Be upfront about the schedule you wish to keep OOC? If I know we should only spend one session in this city we could make sure we don't meander to too much bullshit.
Nah. I'll suck it up. The players collectively chose this module to follow from LMoP from the options I gave them. They seemed real keen to continue with the same PCs, while I want to start fresh for DtA, so I don't want to overtly poo-poo on their choice. And I want these new-ish players to enjoy leveling up their characters and becoming legit awesome.
And its not as if I'm not having fun. But I could be having more fun with a different module, the new hotness of Avernus. And now that we're "done" with with sandbox chapter of SkT and moving into more of the plot, I feel less like I'm spinning my wheels and hopefully we can soon make significant forward progress.
Be upfront about the schedule you wish to keep OOC? If I know we should only spend one session in this city we could make sure we don't meander to too much bullshit.
Nah. I'll suck it up. The players collectively chose this module to follow from LMoP from the options I gave them. They seemed real keen to continue with the same PCs, while I want to start fresh for DtA, so I don't want to overtly poo-poo on their choice. And I want these new-ish players to enjoy leveling up their characters and becoming legit awesome.
And its not as if I'm not having fun. But I could be having more fun with a different module, the new hotness of Avernus. And now that we're "done" with with sandbox chapter of SkT and moving into more of the plot, I feel less like I'm spinning my wheels and hopefully we can soon make significant forward progress.
Are you doing just one giant stronghold? Could do one of the side paths for another group of Giants.
the idea of being constrained like that and all the studying and homework
i raise my cup to ye brave warriors
??
Module lays out setting, maps, tables of encounters, even text to read for room descriptions. And then you can deviate at will when it makes sense for the characters and what you think would work well.
My players wanted to play Curse of Strahd but we're afraid of doing Death House at level 1 so i wrote a session 1 to get them to level 2 outside Barovia and it was sooo much more work and i kept wondering if I'm going to kill them all or make it too breezy.
I find I have a lot more time to create doing a module, and I don't have to take as many notes about who was what where because I have to make less stuff up on the fly
I don't color within the lines AT ALL and worrying about "breaking" the module is a path towards stress, but once you remember that you can fix whatever breaks, and if you can't fix it, it ain't broken, it's just the game now - it's all good
I just spent several months running a campaign in Barovia hundreds of years before Curse of Strahd.... sure i had to do reading to get this to have the impact I wanted, a lot of it, but.... my last fully homebrew campaign involved literally hundreds of hours of mapmaking and backstory creation, this was less, and it was wonderful. Curse of Strahd is a wonderful piece of work and putting my own spin on it has been (and is going to continue to be) a joy
the idea of being constrained like that and all the studying and homework
i raise my cup to ye brave warriors
If it makes you feel better, I'm working on a 100% homebrew campaign world for my other, long time group?
To be honest, I don't have enough bandwidth for two completely homebrewed games. So far, I've kept it "light and easy" for my Dungeon Dads relative newbie group running first Lost Mines and now SKT, because at first, frankly, I didn't know it was going to last so why put in the effort? But I was wrong. So far its been great and the group seems to work. Avernus just looks awesome and I can't wait to legit dive into that module and really make it my own. I've already promised my homebrew world to my old group who are hyped for it. So my new group get Avernus thrust on them.
My usual gaming MO is to take an established world and craft my own stories within in. Forgotten Realms, Darksun, Eberron, Planescape, etc. Did that a lot in 3.5e. Took a break with 4e, most of my 4e gaming being in various pbp's here on the forums. 5e has a different approach though, in that the modules are campaign books. And are very good ones too.
the idea of being constrained like that and all the studying and homework
i raise my cup to ye brave warriors
??
Module lays out setting, maps, tables of encounters, even text to read for room descriptions. And then you can deviate at will when it makes sense for the characters and what you think would work well.
My players wanted to play Curse of Strahd but we're afraid of doing Death House at level 1 so i wrote a session 1 to get them to level 2 outside Barovia and it was sooo much more work and i kept wondering if I'm going to kill them all or make it too breezy.
those maps and encounters and NPCs and descriptions don’t read themselves
i genuinely find it pretty inspiring
when i try to run anything pre-made i find so many things just fall out of my brain like sand in a sieve
plus the time budget just isn’t there for me anymore, i find myself having maybe 2 hours of free time (usually the day before lol) to prepare any given week, so it’s been a “lay the tracks in front of the cart” situation for me since day 1
the idea of being constrained like that and all the studying and homework
i raise my cup to ye brave warriors
I use it as a reference material. A list of NPC's and locations that are already filled out and theme appropriate. Lets me have a bunch of information for however deep my players want to go.
