I think I did a good job for my first time, the players said they were very satisfied and were at some points surprised at how prepared I was, so I guess that's cool. There were lots of laughs. Although they could tell I was kind of nervous because I had to deal with so much new stuff.
However, I didn't feel like I was in control as much as I'd have wanted at times, because sometimes I couldn't describe stuff in as much detail as I'd have wanted to because the players kept commenting, asking questions and arguing about what they should do next. But hey, it's their game as well!
If anyone's interested, here's my writeup of the session that I put in our wiki:
Gaven, priest of Pelor, father of Shay, summoned him from Callaphia to help find Jonathan, who had been missing for three months. He also called in Olek and Danny, who were friends with Jonathan. Also Manfred, who is a friend of Gaven's.
They met at Gaven's house outside of Cortrick, where he told them where they should look for Jonathan and gave them some rations and gold.
On their trip to Cortrick, they came across a bunch of goblins who were demanding money for passage across Zenwick Bridge. The group made short work of the goblins, after which Danny destroyed Zenwick Bridge.
Upon arriving to Cortrick, they visited Drunken fox tavern, where they spoke to the bartender, Bendwick, who informed them that Jonathan was seen meeting with Jimmy the Knife, a local criminal, before disappearing. After much persuasion, Bendwick arranged a meeting between Manfred and Jimmy.
In an over-elaborate stakeout, the group surrounded the meeting place (the hen-house) while Manfred waited for Jimmy to arrive. Jimmy arrived there with some compadres, and they sold him some bank. After, they followed Jimmy to his safehouse in the clacks.
They (actually Danny) set fire to the basement of the house, after which Jimmy's group would spread out so that they could capture him. They made the mistake of spreading out themselves in order to surround the soon-to-be burning safehouse. Jimmy's group escaped the safehouse together and they came upon Danny, who accidentally outed himself as the firestarter. He managed to stall them long-enough for the others to arrive to his help.
Jimmy's band of no-gooders and the group fought in the burning clacks. The group defeated them and killed Jimmy. They managed to capture one of Jimmy's partners in crime, the severely bloodied Diana. With her in custody, they escaped the flames and now they intend to probe her for information regarding Jimmy's meeting with Jonathan.
I totally didn't plan for them to have whole Ocean's 11 type stakeout thing, I just planned for them to meet with the guy where they'd persuade him to give them info, and maybe he'd attack them if they failed some skill checks. Anyway, they decided for a stakeout and to follow him, so I rolled with that and just improvised from then on. I made the stakeout a sort of skill challenge and then gave them XP for it (the player's used their skills a lot even when they weren't in skill challenges, which is very cool). After that, they managed to really mess up stuff, burn down a whole district of the town and get ambushed but in the end they prevailed.
We played for about four hours and I had a lot more stuff prepared that we didn't cover, probably because they sort of went on a tangent. But it's cool, I'll have less stuff to do for the next session.
They claimed the last encounter was a bit too easy, although they burned through quite a few dailies and healing surges. I guess I'm not sure how to make a really challenging encounter, because I'm always worried about making it too hard and doing a TPK.
This may seem like a good idea, but it's still kind of a jerk move. You're purposely making an enemy too difficult to fight (in which case you're basically railroading the PCs). Aside from that, PCs have a (not unreasonable) expectation that you're not going to purposely overwhelm them.
If the PC's are never put into situations where they can potentially lose, why bother ever running combat? You come across a pack of kobolds, oh hey look, you won! Next! Might as well not even bother owning dice. Do characters in your world just automatically pass all their skills checks as well? Cause if not, I guess you're a jerk eh? Secondly, have you never read any sort of fiction or watched any movies? They are full of situations where the heroes are defeated or forced to flee only to come back and save the day at some future point. Hell, most Saturday morning cartoons are based on the "if at first you don't succeed, try try again" formula.
Consider, for instance, a similar scenario. You're in college studying for a math test on Chapters 1 through 5 of your textbook. You get to the test, and suddenly there's a question on the test worth 50% of the grade, and it's on a topic you haven't covered yet, from Chapter 7. Would you consider that fair?
Lastly, this analogy is so laughably bad I think I shall save it. You're not even comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing apples to unobtanium plated bowling balls.
I never said anything about not challenging the PCs, as you seem to have illogically construed from my statements. A group of PCs has a chance of losing any given encounter. This is what dice are for; they add the element of randomness that makes it that much more rewarding when you succeed. But to throw them forcefully into an encounter that they cannot win is counter-intuitive and may annoy you players. Furthermore, in 4E monsters front load a lot of damage. If you throw an unwinnable encounter at your party, there's a decent chance (encounter powers, recharge powers, action points) you could drop or kill one player in the first turn before they get a chance to even act.
SkyCaptain, I do agree that if players do something unreasonablely stupid there should be consequences. I am not saying that I don't think players should ever die. Players should be totally killable if they intentionally do something insanely stupid (jump off a flying city, or mouth off to the Voice of Kelemvor). There's also decent justification for killing them randomly in epic tier when death's not so big a deal, or when they roll really terribly, etc. There's other reasons as well, but it's early and I'm sick.
If you won't listen to anything else I say travathan, then at least listen to this: as someone who puts a lot of thought into his characters, getting killed because I'm not psychic and didn't know that the DM threw me up against an unwinnable encounter does not make me a happy player. If you choose to do this, at least try to do one of the following things as well:
1. Wait until after one of the players can cast the Raise Dead ritual.
2. Provide a Raise Dead scroll in the loot a few encounters before or after the fight.
3. Prepare to arrange some means for a dead player to return to life (perhaps a single player RP game or two in the Shadowfell with your character trying to earn his life back.)
At least give your player a chance to bring his character back if he really wants too.
