live
Eventually they will discover that Fela is out for herself and doesn't intent to break the curse, but instead embody it. She doesn't have any specifically evil intent so they might want to side with her or not, feel betrayed or not, idk how it will go!
Current books I've described:
Travels through the Misted Waste
This is the main book of the early plot, an extensive travelogue of at least 50 pages, written in 1st person by an unknown naturalist of some sort. It describes his daily experiences as he and his companions cross an expanse of boggy moor over two weeks, during an unseasonably chill autumn. It has been torn apart and scattered by persons unknown, many decades or even centuries ago.
It transforms the reader into a being of elemental icy mist. Pages of the book, while they are unsuppressed, boil with freezing mist clouds like infinite dry ice. The farther into the book one reads, the more complete the transformation. Without the complete destruction of the book, the curse cannot be removed or altered. The mist can, when interacting with illusions, convert them into frost-based actual objects or creatures.
Wilderness Guide to the Northern Reaches
A short pamphlet describing firestarting techniques and other suggestions for survival while traversing northern glaciers, using materials typically found in the area. This book surfaces once every century, granting the first reader various fire-based effects that dim when not used. Anyone else the owner allows to read the book will be consumed via spontaneous combustion within 2 days, further powering the owner's fire abilities. The owner is compelled, as though addicted, to seek ever greater "fuel" for their abilities. Eventually the book itself begins to destroy its environment, culminating in a great conflagration that transforms the book's owner into a fire creature under the command of the curse's author.
Tasty Recipes From Your Youth
This book surfaces every 50 years in a moderately sized village and slowly infects the local residents with a hunger curse, causing them to consume all their available food, wildlife, organic materials, and eventually one another in a desperate attempt to sate their intense feelings of starvation. Anyone who dies in the is way rises as a minor ghost under the thrall of the remaining villagers. These ghosts can drain the CON (inflicting starvation) on living beings but do no other damage. When only one person remains, the book reveals itself to the sole survivor, who can control the throng as he is compelled to travel toward the location of the curse's author, devastating everything in his path.
There's an opportunity for some foreshadowing / mirroring here with the enemy groups, as well - the Bag Guy one can have someone who's been curse-Hulked to the max, and the good-guy one can perhaps provide some of the above-mentioned context.
It's not really so bad to have a "It was Fela all along!" moment, but it's going to need some setup and foreshadowing or it'll land with a thud (and savvy players will know it's coming). If there's tension on the point, or Fela's reasons for wanting to do this seem at least sound, it'll work better - even if her reason is just "a bigger badguy".
Its a new medium for him to DM in (Roll20) and I guess he feels like us moving our tokens around willynilly when not in combat is frustrating?
This is a same guy, mind you, who summarily dismissed 4e when I brought it to the group because of its reliance on the grid and how boardgamey it felt. And now he wants to use the grid outside of combat? Yuck.
I prefer to use the narrative/theatre of mind to handle exploration and the grid only for combat. But! Im just the player this time and I need to work on keeping my DM mouth shut when I'm not the DM. Its harder than you would think.
I'll also admit I'm a tiny bit annoyed that a certain player who likes to roleplay (on occasion taking a minute or so to explain something to NPCs) also has very limited patience for listening to an NPC say anything that takes more than two sentences. I had typed something out I wanted one NPC to say and he pretty much shut the character/me down after about a sentence and a half.
So, I did that for Death House in my CoS campaign and for a murder mystery dinner in another campaign. HOWEVER, I did not enforce turn by turn movement. I let the players freely explore and they just moved their tokens around as they explored death house or searching for clues to the murder. It was just a way for me to keep track of which rooms they were in so I knew which notes to refer to.
You might introduce a semi-coherent ruleset that blends things so that the DM is happy with dealing with players and players get a bit more "freedom"
1) Players act in charisma initiative order. Leaders tend to do things first. The person whose initiative it is is considered "the leader". They may delay their turn if they wish.
2) On any persons turn anyone who has not acted yet can follow the person whose initiative it is and forgo their turn later in the round.
3) On a turn anyone currently engaged can move with the leader and maintain a reasonable distance from the leader as they do their thing. The leader may move any distance in increments of their speed(and followers may move to any position within their speed of the leader) until the DM says to stop(for whatever reason) after which point everyone on that turn has to place their character in relation to the leader(within their speed unless the DM says "not there")
4) Turns take about 5 to 10 minutes to do. Anyone in the group may assist or aid in any reasonable way within the time frame. Anyone not in the group may not.
The big thing this does is add structure for the DM. When you're in a digital map space players moving into things you're not ready for is a huge pain because it will happen a lot when you're trying to do something else with a character that is "doing something" and then you've got a bunch of moving parts to deal with.
I did run into a hiccup I was not expecting. Father Donavich gave each player a written copy of a Morninglord eulogy to be given during the funeral and asked each person in attendance to read a line. Turned out our druid player is coming to terms with a conservative/religious upbringing and was not feeling comfortable with the situation. Thankfully, rather than not say anything, she sent me a PM and I was able to nix the eulogy completely. The rest of the session went well (unless the rogue and paladin conspiring to knock out Father Donavich and kill Duro behind the party's back counts as not well...) and we had a talk about boundaries and whether she would be ok with the plan I had of her character being connected to a nature goddess Strahd stole power from. But, of all the potential triggering topics and situations in CoS, that is amongst the last I thought would cause issues haha.
Yeah, that's more in line with how I do it too. I present the map on Roll20 andbuse their tokens to give a vague idea of location. And then once a combat/trap scenario starts, I would tell the party to place themselves on the map where they would have been given the narrative so far.