Am I the only one that wants to see the Shaman come back as an alternative primal caster to the druid? And I say this as someone who loves the druid and doesn't like the moon circle subclass. Why use the shape shifting for combat when you can use it for utility, scouting and problem-solving.
the idea of being constrained like that and all the studying and homework
i raise my cup to ye brave warriors
??
Module lays out setting, maps, tables of encounters, even text to read for room descriptions. And then you can deviate at will when it makes sense for the characters and what you think would work well.
My players wanted to play Curse of Strahd but we're afraid of doing Death House at level 1 so i wrote a session 1 to get them to level 2 outside Barovia and it was sooo much more work and i kept wondering if I'm going to kill them all or make it too breezy.
those maps and encounters and NPCs and descriptions don’t read themselves
i genuinely find it pretty inspiring
when i try to run anything pre-made i find so many things just fall out of my brain like sand in a sieve
plus the time budget just isn’t there for me anymore, i find myself having maybe 2 hours of free time (usually the day before lol) to prepare any given week, so it’s been a “lay the tracks in front of the cart” situation for me since day 1
Story wise or proceduraly, things fall out of my brain when using a module too. If it's my own creation, then all that info is up in my noodle somewhere anyway. If its a module, chances are I just haven't read far enough ahead and something will trip me up that I really should have known better.
If you have a hard time reading modules and organizing bullet points into notes or something it might be more difficult.... but I'm not a good enough writer to come up with a cohesive, entirely original campaign from start to finish as good anything the modules provide
looking over my notes from my original campaign they're more extensive than my storm king's thunders notes, and I moved SKT to a different setting entirely, so overall it is less work for me
the big thing is just having a big dramatis personae in some place other than just the start of the book, D&D beyond also helps with the ability to search the module
I generally don't use large adventure paths in their totality but I will steal sections if they appeal to me. Like the town of brinford from the 3.5e speaker in dreams module is a major part of my setting now, because I converted and ran that module a while back, and the yearly festival is still going in setting. The caravan headed to the festival from a major metropolis south of brinford has become a plot point multiple times now.
I also used white plume mountain because it's one of the easiest to pull out of tales from the yawning portal, and also the three weapons will play into a story I started with my first campaign in the setting.
I also run a lot of my campaign improvisationally, I've been designing my setting for the better part of a decade, and I run what is essentially a living campaign with multiple plot lines to account for player fluidity.
Right now there are 3 major plot lines. One plotline follows a set of adventurers that has ventured far into the northwest deserts to find the secrets of ages past, another plotline follows multiple parties dealing with a cadre of undead overlords inhabiting a massive forest, and a third is still kind of on setup towards a campaign that will deal with/observe the fallout of both the other plot lines and the machinations of the oligarchs of the setting.
I also benefit from a dedicated player pool that's been super understanding the whole time as I get better at said improvisation, and plotting.
this reminds me I have a shit ton of bookkeeping to do with the party's town, it's not in the red any more so i have to figure out how much money it makes
I'm also going to have the names, ages, genders, familial status, and race of every member of the town and which building they live in on the map because im a psychopath
im also going to make portraits for each of them in the sims because of the aforementioned psycopathy
(I mean I'm going to do a lot of autogenerating of names and whatnot)
See down that path lies madness, at least for me. I have a city that takes days to cross I never draw any part of it unless it will be the location of a set piece battle where positioning is of paramount importance. Other than that broad descriptions of the location is all that's needed. No one exists until they are important.
The last time I ran plot line 3 I invented like 4 or 5 named NPCs on the spot because the players would be meaningfully interacting with them, reused 2 or 3 from the last time this caravan went forth, other than that it's an indiscriminate mass of people traveling along with the caravan. Free to be set dressing "extras" in scenes, or new characters waiting for a player to become them.
See down that path lies madness, at least for me. I have a city that takes days to cross I never draw any part of it unless it will be the location of a set piece battle where positioning is of paramount importance. Other than that broad descriptions of the location is all that's needed. No one exists until they are important.
The last time I ran plot line 3 I invented like 4 or 5 named NPCs on the spot because the players would be meaningfully interacting with them, reused 2 or 3 from the last time this caravan went forth, other than that it's an indiscriminate mass of people traveling along with the caravan. Free to be set dressing "extras" in scenes, or new characters waiting for a player to become them.