Losing does not equal killing off characters. o_O If you're a DM, fudging is perfectly acceptable. If the players don't know that what they're facing is much stronger than them, show them without killing anyone off. If they then insist on fighting, have there be consequences if they lose: party or party member gets captured and must be rescued, party knocked unconscious and some of their gear looted/eaten, bards at the nearby towns sing of their ineptitude, etc. If done right, it evolves into a perfectly natural plot hook. Death is not the only option.
It is not railroading anyone if monsters you come across are stronger than your party. It just provides a different sort of challenge that they must overcome.
Losing does not equal killing off characters. o_O If you're a DM, fudging is perfectly acceptable. If the players don't know that what they're facing is much stronger than them, show them without killing anyone off. If they then insist on fighting, have there be consequences if they lose: party or party member gets captured and must be rescued, party knocked unconscious and some of their gear looted/eaten, bards at the nearby towns sing of their ineptitude, etc. If done right, it evolves into a perfectly natural plot hook. Death is not the only option.
It is not railroading anyone if monsters you come across are stronger than your party. It just provides a different sort of challenge that they must overcome.
I see no problem with throwing something at the characters that they either cant beat or could only beat if incredibly lucky, ingenious, or tactful. So long as the characters have some means of escape (plus some means of knowing their opponents have a decisive advantage before half the party is dead), it is up to the players to use their noggins and go "hmmmm, my character can stay and fight and have a very, very slim chance of winning or I can 'run away, runnnn awayyyyy' and see if I can escape." Players shouldn't be under the assumption that every fight they get in is winnable. Yes, they are heroes, but even heroes have to make strategic retreats at times.
I bolded the part that implied to me that he was intending characters to get killed off if they continued, ignoring SkyCaptain because he is a terrible DM. Granted it's not a very good justification.
More importantly, it's my experience in 4E that if a fight is too difficult for a party to handle, there's a decent chance it'll kill them before they realize it unless they metagame. Look at that Young Adamantine Dragon he was considering.
First turn:
Breath Weapon: 2d6+3 damage, plus 10 next turn. Action point, Frightful Presence, stuns basically the whole party. All he really needs to hit is the Defender and the Leader.
Second turn:
Move to non-Defender also hit in blast. Make a couple of claw attacks, action point and do it again. 4 * (1d8+6) damage.
Assuming this is an EL+4 encounter, that's enough damage to be reasonably sure that one of them dies. Add in a few minions or something and you've got a PK encounter.
Don't start that stupid bullshit again. I'm an excellent DM. Far better than you'll ever be. I'm willing to let the players suffer the consequences of their actions. I don't hold my players hands and coddle them like weepy toddlers dribbling on big, chewy dice. I hate players that whine when ever they "lose". That sense of player entitlement is complete and utter bullshit.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
More importantly, it's my experience in 4E that if a fight is too difficult for a party to handle,
More importantly, it's been my experience in 20 years of 1E/2E/3E/4E/Rifts/Shadowrun/GURPS/Chamions that you don't know what you are talking about. Players don't need to metagame to know a fight is going to be more than they can handle. Even in 4E there are skills that allow you knowledge of monsters, or can simply rule that players of certain classes or races have basic knowledge/lore of some creatures. Hell, the player can just come right out and ask "I'm sizing up this creature, how tough do I think it is?" and as the DM my answer can vary from "you don't have a clue as it is too foreign to you" all the way to "your grandmother and her walking stick could kick that guy's arse."
Or, the party faced against a foe who attacks the mightiest warrior in the group, and said warrior suffers 1/3 of their hitpoints in a single attack, I would hope that warrior announces to the rest of the party "holy shit, my spleen, we should runnnn!" And the party makes a tactful retreat or otherwise finds some way to avoid that foe. Granted the party may be able to actually beat said foe, but at the cost of a few party members. Ultimately it is up to the party to calculate that risk based on the information at hand and make a decision. If there is never any risk involved, what is the point?
Saying that players should never be put in a position where one of them can die until they have the means to raise the dead is fucking stupid. What is the point of death if with the snap of the fingers it can be undone? If every battle you have is winnable, again, wtf is the point of having the battles? If winning the battle is decided by dice rolls, then skip the battle rolling and just tell the players they have a 5 in 6 chance of winning and have one of them roll the d6 to decide the outcome.
I, on the other hand, want the outcome of the battle to be decided upon the players and their characters assessing the situation, USING THEIR BRAINS, and coming to the decision on the best course of action; no matter if that course of action is fight, run away, surrender, bribe, etc. If the characters never face a situation that they can possibly lose, then there isn't a whole lot of brain power needed to say "we attack" for every encounter.
If you and your fellow players want to be the winners all the time then maybe you should fire up Diablo, load up your level 200 characters, and set the difficulty to Normal. I'm sure you can have loads of fun hacking shit up knowing you'll never die and that victory is just a matter of mindlessly clicking to attack.
More importantly, it's my experience in 4E that if a fight is too difficult for a party to handle,
More importantly, it's been my experience in 20 years of 1E/2E/3E/4E/Rifts/Shadowrun/GURPS/Chamions that you don't know what you are talking about. Players don't need to metagame to know a fight is going to be more than they can handle. Even in 4E there are skills that allow you knowledge of monsters, or can simply rule that players of certain classes or races have basic knowledge/lore of some creatures. Hell, the player can just come right out and ask "I'm sizing up this creature, how tough do I think it is?" and as the DM my answer can vary from "you don't have a clue as it is too foreign to you" all the way to "your grandmother and her walking stick could kick that guy's arse."
Or, the party faced against a foe who attacks the mightiest warrior in the group, and said warrior suffers 1/3 of their hitpoints in a single attack, I would hope that warrior announces to the rest of the party "holy shit, my spleen, we should runnnn!" And the party makes a tactful retreat or otherwise finds some way to avoid that foe. Granted the party may be able to actually beat said foe, but at the cost of a few party members. Ultimately it is up to the party to calculate that risk based on the information at hand and make a decision. If there is never any risk involved, what is the point?