How I've made the transition to the VTT style of play is that token location doesn't really matter until it does. And the border between the two is very obvious.
These are all great points and things to consider. I tried to bring my DM to my way of thinking for a hot second there and it was soundly rejected and not appreciated. Hence my comment before about needing to learn to keep my DM trap shut when not the DM.
I think I need to steal this. Any feedback on how it works/issues that arise on using this?
Imagine you've set up a super cool dungeon for your players. You made it out of blocks and have everything set up and you've got enemies and traps and the works and its wonderful. Anyway you cover it up with hand towels so your players cannot see into the fog of war. And then one player just gets there and is like "i move here" and takes the towel off. And then before you figure out what is going on with another character who is interacting with something they say "i move here" and take the towel off.
This is what it feels like to have your players move their tokens willy nilly in a digital environement
Yes. I get that. I should clarify my position. I did not mean to say that i would allow players to move tokens all over the entire map. Just the environs that they are exploring in the narrative.
We're using Roll20. When I DM, I have been setting the fog of war and I reveal only the areas where the party is in at that point in the narrative (edit: and where they've been previously). I usually ping an area that the players can move their tokens to. Once within that "room" and exploring via the narrative. My players are usually free to move around. If a trigger for something takes place "I want to open that chest" I tell everyone to hold it and say that the rogue is going to open the chest and to place your tokens where you want them for such an event. Its not foolproof, but it strikes a good balance between moving at the speed of the narrrative and still allowing for precise token location when the situatuon calls for it. To use your analogy.... I'm the one who pulls off the hand towel off and then the players can explore within those limits until something triggers a combat/trap/etc. scenario and then positioning becomes very important.
Contrast that to turn by turn movement for the whole dungeon using dynamic lighting. We can't simply "move to the door and check it for traps." Five players, all counting out 6-ish squares of movement, or 12 if we're being reckless. All having to account for move, attack and bonus actions, one after the other, to make out way down a 50' hallway. For the entire dungeon. With dynamic lighting keyed only to your token, the player who moves through the door gets the description read out while the rest of us are starting at a blacked out screen. It sets a ponderous pace of play and takes players out of the moment by using a visual medium and leaving them with no visuals to enjoy. And then someone is going to be that guy who was a at the back of the marching order finally getting to peek at the room and then once again starting the barrage of questions like, "Whats's this thing? The chest? OK. How about that? Oh, right you mentioned a curtain on the far wall, that must be it." Its just.... not fun to me.
I completely understand the desire for the DM to have some control and create structure around when and where the players can move. Turn by turn exploration on a grid map provides just that, but on the the far end of the willy-nilly spectrum. I would prefer and try to present a balance between player agency, narrative flow/pace of play and DM control.
Of course, YMMV.
Give the 2nd most important NPC a name. Of course they asked and I choked so hard on coming up with an elf name in the moment...
rip
Secundelf
Derrick... Glade...runner?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Having run into the same obstacle, the elves in my setting had a language that is like Welsh but even worse/harder to pronounce. So that's why (honest!) many elves you meet have really generic names.
This elf is called Oakwind? Well really he is "The wind that shakes the mighty oak upon the changing of the seasons, but does not break him" or at least that is as close as a translation as you're going to get into common, but even that misses a lot of the connotations that this particular wind has as far as references to history and religion, not to mention the metaphors and simple wordplay that comes in.
He's "Ygwyntsy'n Ysgwyderwerthol Newidorri Y Tymhorau" to another elf, but non-elves have very little chance of getting the pronunciation right, let alone the right posture during the address, so "Lord Oakwind" will do. Perhaps "Gwyntsy" if they really want to piss him off. But of course the first time they meet an elf, they will give their real name, and by the time they have tried to write that down, you've had time to come up with 'uh...Silverbow'.
Also has let me leave some notes as puzzles (or clues), as older versions of elvish aren't very precise in their meaning and assumes the reader understands the context. Thus a translation of an inscription on a coin could read as "Dragon's reward, a Tyrant's price or a Lesson from the Passing of the Day" and you might just learn that it was found on a coin of dullish sheen, if the historian hasn't bothered to record where they actually found the coin.
I do much the same thing when I'm playing a Grung. I have a longwinded description of my Grung throwing her head back and inflating a vibrating throat sack and trilling an intricate sound, that, if you took out all the nuance and warmth and depth of the musical trill, crammed the remains into the letters of the default common tongue, you might write down on paper as "Reek't".
Elfo the elf
Sello the merchant
Servo the servant
NPCo the villager
Othertimes I'm caught offguard and I name them on the fly and then rely on my players notetaking to remind me of then. (ie: That dwarven guard captain, what was his name again? Right! Bilvan Brawnanvil! He's the one to greet you when you announce yourselves at Citadel Felbarr and escorts you in.)
1) a rule: players may only be killed by NPC with names. This prevents them from asking everyone’s name
2) someone who doesn’t have a name, when asked, will probably get a response of “they have a name but it’s not important” said from the DM and not the NPC
- It's okay, gang, this overpowered lich bent on world domination won't be a problem for us!
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
In previous campaigns I've flicked to the relevant list and gone to the first unused one
Occasionally my players would notice that they were meeting people in alphabetical order
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
DM: You're rushed by six goblins!
Players: No problem!
DM: Their names are Gob, Rorg-
Players: ... big problem
makin us all look bad
I've done zero prep
Long story short it's going to be The Cube with four players, it leads in to Strahd, two players are one off evil peeps because their mains are already in the campaign
I need trap ideas