I already made a pretty good map of the town I just have to expand it a bit and also take my semi-complete list of townsfolk and finish it (I'm not actually going to map townsfolk to their residence, if someone asks about someone they've met I'll decide it on the spot and throw a marker on the map at that point, it doesn't exist until it happens)
I do have some editing to do and if it weren't for matt colville's spreadsheet I would just be like "eh, you make like, 1000g a year"
I have so many NPC's named Bob Itdoesntfuckingmatter in my games, its ridiculous.
Although, I do have a recurring merchant that shows up in a few my of games in recent years over a few different systems (D&D, IKRPG & I think SW?)... and that is Johann and his Wonderful World of Weapons, currently he is a merchant in Neverwinter holding the scales of the green dragon from Lost Mines until the cleric player shows back up with 5000gp for a suit of dragonscale armor that was commissioned. And in IK, he was Johann and his Wandering Wagon of Wonder who traveled from Trollblood clan to clan in the Scarsfell Forest on a regular trade route until the snows got to bad and he returned to town until next year. I forget what he was in the Star Wars game.
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awsimoa perfectly cromulent human; definitely not a robotRegistered Userregular
Sooooo...... Are any other DMs surprised at how often their players resort directly to torture when questioning NPCs?
Just wondering if this is, like, a universal thing or maybe I should be concerned about my friends
Sooooo...... Are any other DMs surprised at how often their players resort directly to torture when questioning NPCs?
Just wondering if this is, like, a universal thing or maybe I should be concerned about my friends
Not surprised in the slightest. My old group of players are giant, horrible assholes when it comes to roleplaying. Yes, even the most pious of paladins. I feel like this is one area where the closet terribleness of your friends is "allowed" to be expressed and bleeds over to their character actions.
Sooooo...... Are any other DMs surprised at how often their players resort directly to torture when questioning NPCs?
Just wondering if this is, like, a universal thing or maybe I should be concerned about my friends
Due to my bag of infinite bullshit, the players ended up getting a modern scientist, from earth. Nothing she knows is that valuable, chemistry is completely different, things aren't even made of atoms, etc. They then went to asking her about methods of torture from her advanced society
Cut to waterboarding a cultist in a zone of truth a few sessions later
In my evil campaign, my players had cast a permanent Zone of Truth on a brick in their torture room at their home base. One day they took it with them on a fact-finding adventure session... to which the fleshbag hating warforged barbarian took great pleasure in pummelling people with it, while the necromancer player asked useless questions. Ever since that day, "DO NOT LIE TO THE BRICK OF TRUUUUUUUUUTH!!!" has become a live action meme played out at my table whenever the party has to ask an NPC any question whatsoever.
I mean, a lot of the practical disadvantages of torture disappear when Zone of Truth exists. Your characters are typically going to kill their victims anyway, and I'm not sure how much better murder is than torture.
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awsimoa perfectly cromulent human; definitely not a robotRegistered Userregular
Hahaha, yeah I figured that it was probably a common phenomenon. They're also all first-time players, and I don't think they've fully grokked a lot of the social applications of their characters skills. RP-wise it's a lot easier to just say "waterboard him!" than to actually think of something charming or persuading to say.
It's funny though, because they've got a Bard, a Sorcerer, and a high-CHA build Paladin, so collectively they have Charisma out the wazoo but they never use it (outside of spellcasting in combat).
my players almost never kills anyone if they can avoid it
they deliberately avoided killing hill giants and launched a grand scheme to create peace with the humans, where the druids of Goldenfields provide them plenty of food in exchange for exclusively raiding orcs and hobgoblins (this is kind of a dick move to the hobgoblins and orcs), and even extras like beef if they'll do tasks like help move boulders around or help build things like big walls
It's not perfect, but they installed Moog (wounded tower hill giant) as their new queen, they sovereign glued a headband of intellect to Moog's head so she's the Ur-Hill giant, having even purchased a few common magical items that satiate her hill giant hunger and losing a lot of weight so she could fit into her magical chainmail she got from a big Oni, having conned the rest of her people into beliving women were superior (hill giant females are, in fact, superior in every way to their males - but the males are physically larger, which is why they're usually a patriarchy, because they believe biggest=best, Moog, having access to some illusion making items, is able to easily dupe her dimwitted species into being less shitty).