Saying that players should never be put in a position where one of them can die until they have the means to raise the dead is fucking stupid. What is the point of death if with the snap of the fingers it can be undone? If every battle you have is winnable, again, wtf is the point of having the battles? If winning the battle is decided by dice rolls, then skip the battle rolling and just tell the players they have a 5 in 6 chance of winning and have one of them roll the d6 to decide the outcome.
I, on the other hand, want the outcome of the battle to be decided upon the players and their characters assessing the situation, USING THEIR BRAINS, and coming to the decision on the best course of action; no matter if that course of action is fight, run away, surrender, bribe, etc. If the characters never face a situation that they can possibly lose, then there isn't a whole lot of brain power needed to say "we attack" for every encounter.
If you and your fellow players want to be the winners all the time then maybe you should fire up Diablo, load up your level 200 characters, and set the difficulty to Normal. I'm sure you can have loads of fun hacking shit up knowing you'll never die and that victory is just a matter of mindlessly clicking to attack.
You're talking right past me and you're using terrible examples to prove your point. I'm not saying you shouldn't challenge the players, but it sounds like you approve of purposefully trying to kill them. Punishing them because they don't ask you "hey, did you make this one to kill us?" every combat is inane. If you want to tell them straight up that an encounter is designed as a potential PK and that they should avoid it, fine.
By the way, a monster dealing damage to 1/3-1/2 of a player's hit points is totally normal in late Heroic or Paragon, and is in no way any indication that a fight is too difficult for the PCs.
I'm pretty sure Terrendos didn't say that they shouldn't ever be put in a situation where they might die. He said that you shouldn't throw them into a fight they have virtually no chance of winning without warning, which is a little different.
I mean, taking Sky Captain's epic-level dungeon as an example: That's not inherently unfair by any means, although I don't really know why you'd stat out an epic-level dungeon when your party was level 2; the issue as to whether them going there and dying was player stupidity or unfair DM dickery turns on how much warning they had that they couldn't handle the place. If he was just like "you're going there? okay, cool: you are all eaten by superdemons!" that's a dick move. It becomes a little more reasonable, though, if they spent the whole trip there tripping over people with stories about how legendary heroes who saved countries went there and didn't come back, or met another adventuring party that was clearly much stronger than them, who they then saw running from the citadel with half their members dead, or what-have-you.
You guys are saying the PCs should be put in situations where they might not win, otherwise the game is pointless and not much fun. That's true. Terrendos is saying that you shouldn't just instagib them with an unwinnable fight without some kind of warning that they should consider other options. That's also true.
Abbalah on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited October 2009
The difference is designing an encounter that will definitely kill the PCs and designing an encounter that is challenging, but isn't likely to murder anyone if they have good tactics and strategy. Any idiot can make an encounter in 4E unwinnable, just choose any level + 6/7 solo and there you go. They'll never hit it and it will completely maul them with its attacks.
Saying that players should never be put in a position where one of them can die until they have the means to raise the dead is fucking stupid.
He's saying if you're going to put the PCs into a position where they WILL die you should make a backup plan in case they do (or have other options). Normal death just because encounters are difficult or challenging is not the problem here.
I mean, taking Sky Captain's epic-level dungeon as an example: That's not inherently unfair by any means, although I don't really know why you'd stat out an epic-level dungeon when your party was level 2
They were one of several groups running concurrently in the same campaign setting I'd been running for many years. There was a massive wealth of encounter information, dungeons, background, history, and plot hooks to draw upon and create a rich world full of verisimilitude.
If he was just like "you're going there? okay, cool: you are all eaten by superdemons!" that's a dick move. It becomes a little more reasonable, though, if they spent the whole trip there tripping over people with stories about how legendary heroes who saved countries went there and didn't come back, or met another adventuring party that was clearly much stronger than them, who they then saw running from the citadel with half their members dead, or what-have-you.
There were plenty of warning signs both subtle and obvious. Including a dire warning from their patron at the Explorer's Society headquarters in a nearby city. The warnings and threats only served to increase the player's ardor in exploring this dangerous dungeon and claiming the riches within. They quickly learned that the warnings weren't just me hyping up the dungeon haha.
They also learned to pay closer attention to the player handouts I gave everyone.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
SkyCaptain, now I'm a little curious, had these guys played with you before? Because for lots of players it's standard procedure to call the level 1 dungeon the Cave of Ultimate Demise and expect them to still go inside. But you've been general rather than specific in your descriptions of your warnings so it's worth giving you the benefit of the doubt.
SkyCaptain, now I'm a little curious, had these guys played with you before? Because for lots of players it's standard procedure to call the level 1 dungeon the Cave of Ultimate Demise and expect them to still go inside. But you've been general rather than specific in your descriptions of your warnings so it's worth giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Two of the six had played before. They were wary, but didn't figure I'd really let the newbs make that mistake. The dungeon was called the The Reaver's Citadel. Low level dungeons weren't really named, unless they were a tomb or something. I try to stay away from corny names like Caves of Ultimate Doom and that kind of crap. I give places in my campaign settings real names that real people would use to refer to them.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
We chewed up 6.5 encounters in about the same number of hours. (The 0.5 was finishing off the encounter that killed them all last time, after they negotiated a return to life with a devil mucking about outside the City of Judgement.)
Unfortunately, they ran out of surges after fighting the two stench ghouls, arguably before even, so they insisted on taking an extended rest before the dungeon boss, who wasn't that hard at all when they came back. I just said, fuck it, they get the extended rest off, because I wasn't prepared to throw another encounter at them, and they were near death, and it was late. They left fhe necromancer's cave, gathered up ruin caravan parts, and then blockaded the cave entrance too, so I figure that was good enough. I think I should have thrown a couple more skeletons into the final room though, as indication that the necromancer's been preparing while they've been sleeping. Oh well.
They did get pissed at being unable to hit the Stench Ghouls though due to their inabilities to roll >12.
(Edit, my avatar correctly sums up my current emotional state.)
hippofant on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
It used up the last healing surges on three of four party members though!
Though I blame them for botching the previous encounter. I stick two Chillborn Zombies behind iron bars (aura 2, 5 cold damage), and they charge and engage in melee en masse. And then to deal with the Blazing Skeleton in the pit, they stand at the edge, pop up, shoot something off, and drop prone again, because they had taken too much damage from the zombies... /sigh.
Wow, it really didn't take long for this thread to turn into dick waving.
It's perfectly ok to have monsters the pc's can't defeat as long as you don't force them to fight it, and as long as they have some way of figuring out that it's really tough. But then, I also prefer those kind of gritty realistic games anyway.
Anyway, I second the wiki suggestion, I'm going to shamelessly plug Obsidian Portal because it's run by a friend of mine. It has a wiki, blog, map import, all kinds o crap, which are all linked together. Pretty handy.
I use wikidot.com to host my campaign wiki. They've got a lot of nice themes and modules and have opened up the css files for you to modify so you can create your own theme from scratch. I haven't gone that far yet, but someday I will.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
I was on the train today and thought of a general idea for an adventure. I was going through the MM2 at the local store and saw the section with the Poisonscale lizard guys and thought they'd make for an interesting story, since they're low level and you could make a campaign that didn't consist entirely of a dungeon. So I was trying to work out a story to use them in and came up with this.
A wounded black dragon has convinced a tribe of poisonscales to bring him human sacrifices to restore his powers and in return will resurrect one of their heroic ancestors from mythology, claiming it was a friend of the hero in the past. The dragon has no intentions of doing so and intends to devour the poisonscales as well once it is healed. The poisonscale tribes have been raiding the area according to its directions and their attacks have become bolder and bolder. The dragon has also enlisted the aid of several people of influence in the area using the money and goods taken from the villages and will use them to stop the adventurers as their exploits begin to interrupt it’s work.
Hub Village: Maelkurn
Medium sized village situated in swampy marshlands.
- Acts as a trading hub for the hamlets in the swamp and a dwarven city in the mountains.
- Representatives from the outlying hamlets have one by one ceased to come and trade at Maelkurn over the last month
- A part was sent to investigate by the local lord’s garrison and have not been seen since, although they could have taken an alternate path out of the swamp The lord is not greatly concerned at the loss and has written them off.
The Hamlets: Reeds End, Willowtown, Helvington, Oakbend.
- Reeds End: Razed. Corpses dot the group and the houses have been cleaned out of all valuable goods.
- Willowtown: Perimeter of hamlet is surrounded by markers. If players enter the village slime monsters rise up and attack them. The place is devoid of both townsfolk and corpses.
- Helvington: Untouched, save all goods have disappeared and there is no encounter for the players.
- Oakbend: Still resisting, traps surround the area and the area around the village has been fortified. Solders who survived the patrol escaped to the village and have turned the populace into a makeshift militia. Some of the soldiers and woodsmen of the village have attempted to reach Maelkurn but have been killed en route.
Poisonscale Outpost:
The poisonscales have been using this as a camp to temporarily store prisoners and sort the supplies from the hamlets, as well as basing their raids from.
Consists of an outer circle of pickets, the prisoner pens and supplies surrounding the central area, a partially ruined watchtower.
- Pickets are mostly minions
- The majority of the forces have returned to the warrens escorted the initial batch of sacrifices, leaving a light guard.
- The weath of the hamlets is stored in the basement of the tower.
- A mix of minions, soldiers and a controller are around the pens.
- Inside the tower the leader of the patrol has been resurrected and guards the inside. Elite with some sort of necromancer controller alongside?
Captured poisonscales give direction to a reptile den if captured by the players. The black dragon has brainwashed them into believing this is the truth.
Initially I'd thought that it should be a green dragon so it matched up colour wise with the poisonscales, but flicking through the Draconomicon it turns out that a black one would be perfect since they inhabit swamps and apparently have the whole death magic thing, so rather than be a green one that is keeping his promise and bringing back an old friend as a favour to them for healing him it'll be a black one who was stringing them along and just being a dick. I've work out some details for the hamlets and a forward poisonscale camp they use as a base for the raids, then they'll most likely have their home in a set of cave galleries with the dragon's nest somewhere inside.
Sounds pretty good and well thought out. If you want to make the campaign last a little longer, add a third faction within the swamp to provide a distraction from dealing with the poisonscales all the time. Maybe some trolls moving in from the west, trying to make a place for themselves after being driven out from their previous home.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
Sounds pretty good and well thought out. If you want to make the campaign last a little longer, add a third faction within the swamp to provide a distraction from dealing with the poisonscales all the time. Maybe some trolls moving in from the west, trying to make a place for themselves after being driven out from their previous home.
That was what I was thinking, the trolls used to have a lair but were ousted by Poisonscales (since acid is not so great for trolls) and are stuck camping out in the swamps now or something along those lines. The people in the area know there was a troll warren around and think they're to blame for these villagers disappearing. So they go out looking for trolls but get lizards instead.
Of course they could stumble into some trolls by accident....
It's perfectly ok to have monsters the pc's can't defeat as long as you don't force them to fight it, and as long as they have some way of figuring out that it's really tough. But then, I also prefer those kind of gritty realistic games anyway.