See my logic is that, with the ordening broken, Hill Giants have no inherent need to be dicks anymore. They are free of the shackles of their creator, and now it's just a matter of carefully navigating their simplistic logic and finding a mutually beneficial arrangement
things like this are huge derails that change the lanscape of the game's world, but.... I mean the party is all in on keeping the ordening broken forever because of things like this. There's an actual possible future where giants aren't some distant monsters that peasants tell stories about to scare their children
edit: I mean they killed chief guh, and all her mates, unreasonable 14 foot tall people throwing rocks at you are unreasonable 14 foot tall people throwing rocks at you. Of the primary villain leaders, I suspect only Sansuri will be someone who surrenders peacefully once she's beaten, and possible the Frost Giant leader if one of them challenges him to a duel and wins
As a person who hates horror movies, gore and did have to read descriptions of war crimes for a course in college...
The effects of torturing someone are mentally scarring, it is just never pretty. Even something with a weird reputation like waterboarding is fucking gruesome. A player who wants to roleplay waterboarding a prisoner shouldn't be treated to a "you do the thing, roll intimidation" and then never mention what happened again. I personally wouldn't let players get away with it, although I understand that intimidation and nasty behavior are a lot more commonplace in a relatively lawless environment.
I mean hacking people's limbs off or crushing their face with a mace or blowing up their friends with a fireball is pretty mentally scarring too
if they're using a zone of truth or something there's no real roll, they get the information they want pretty fast, or they never get it, or the person doesn't know what they want and says so and they know its the truth
it's pretty awful but real world torture isn't about information either, it's extended and over a long period of time for no reason but the satisfaction of the torturer
I just tell the players "he or she tells you X" or, "no matter how long you spend at it, they don't give you anything" or "they say they don't know anything right away and you're sure it's the truth", we don't need to discuss what they did
everyone at my table knows torture is horrific and pointless, even in the most conservative wet dreamy scenario, they also know slavery is wrong, but they've bought slaves in D&D games I've run, it can get dark, but as long as everyone's cool with what's happening, it's cool *shrug*. In general my players play characters that are quite far away from murderhobos, but they have no qualms about waterboarding a kraken cultist because those guys are cartoon villains that don't exist in the real world
Especially in a magic society where, depending on interpretation, you can go real black and white in terms of defining actions that are considered Good versus Evil. One particular instance jumps to mind in the recent Pathfinder: Kingmaker CRPG. While dealing with a group of well-organized trolls, you happen upon one that does not wish to fight you, and claims to have forsaken the consumption of sentient creatures. One of the replies you can give is essentially "Nice try, but I'm still going to kill you, because the only good troll is a dead troll." And somehow that is considered a Lawful Good action.
Obviously I would never condone torture in real life, and its apparent efficacy in the fantasy worlds defined in the D&D ruleset is probably an unintended consequence. But again, there's a lot of real evil stuff you can do with the entire school of Enchantment, so uhh... yeah you kind of just need to make sure you're on the same page as the rest of your group in session zero.
Especially in a magic society where, depending on interpretation, you can go real black and white in terms of defining actions that are considered Good versus Evil. One particular instance jumps to mind in the recent Pathfinder: Kingmaker CRPG. While dealing with a group of well-organized trolls, you happen upon one that does not wish to fight you, and claims to have forsaken the consumption of sentient creatures. One of the replies you can give is essentially "Nice try, but I'm still going to kill you, because the only good troll is a dead troll." And somehow that is considered a Lawful Good action.
Obviously I would never condone torture in real life, and its apparent efficacy in the fantasy worlds defined in the D&D ruleset is probably an unintended consequence. But again, there's a lot of real evil stuff you can do with the entire school of Enchantment, so uhh... yeah you kind of just need to make sure you're on the same page as the rest of your group in session zero.
Trolls eat humans and elves, like, exclusively if they can help it. It's not a moral decision for them, they just do, and they're so dimwitted and naturally predisposed towards the act that any alliance you make is doomed to failure - every one of your party members castigates you for being dumb if you go with his alliance and sure enough you still get "troll attack" events if you ignore them
Sure if you analyze it you find problematic shit, colonialism, etc, etc, but hopefully your players are smart enough to get it
Oh I for sure point out when my players are being fucked up, but I also allow evil characters, and I've also got a sense of humor darker than an old EMT.
Everyone knows the lines not to cross for propriety sake, not that I expect any of my players would. Conflict between player characters is only allowed when the players all agree to it. The players all understand how to do evil guy working with good guys storytelling (just watch farscape it's called party dynamic) and also that good and evil are subjective with shades of grey, and how to play bad guys that totally think they're the good guys and often deal with the more concrete evils of devil's and demons and foul aberrations, but are still pretty awful in some mundane respects.