I agree about the overly tough monsters, but as a DM I also have a contingency plan (ie. the cavalry) in place in case the characters get a little stupid - I hate restarting campaigns due to one moment of bad judgement. If it starts to become a party wipe, I usually reach a hand in to stop it. But usually at a cost in resources, cash, etc.
Anyway, I second the wiki suggestion, I'm going to shamelessly plug Obsidian Portal because it's run by a friend of mine. It has a wiki, blog, map import, all kinds o crap, which are all linked together. Pretty handy.
Love that site! I have one of my 4e campaigns there to try it out - The Ebon Cabal - which reminds me I really need to do a DM update over there o_O
Whew. I just finished typing up Session 4 of my savage races campaign. It was the end of their first adventure and the trigger for everything that is to follow in the campaign.
Session 5 had a lot of exposition and a lot of intrigue. I'm getting pretty good at telling the story through encounters (at least for my immediate players. I don't know how it comes across in writing), but I'm not sure how to get them to begin trying to delve deep into their characters as far as roleplaying goes. They all tend to discuss things and then agree on a course of action, but it rarely factors how their characters would react.
Anybody have any tips?
(I'm also considering having one of my players do podcasts so people can hear me become Michael Bay when I start describing explosions as "BRSHHHHHCHHHHHH, BOOOOOOMMM, FFFFFFFFFFRAAAAHHHHHH" )
I'm starting my group on their next big adventure, but I'm looking to create a kind of subterranean city-state for them to explore. I'm handling the politics and the dangers. However, I haven't worked much on the visual possibilities. The basic idea is that the waters of the city flow outward from a spring at its center. The more wealthy inhabitants of the stronger races have small rivers cutting courses through their homes and powering their devices, while the oppressed races rely solely on communal facilities. Lights at the edge of the city are the only things keeping massive, intelligent, worms from approaching the city and devouring its inhabitants.
I keep referencing paintings of Hell by Wayne Barlowe, but I think I want to go with something with a stronger connection to fertility and water. Do you guys know of anything I could look into for inspiration?
I'm starting my group on their next big adventure, but I'm looking to create a kind of subterranean city-state for them to explore. I'm handling the politics and the dangers. However, I haven't worked much on the visual possibilities. The basic idea is that the waters of the city flow outward from a spring at its center. The more wealthy inhabitants of the stronger races have small rivers cutting courses through their homes and powering their devices, while the oppressed races rely solely on communal facilities. Lights at the edge of the city are the only things keeping massive, intelligent, worms from approaching the city and devouring its inhabitants.
I keep referencing paintings of Hell by Wayne Barlowe, but I think I want to go with something with a stronger connection to fertility and water. Do you guys know of anything I could look into for inspiration?
My first instinct reading this is that the city would have a very organic feel to it, very twilight lighting, many plants, nice and cool and dim and sleepy, equal parts frightening and breathtaking. If there's a massive underground source of water, my political-science education tells me that nature would take advantage of that and you would have massive root structures permeating the whole of the city from massive trees above ground. Here's some pictures of the Angkor Wat temple, an ancient Cambodian city taken over by plantlife; tell us what you think:
susan on
2010 PAX DM Challenge Grand Champion 2011 PAX Warmachine/Hordes Champion
I've been running a 4e Star Wars: Knight of the old Republic campaign, and I plan on introducing the story's main villain, who is strong enough to wipe the whole party at the moment.
They were drifting in space after just making it off nar'shada (one of them thought it'd be a good idea to try and steal from every merchant they could find, got chased by police and smugglers) and got a distress call from a giant cargo freighter. It was obviously either a trap, or invaded with some monsters, but they decided to go in anyway.
Now, I don't want the party to wipe, but the way one of them is playing his character I know he will attack him, and I'm worried he'll wipe the party because they all tend to try and help eachother out of stupid situations, and I don't know a way to go about saying he will almost defiantly kill all of you without it taking out some of the drama. Any ideas?
Also I'm using this encounter as a reason to kill off one of my NPC's that's kinda been holding their handing the whole campaign.
Alternately, when the PC attacks, have a really ridiculous counter attack. I'm assuming the BBEG is a dark Jedi/Sith, right? If the PC uses a lightsaber, have the BBEG cut it in half. If it's a gun, do a Han Solo shooting Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and have him block the bolts with his hand and pull the gun away. If he's not a Force User, you can still do something similar. Have him shoot the PC's blaster/lightsaber with his own weapon before the PC can react.
Destroying a PC's weapon is a time-honored tradition that says "Listen, this guy is going to wipe the floor with you, time to run." Just make sure that either the PC gets a replacement in relatively short order or they are able to repair it quickly.
Alternately, when the PC attacks, have a really ridiculous counter attack. I'm assuming the BBEG is a dark Jedi/Sith, right? If the PC uses a lightsaber, have the BBEG cut it in half. If it's a gun, do a Han Solo shooting Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and have him block the bolts with his hand and pull the gun away. If he's not a Force User, you can still do something similar. Have him shoot the PC's blaster/lightsaber with his own weapon before the PC can react.
Destroying a PC's weapon is a time-honored tradition that says "Listen, this guy is going to wipe the floor with you, time to run." Just make sure that either the PC gets a replacement in relatively short order or they are able to repair it quickly.
That's a good idea, I'm thinking that once the PC I'm thinking of charges the main bad guy with his vibroblades, having them just both cut in half would deter him.
Hello D&D players! Just a quick note to let you know that the Critical Failures Secret Santa is now open for business here. We'd really like to get as many sections of Critical Failures involved as possible this year, so feel free to come along and sign up.
Alternately, when the PC attacks, have a really ridiculous counter attack. I'm assuming the BBEG is a dark Jedi/Sith, right? If the PC uses a lightsaber, have the BBEG cut it in half. If it's a gun, do a Han Solo shooting Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and have him block the bolts with his hand and pull the gun away. If he's not a Force User, you can still do something similar. Have him shoot the PC's blaster/lightsaber with his own weapon before the PC can react.