I've purposefully made the world kinda fucked up in order to explore those more casual evils we encounter in the world and that the shades of grey can get pretty dark. Maybe killing a bunch of devils isn't enough to make you a good guy if your character is a classist dick.
My players however are not always their characters, we are electing to write characters as part of the storytelling game, if you are expertly running an asshole of a character, I will let you know. The judgment comes on if you take that as a compliment or not. I have told more than one player, "I love how much of piece of shit your character is" and luckily the response is usually something to the effect of 'thank you, I hope it's not coming on to strong'
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
Yea I usually fade to black for extreme gore violence or torture. I allow it though because it's usually of the cartoonish variety and so far outside of everyone's normal everyday that you get the Hollywood versions anyways. If we don't get that version then I snip it real fast. I've never had anybody get creepy with it though, so I count myself lucky.
I draw the line at extreme verbal (beyond hurling dumb insults and stuff) abuse and sexual abuse. That intersects with so many peoples day to day lives that we don't need to RP that at all. Statistically someone at my table has probably dealt with something like that, and I know for a fact that a couple have dealt with pretty bad verbal abuse.
I’ve been at sea with work for ages, but I’m coming back to a 5E game on Monday and while away the ranger died, the wizard got captured by pirates and the fighter has been bound into service of a being of pure chaos.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I have a 6+ hour session scheduled for tomorrow. It's one of our groups birthday and she asked that we do a long session for it. Nobody had any issue with that. We're doing descent into Avernus and we just hit level 4. It's been fun so far!
Honestly I need to get a read of avernus because there's a solid chance I could drop that entire adventure into my campaign setting with only the slightest of tweaks.
If you really want to cut down on the use of torture, try going over how reliable it actually is for getting information. Hell, if your torturer is really doing their job, even the zone of truth won't help, because the victim will sincerely believe whatever they tell you, which will be what they think you most want to hear.
If you really want to cut down on the use of torture, try going over how reliable it actually is for getting information. Hell, if your torturer is really doing their job, even the zone of truth won't help, because the victim will sincerely believe whatever they tell you, which will be what they think you most want to hear.
Eh, that's not what "truth" means.
Instead, I'd reinforce the moral angle. For example, Divine casters (paladin and cleric) could lose access to their spells for some period of time (or until the character repents) as their deity tells them it's not ok. Starting at the worst possible moment, of course, as the "beurocratic paperwork" catches up.
Alternatively, lean into it from the other side. Strahd/one of the Avernus Devils/etc... is seriously impressed by the characters march in the evil path. "See, you and i aren't so different" delivered by an NPC casually eating a paralyzed but alive child.
If you really want to cut down on the use of torture, try going over how reliable it actually is for getting information. Hell, if your torturer is really doing their job, even the zone of truth won't help, because the victim will sincerely believe whatever they tell you, which will be what they think you most want to hear.
Eh, that's not what "truth" means.
If they believe it, they're not lying. Could the spell coerce the real truth from someone the villain had actively fed false information? It could easily be the same with torture. The victim honestly believes that they're telling the truth, because "truth", to a torture victim, is whatever will make the pain stop.
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WACriminalDying Is Easy, Young ManLiving Is HarderRegistered Userregular
If you really want to cut down on the use of torture, try going over how reliable it actually is for getting information. Hell, if your torturer is really doing their job, even the zone of truth won't help, because the victim will sincerely believe whatever they tell you, which will be what they think you most want to hear.
Eh, that's not what "truth" means.
If they believe it, they're not lying. Could the spell coerce the real truth from someone the villain had actively fed false information? It could easily be the same with torture. The victim honestly believes that they're telling the truth, because "truth", to a torture victim, is whatever will make the pain stop.
Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound
Darkmagic's Magic Missile
Costanza's Zone of Truth
If you really want to cut down on the use of torture, try going over how reliable it actually is for getting information. Hell, if your torturer is really doing their job, even the zone of truth won't help, because the victim will sincerely believe whatever they tell you, which will be what they think you most want to hear.
Eh, that's not what "truth" means.
If they believe it, they're not lying. Could the spell coerce the real truth from someone the villain had actively fed false information? It could easily be the same with torture. The victim honestly believes that they're telling the truth, because "truth", to a torture victim, is whatever will make the pain stop.
I don't think it's about people believing it, I think it's more about whoever is being tortured desperately trying to connect dots to make all the pain stop.
If recovered memory therapy is enough to convince people their parents abused them and were in a cult (to the point where even after it'd been discredited those families are still not communicating) I don't think it's a stretch to assume that people's brains will convince themselves of whatever is asked, just to make the pain stop.
There are five lights, etc, from the documentary, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Nah. I'll suck it up. The players collectively chose this module to follow from LMoP from the options I gave them. They seemed real keen to continue with the same PCs, while I want to start fresh for DtA, so I don't want to overtly poo-poo on their choice. And I want these new-ish players to enjoy leveling up their characters and becoming legit awesome.
And its not as if I'm not having fun. But I could be having more fun with a different module, the new hotness of Avernus. And now that we're "done" with with sandbox chapter of SkT and moving into more of the plot, I feel less like I'm spinning my wheels and hopefully we can soon make significant forward progress.
Are you doing just one giant stronghold? Could do one of the side paths for another group of Giants.
the idea of being constrained like that and all the studying and homework
i raise my cup to ye brave warriors
??
Module lays out setting, maps, tables of encounters, even text to read for room descriptions. And then you can deviate at will when it makes sense for the characters and what you think would work well.
My players wanted to play Curse of Strahd but we're afraid of doing Death House at level 1 so i wrote a session 1 to get them to level 2 outside Barovia and it was sooo much more work and i kept wondering if I'm going to kill them all or make it too breezy.
I don't color within the lines AT ALL and worrying about "breaking" the module is a path towards stress, but once you remember that you can fix whatever breaks, and if you can't fix it, it ain't broken, it's just the game now - it's all good
I just spent several months running a campaign in Barovia hundreds of years before Curse of Strahd.... sure i had to do reading to get this to have the impact I wanted, a lot of it, but.... my last fully homebrew campaign involved literally hundreds of hours of mapmaking and backstory creation, this was less, and it was wonderful. Curse of Strahd is a wonderful piece of work and putting my own spin on it has been (and is going to continue to be) a joy
If it makes you feel better, I'm working on a 100% homebrew campaign world for my other, long time group?
To be honest, I don't have enough bandwidth for two completely homebrewed games. So far, I've kept it "light and easy" for my Dungeon Dads relative newbie group running first Lost Mines and now SKT, because at first, frankly, I didn't know it was going to last so why put in the effort? But I was wrong. So far its been great and the group seems to work. Avernus just looks awesome and I can't wait to legit dive into that module and really make it my own. I've already promised my homebrew world to my old group who are hyped for it. So my new group get Avernus thrust on them.
My usual gaming MO is to take an established world and craft my own stories within in. Forgotten Realms, Darksun, Eberron, Planescape, etc. Did that a lot in 3.5e. Took a break with 4e, most of my 4e gaming being in various pbp's here on the forums. 5e has a different approach though, in that the modules are campaign books. And are very good ones too.
those maps and encounters and NPCs and descriptions don’t read themselves
i genuinely find it pretty inspiring
when i try to run anything pre-made i find so many things just fall out of my brain like sand in a sieve
plus the time budget just isn’t there for me anymore, i find myself having maybe 2 hours of free time (usually the day before lol) to prepare any given week, so it’s been a “lay the tracks in front of the cart” situation for me since day 1
I use it as a reference material. A list of NPC's and locations that are already filled out and theme appropriate. Lets me have a bunch of information for however deep my players want to go.
Story wise or proceduraly, things fall out of my brain when using a module too. If it's my own creation, then all that info is up in my noodle somewhere anyway. If its a module, chances are I just haven't read far enough ahead and something will trip me up that I really should have known better.
looking over my notes from my original campaign they're more extensive than my storm king's thunders notes, and I moved SKT to a different setting entirely, so overall it is less work for me
the big thing is just having a big dramatis personae in some place other than just the start of the book, D&D beyond also helps with the ability to search the module
I generally don't use large adventure paths in their totality but I will steal sections if they appeal to me. Like the town of brinford from the 3.5e speaker in dreams module is a major part of my setting now, because I converted and ran that module a while back, and the yearly festival is still going in setting. The caravan headed to the festival from a major metropolis south of brinford has become a plot point multiple times now.
I also used white plume mountain because it's one of the easiest to pull out of tales from the yawning portal, and also the three weapons will play into a story I started with my first campaign in the setting.
I also run a lot of my campaign improvisationally, I've been designing my setting for the better part of a decade, and I run what is essentially a living campaign with multiple plot lines to account for player fluidity.