Destroying a PC's weapon is a time-honored tradition that says "Listen, this guy is going to wipe the floor with you, time to run." Just make sure that either the PC gets a replacement in relatively short order or they are able to repair it quickly.
I really like this idea and I think I'm going to use it in the second session of a new campaign I'm starting. Introduce the "big bad" and let them escape. I'll have to find some way to make it painful though
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I think I did a good job for my first time, the players said they were very satisfied and were at some points surprised at how prepared I was, so I guess that's cool. There were lots of laughs. Although they could tell I was kind of nervous because I had to deal with so much new stuff.
However, I didn't feel like I was in control as much as I'd have wanted at times, because sometimes I couldn't describe stuff in as much detail as I'd have wanted to because the players kept commenting, asking questions and arguing about what they should do next. But hey, it's their game as well!
If anyone's interested, here's my writeup of the session that I put in our wiki:
They met at Gaven's house outside of Cortrick, where he told them where they should look for Jonathan and gave them some rations and gold.
On their trip to Cortrick, they came across a bunch of goblins who were demanding money for passage across Zenwick Bridge. The group made short work of the goblins, after which Danny destroyed Zenwick Bridge.
Upon arriving to Cortrick, they visited Drunken fox tavern, where they spoke to the bartender, Bendwick, who informed them that Jonathan was seen meeting with Jimmy the Knife, a local criminal, before disappearing. After much persuasion, Bendwick arranged a meeting between Manfred and Jimmy.
In an over-elaborate stakeout, the group surrounded the meeting place (the hen-house) while Manfred waited for Jimmy to arrive. Jimmy arrived there with some compadres, and they sold him some bank. After, they followed Jimmy to his safehouse in the clacks.
They (actually Danny) set fire to the basement of the house, after which Jimmy's group would spread out so that they could capture him. They made the mistake of spreading out themselves in order to surround the soon-to-be burning safehouse. Jimmy's group escaped the safehouse together and they came upon Danny, who accidentally outed himself as the firestarter. He managed to stall them long-enough for the others to arrive to his help.
Jimmy's band of no-gooders and the group fought in the burning clacks. The group defeated them and killed Jimmy. They managed to capture one of Jimmy's partners in crime, the severely bloodied Diana. With her in custody, they escaped the flames and now they intend to probe her for information regarding Jimmy's meeting with Jonathan.
We played for about four hours and I had a lot more stuff prepared that we didn't cover, probably because they sort of went on a tangent. But it's cool, I'll have less stuff to do for the next session.
They claimed the last encounter was a bit too easy, although they burned through quite a few dailies and healing surges. I guess I'm not sure how to make a really challenging encounter, because I'm always worried about making it too hard and doing a TPK.
Cool stuff.
I never said anything about not challenging the PCs, as you seem to have illogically construed from my statements. A group of PCs has a chance of losing any given encounter. This is what dice are for; they add the element of randomness that makes it that much more rewarding when you succeed. But to throw them forcefully into an encounter that they cannot win is counter-intuitive and may annoy you players. Furthermore, in 4E monsters front load a lot of damage. If you throw an unwinnable encounter at your party, there's a decent chance (encounter powers, recharge powers, action points) you could drop or kill one player in the first turn before they get a chance to even act.
SkyCaptain, I do agree that if players do something unreasonablely stupid there should be consequences. I am not saying that I don't think players should ever die. Players should be totally killable if they intentionally do something insanely stupid (jump off a flying city, or mouth off to the Voice of Kelemvor). There's also decent justification for killing them randomly in epic tier when death's not so big a deal, or when they roll really terribly, etc. There's other reasons as well, but it's early and I'm sick.
If you won't listen to anything else I say travathan, then at least listen to this: as someone who puts a lot of thought into his characters, getting killed because I'm not psychic and didn't know that the DM threw me up against an unwinnable encounter does not make me a happy player. If you choose to do this, at least try to do one of the following things as well:
1. Wait until after one of the players can cast the Raise Dead ritual.
2. Provide a Raise Dead scroll in the loot a few encounters before or after the fight.
3. Prepare to arrange some means for a dead player to return to life (perhaps a single player RP game or two in the Shadowfell with your character trying to earn his life back.)
At least give your player a chance to bring his character back if he really wants too.
Losing does not equal killing off characters. o_O If you're a DM, fudging is perfectly acceptable. If the players don't know that what they're facing is much stronger than them, show them without killing anyone off. If they then insist on fighting, have there be consequences if they lose: party or party member gets captured and must be rescued, party knocked unconscious and some of their gear looted/eaten, bards at the nearby towns sing of their ineptitude, etc. If done right, it evolves into a perfectly natural plot hook. Death is not the only option.
It is not railroading anyone if monsters you come across are stronger than your party. It just provides a different sort of challenge that they must overcome.
I bolded the part that implied to me that he was intending characters to get killed off if they continued, ignoring SkyCaptain because he is a terrible DM. Granted it's not a very good justification.
More importantly, it's my experience in 4E that if a fight is too difficult for a party to handle, there's a decent chance it'll kill them before they realize it unless they metagame. Look at that Young Adamantine Dragon he was considering.
First turn:
Breath Weapon: 2d6+3 damage, plus 10 next turn. Action point, Frightful Presence, stuns basically the whole party. All he really needs to hit is the Defender and the Leader.
Second turn:
Move to non-Defender also hit in blast. Make a couple of claw attacks, action point and do it again. 4 * (1d8+6) damage.
Assuming this is an EL+4 encounter, that's enough damage to be reasonably sure that one of them dies. Add in a few minions or something and you've got a PK encounter.