Right now there are 3 major plot lines. One plotline follows a set of adventurers that has ventured far into the northwest deserts to find the secrets of ages past, another plotline follows multiple parties dealing with a cadre of undead overlords inhabiting a massive forest, and a third is still kind of on setup towards a campaign that will deal with/observe the fallout of both the other plot lines and the machinations of the oligarchs of the setting.
I also benefit from a dedicated player pool that's been super understanding the whole time as I get better at said improvisation, and plotting.
I'm also going to have the names, ages, genders, familial status, and race of every member of the town and which building they live in on the map because im a psychopath
im also going to make portraits for each of them in the sims because of the aforementioned psycopathy
(I mean I'm going to do a lot of autogenerating of names and whatnot)
The last time I ran plot line 3 I invented like 4 or 5 named NPCs on the spot because the players would be meaningfully interacting with them, reused 2 or 3 from the last time this caravan went forth, other than that it's an indiscriminate mass of people traveling along with the caravan. Free to be set dressing "extras" in scenes, or new characters waiting for a player to become them.
I already made a pretty good map of the town I just have to expand it a bit and also take my semi-complete list of townsfolk and finish it (I'm not actually going to map townsfolk to their residence, if someone asks about someone they've met I'll decide it on the spot and throw a marker on the map at that point, it doesn't exist until it happens)
I do have some editing to do and if it weren't for matt colville's spreadsheet I would just be like "eh, you make like, 1000g a year"
Although, I do have a recurring merchant that shows up in a few my of games in recent years over a few different systems (D&D, IKRPG & I think SW?)... and that is Johann and his Wonderful World of Weapons, currently he is a merchant in Neverwinter holding the scales of the green dragon from Lost Mines until the cleric player shows back up with 5000gp for a suit of dragonscale armor that was commissioned. And in IK, he was Johann and his Wandering Wagon of Wonder who traveled from Trollblood clan to clan in the Scarsfell Forest on a regular trade route until the snows got to bad and he returned to town until next year. I forget what he was in the Star Wars game.
Just wondering if this is, like, a universal thing or maybe I should be concerned about my friends
Not surprised in the slightest. My old group of players are giant, horrible assholes when it comes to roleplaying. Yes, even the most pious of paladins. I feel like this is one area where the closet terribleness of your friends is "allowed" to be expressed and bleeds over to their character actions.
You are not alone.
Due to my bag of infinite bullshit, the players ended up getting a modern scientist, from earth. Nothing she knows is that valuable, chemistry is completely different, things aren't even made of atoms, etc. They then went to asking her about methods of torture from her advanced society
Cut to waterboarding a cultist in a zone of truth a few sessions later
Welp
It's funny though, because they've got a Bard, a Sorcerer, and a high-CHA build Paladin, so collectively they have Charisma out the wazoo but they never use it (outside of spellcasting in combat).
they deliberately avoided killing hill giants and launched a grand scheme to create peace with the humans, where the druids of Goldenfields provide them plenty of food in exchange for exclusively raiding orcs and hobgoblins (this is kind of a dick move to the hobgoblins and orcs), and even extras like beef if they'll do tasks like help move boulders around or help build things like big walls
It's not perfect, but they installed Moog (wounded tower hill giant) as their new queen, they sovereign glued a headband of intellect to Moog's head so she's the Ur-Hill giant, having even purchased a few common magical items that satiate her hill giant hunger and losing a lot of weight so she could fit into her magical chainmail she got from a big Oni, having conned the rest of her people into beliving women were superior (hill giant females are, in fact, superior in every way to their males - but the males are physically larger, which is why they're usually a patriarchy, because they believe biggest=best, Moog, having access to some illusion making items, is able to easily dupe her dimwitted species into being less shitty).
See my logic is that, with the ordening broken, Hill Giants have no inherent need to be dicks anymore. They are free of the shackles of their creator, and now it's just a matter of carefully navigating their simplistic logic and finding a mutually beneficial arrangement
things like this are huge derails that change the lanscape of the game's world, but.... I mean the party is all in on keeping the ordening broken forever because of things like this. There's an actual possible future where giants aren't some distant monsters that peasants tell stories about to scare their children
edit: I mean they killed chief guh, and all her mates, unreasonable 14 foot tall people throwing rocks at you are unreasonable 14 foot tall people throwing rocks at you. Of the primary villain leaders, I suspect only Sansuri will be someone who surrenders peacefully once she's beaten, and possible the Frost Giant leader if one of them challenges him to a duel and wins
The effects of torturing someone are mentally scarring, it is just never pretty. Even something with a weird reputation like waterboarding is fucking gruesome. A player who wants to roleplay waterboarding a prisoner shouldn't be treated to a "you do the thing, roll intimidation" and then never mention what happened again. I personally wouldn't let players get away with it, although I understand that intimidation and nasty behavior are a lot more commonplace in a relatively lawless environment.
if they're using a zone of truth or something there's no real roll, they get the information they want pretty fast, or they never get it, or the person doesn't know what they want and says so and they know its the truth
it's pretty awful but real world torture isn't about information either, it's extended and over a long period of time for no reason but the satisfaction of the torturer
I just tell the players "he or she tells you X" or, "no matter how long you spend at it, they don't give you anything" or "they say they don't know anything right away and you're sure it's the truth", we don't need to discuss what they did
everyone at my table knows torture is horrific and pointless, even in the most conservative wet dreamy scenario, they also know slavery is wrong, but they've bought slaves in D&D games I've run, it can get dark, but as long as everyone's cool with what's happening, it's cool *shrug*. In general my players play characters that are quite far away from murderhobos, but they have no qualms about waterboarding a kraken cultist because those guys are cartoon villains that don't exist in the real world
Obviously I would never condone torture in real life, and its apparent efficacy in the fantasy worlds defined in the D&D ruleset is probably an unintended consequence. But again, there's a lot of real evil stuff you can do with the entire school of Enchantment, so uhh... yeah you kind of just need to make sure you're on the same page as the rest of your group in session zero.
Trolls eat humans and elves, like, exclusively if they can help it. It's not a moral decision for them, they just do, and they're so dimwitted and naturally predisposed towards the act that any alliance you make is doomed to failure - every one of your party members castigates you for being dumb if you go with his alliance and sure enough you still get "troll attack" events if you ignore them
Sure if you analyze it you find problematic shit, colonialism, etc, etc, but hopefully your players are smart enough to get it
Everyone knows the lines not to cross for propriety sake, not that I expect any of my players would. Conflict between player characters is only allowed when the players all agree to it. The players all understand how to do evil guy working with good guys storytelling (just watch farscape it's called party dynamic) and also that good and evil are subjective with shades of grey, and how to play bad guys that totally think they're the good guys and often deal with the more concrete evils of devil's and demons and foul aberrations, but are still pretty awful in some mundane respects.
I've purposefully made the world kinda fucked up in order to explore those more casual evils we encounter in the world and that the shades of grey can get pretty dark. Maybe killing a bunch of devils isn't enough to make you a good guy if your character is a classist dick.
My players however are not always their characters, we are electing to write characters as part of the storytelling game, if you are expertly running an asshole of a character, I will let you know. The judgment comes on if you take that as a compliment or not. I have told more than one player, "I love how much of piece of shit your character is" and luckily the response is usually something to the effect of 'thank you, I hope it's not coming on to strong'
I draw the line at extreme verbal (beyond hurling dumb insults and stuff) abuse and sexual abuse. That intersects with so many peoples day to day lives that we don't need to RP that at all. Statistically someone at my table has probably dealt with something like that, and I know for a fact that a couple have dealt with pretty bad verbal abuse.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
And you should see what happened in the game!
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.
even the evil one in my party is principled evil and put themselves on the line to try and save a helpless person in a recent session
i think the lawless monstrous “go with your id” is a common thing for new groups, just let em get the wiggles out
as time goes on though it is always worthwhile to have a Real Talk and talk about consent and what themes are good/no good
the rpg consent checklist is a great tool for it (free pdf here! https://www.montecookgames.com/consent-in-gaming/ )
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Eh, that's not what "truth" means.
Instead, I'd reinforce the moral angle. For example, Divine casters (paladin and cleric) could lose access to their spells for some period of time (or until the character repents) as their deity tells them it's not ok. Starting at the worst possible moment, of course, as the "beurocratic paperwork" catches up.
Alternatively, lean into it from the other side. Strahd/one of the Avernus Devils/etc... is seriously impressed by the characters march in the evil path. "See, you and i aren't so different" delivered by an NPC casually eating a paralyzed but alive child.
If they believe it, they're not lying. Could the spell coerce the real truth from someone the villain had actively fed false information? It could easily be the same with torture. The victim honestly believes that they're telling the truth, because "truth", to a torture victim, is whatever will make the pain stop.
Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound
Darkmagic's Magic Missile
Costanza's Zone of Truth
I don't think it's about people believing it, I think it's more about whoever is being tortured desperately trying to connect dots to make all the pain stop.
There are five lights, etc, from the documentary, Star Trek: The Next Generation.