More importantly, it's been my experience in 20 years of 1E/2E/3E/4E/Rifts/Shadowrun/GURPS/Chamions that you don't know what you are talking about. Players don't need to metagame to know a fight is going to be more than they can handle. Even in 4E there are skills that allow you knowledge of monsters, or can simply rule that players of certain classes or races have basic knowledge/lore of some creatures. Hell, the player can just come right out and ask "I'm sizing up this creature, how tough do I think it is?" and as the DM my answer can vary from "you don't have a clue as it is too foreign to you" all the way to "your grandmother and her walking stick could kick that guy's arse."
Or, the party faced against a foe who attacks the mightiest warrior in the group, and said warrior suffers 1/3 of their hitpoints in a single attack, I would hope that warrior announces to the rest of the party "holy shit, my spleen, we should runnnn!" And the party makes a tactful retreat or otherwise finds some way to avoid that foe. Granted the party may be able to actually beat said foe, but at the cost of a few party members. Ultimately it is up to the party to calculate that risk based on the information at hand and make a decision. If there is never any risk involved, what is the point?
Saying that players should never be put in a position where one of them can die until they have the means to raise the dead is fucking stupid. What is the point of death if with the snap of the fingers it can be undone? If every battle you have is winnable, again, wtf is the point of having the battles? If winning the battle is decided by dice rolls, then skip the battle rolling and just tell the players they have a 5 in 6 chance of winning and have one of them roll the d6 to decide the outcome.
I, on the other hand, want the outcome of the battle to be decided upon the players and their characters assessing the situation, USING THEIR BRAINS, and coming to the decision on the best course of action; no matter if that course of action is fight, run away, surrender, bribe, etc. If the characters never face a situation that they can possibly lose, then there isn't a whole lot of brain power needed to say "we attack" for every encounter.
If you and your fellow players want to be the winners all the time then maybe you should fire up Diablo, load up your level 200 characters, and set the difficulty to Normal. I'm sure you can have loads of fun hacking shit up knowing you'll never die and that victory is just a matter of mindlessly clicking to attack.
You're talking right past me and you're using terrible examples to prove your point. I'm not saying you shouldn't challenge the players, but it sounds like you approve of purposefully trying to kill them. Punishing them because they don't ask you "hey, did you make this one to kill us?" every combat is inane. If you want to tell them straight up that an encounter is designed as a potential PK and that they should avoid it, fine.
By the way, a monster dealing damage to 1/3-1/2 of a player's hit points is totally normal in late Heroic or Paragon, and is in no way any indication that a fight is too difficult for the PCs.
I mean, taking Sky Captain's epic-level dungeon as an example: That's not inherently unfair by any means, although I don't really know why you'd stat out an epic-level dungeon when your party was level 2; the issue as to whether them going there and dying was player stupidity or unfair DM dickery turns on how much warning they had that they couldn't handle the place. If he was just like "you're going there? okay, cool: you are all eaten by superdemons!" that's a dick move. It becomes a little more reasonable, though, if they spent the whole trip there tripping over people with stories about how legendary heroes who saved countries went there and didn't come back, or met another adventuring party that was clearly much stronger than them, who they then saw running from the citadel with half their members dead, or what-have-you.
You guys are saying the PCs should be put in situations where they might not win, otherwise the game is pointless and not much fun. That's true. Terrendos is saying that you shouldn't just instagib them with an unwinnable fight without some kind of warning that they should consider other options. That's also true.
He's saying if you're going to put the PCs into a position where they WILL die you should make a backup plan in case they do (or have other options). Normal death just because encounters are difficult or challenging is not the problem here.
There were plenty of warning signs both subtle and obvious. Including a dire warning from their patron at the Explorer's Society headquarters in a nearby city. The warnings and threats only served to increase the player's ardor in exploring this dangerous dungeon and claiming the riches within. They quickly learned that the warnings weren't just me hyping up the dungeon haha.
They also learned to pay closer attention to the player handouts I gave everyone.
Two of the six had played before. They were wary, but didn't figure I'd really let the newbs make that mistake. The dungeon was called the The Reaver's Citadel. Low level dungeons weren't really named, unless they were a tomb or something. I try to stay away from corny names like Caves of Ultimate Doom and that kind of crap. I give places in my campaign settings real names that real people would use to refer to them.
Plus "Cave" is all "BEWARE" in Whatever D&D Latin is.
We chewed up 6.5 encounters in about the same number of hours. (The 0.5 was finishing off the encounter that killed them all last time, after they negotiated a return to life with a devil mucking about outside the City of Judgement.)
Unfortunately, they ran out of surges after fighting the two stench ghouls, arguably before even, so they insisted on taking an extended rest before the dungeon boss, who wasn't that hard at all when they came back. I just said, fuck it, they get the extended rest off, because I wasn't prepared to throw another encounter at them, and they were near death, and it was late. They left fhe necromancer's cave, gathered up ruin caravan parts, and then blockaded the cave entrance too, so I figure that was good enough. I think I should have thrown a couple more skeletons into the final room though, as indication that the necromancer's been preparing while they've been sleeping. Oh well.
They did get pissed at being unable to hit the Stench Ghouls though due to their inabilities to roll >12.
(Edit, my avatar correctly sums up my current emotional state.)
Excellent.
It used up the last healing surges on three of four party members though!
Though I blame them for botching the previous encounter. I stick two Chillborn Zombies behind iron bars (aura 2, 5 cold damage), and they charge and engage in melee en masse. And then to deal with the Blazing Skeleton in the pit, they stand at the edge, pop up, shoot something off, and drop prone again, because they had taken too much damage from the zombies... /sigh.
It's perfectly ok to have monsters the pc's can't defeat as long as you don't force them to fight it, and as long as they have some way of figuring out that it's really tough. But then, I also prefer those kind of gritty realistic games anyway.
Anyway, I second the wiki suggestion, I'm going to shamelessly plug Obsidian Portal because it's run by a friend of mine. It has a wiki, blog, map import, all kinds o crap, which are all linked together. Pretty handy.
Hub Village: Maelkurn
Medium sized village situated in swampy marshlands.
- Acts as a trading hub for the hamlets in the swamp and a dwarven city in the mountains.
- Representatives from the outlying hamlets have one by one ceased to come and trade at Maelkurn over the last month
- A part was sent to investigate by the local lord’s garrison and have not been seen since, although they could have taken an alternate path out of the swamp The lord is not greatly concerned at the loss and has written them off.
The Hamlets: Reeds End, Willowtown, Helvington, Oakbend.
- Reeds End: Razed. Corpses dot the group and the houses have been cleaned out of all valuable goods.
- Willowtown: Perimeter of hamlet is surrounded by markers. If players enter the village slime monsters rise up and attack them. The place is devoid of both townsfolk and corpses.
- Helvington: Untouched, save all goods have disappeared and there is no encounter for the players.
- Oakbend: Still resisting, traps surround the area and the area around the village has been fortified. Solders who survived the patrol escaped to the village and have turned the populace into a makeshift militia. Some of the soldiers and woodsmen of the village have attempted to reach Maelkurn but have been killed en route.
Poisonscale Outpost:
The poisonscales have been using this as a camp to temporarily store prisoners and sort the supplies from the hamlets, as well as basing their raids from.
Consists of an outer circle of pickets, the prisoner pens and supplies surrounding the central area, a partially ruined watchtower.
- Pickets are mostly minions
- The majority of the forces have returned to the warrens escorted the initial batch of sacrifices, leaving a light guard.
- The weath of the hamlets is stored in the basement of the tower.
- A mix of minions, soldiers and a controller are around the pens.
- Inside the tower the leader of the patrol has been resurrected and guards the inside. Elite with some sort of necromancer controller alongside?
Captured poisonscales give direction to a reptile den if captured by the players. The black dragon has brainwashed them into believing this is the truth.
Initially I'd thought that it should be a green dragon so it matched up colour wise with the poisonscales, but flicking through the Draconomicon it turns out that a black one would be perfect since they inhabit swamps and apparently have the whole death magic thing, so rather than be a green one that is keeping his promise and bringing back an old friend as a favour to them for healing him it'll be a black one who was stringing them along and just being a dick. I've work out some details for the hamlets and a forward poisonscale camp they use as a base for the raids, then they'll most likely have their home in a set of cave galleries with the dragon's nest somewhere inside.
Thoughts?
That was what I was thinking, the trolls used to have a lair but were ousted by Poisonscales (since acid is not so great for trolls) and are stuck camping out in the swamps now or something along those lines. The people in the area know there was a troll warren around and think they're to blame for these villagers disappearing. So they go out looking for trolls but get lizards instead.
Of course they could stumble into some trolls by accident....
I agree about the overly tough monsters, but as a DM I also have a contingency plan (ie. the cavalry) in place in case the characters get a little stupid - I hate restarting campaigns due to one moment of bad judgement. If it starts to become a party wipe, I usually reach a hand in to stop it. But usually at a cost in resources, cash, etc.
Love that site! I have one of my 4e campaigns there to try it out - The Ebon Cabal - which reminds me I really need to do a DM update over there o_O
http://worldofyorg.blogspot.com
Session 5 had a lot of exposition and a lot of intrigue. I'm getting pretty good at telling the story through encounters (at least for my immediate players. I don't know how it comes across in writing), but I'm not sure how to get them to begin trying to delve deep into their characters as far as roleplaying goes. They all tend to discuss things and then agree on a course of action, but it rarely factors how their characters would react.
Anybody have any tips?
(I'm also considering having one of my players do podcasts so people can hear me become Michael Bay when I start describing explosions as "BRSHHHHHCHHHHHH, BOOOOOOMMM, FFFFFFFFFFRAAAAHHHHHH" )
I keep referencing paintings of Hell by Wayne Barlowe, but I think I want to go with something with a stronger connection to fertility and water. Do you guys know of anything I could look into for inspiration?
My first instinct reading this is that the city would have a very organic feel to it, very twilight lighting, many plants, nice and cool and dim and sleepy, equal parts frightening and breathtaking. If there's a massive underground source of water, my political-science education tells me that nature would take advantage of that and you would have massive root structures permeating the whole of the city from massive trees above ground. Here's some pictures of the Angkor Wat temple, an ancient Cambodian city taken over by plantlife; tell us what you think:
2011 PAX Warmachine/Hordes Champion
They were drifting in space after just making it off nar'shada (one of them thought it'd be a good idea to try and steal from every merchant they could find, got chased by police and smugglers) and got a distress call from a giant cargo freighter. It was obviously either a trap, or invaded with some monsters, but they decided to go in anyway.
Now, I don't want the party to wipe, but the way one of them is playing his character I know he will attack him, and I'm worried he'll wipe the party because they all tend to try and help eachother out of stupid situations, and I don't know a way to go about saying he will almost defiantly kill all of you without it taking out some of the drama. Any ideas?
Also I'm using this encounter as a reason to kill off one of my NPC's that's kinda been holding their handing the whole campaign.
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
Hah, that might work!
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
Destroying a PC's weapon is a time-honored tradition that says "Listen, this guy is going to wipe the floor with you, time to run." Just make sure that either the PC gets a replacement in relatively short order or they are able to repair it quickly.
That's a good idea, I'm thinking that once the PC I'm thinking of charges the main bad guy with his vibroblades, having them just both cut in half would deter him.
Thanks!
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
Thanks for reading!
I really like this idea and I think I'm going to use it in the second session of a new campaign I'm starting. Introduce the "big bad" and let them escape. I'll have to find some way to make it painful though