Oh I forgot to add. They got another boat. A small single sail thing like from the first scene of jack sparrow in the first movie. They've been dragging it around behind the larger boat they were given. Last session they named both. The larger is now called "The Full Mast" and the small one is "The Rear Ender"
So, you know, perfectly predictable D&D. Wiener jokes.
My Star Wars friends finally got a group together recently, most of us were noobs (I did it in early 80s high school, one other lady was a full-timer). A friend that knew a good DM ran the event, a module from GENCON and NASCRAG(?). Northern Latitudes if you're familiar.
3 parts, the first two were fairly standard D&D fare, the 3rd part we finished last weekend was full-on dad joke. A town sign with two dice (Pair of Dice), a Buffet that only served cheeseburgers, guy had a talking parrot, we needed an enchanted NACL (salt) container to take back to an Ice Elemental, etc.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
At the end of the first book of our long campaign, they got a ship and named it "Hector's Sword" as a completely phallic tribute to a fallen PC.
And now I have two days to prep a one shot for a family gathering. I've decided on a setting and theme. Scooby Do style investigation, a museum where several artifacts were stolen and a security guard was killed. No alarms went off and no obvious points of entry or escape. If anyone has any puzzles or challenges that could fit in the setting, let me know. I'm thinking modern museum, but with classic fantasy mechanics depending on the display.
Im thinking a couple keys they need to find through puzzles/riddles, and maybe a password(?) to get through a secret door disguised as something like a sarcophagus... behind which is the curator/boss they'll have to fight. Idk.
Back to our main campaign.
The players are on a quest to retrieve a special potion, part of a larger treasure, in a place known as Winter Island***.
Last time we left off at sea, fresh from a shark fight. The next morning, well rested and fed, the party found themselves under attack from a ship* shooting flaming arrows and keeping distance. They were able to disable the ship and make an escape fairly quickly, and took shelter from the incoming storm in basically a Viking port. There, a bad choice of words got the bard involved in a drinking competition, which he won. We left off, mid rager, with the doors slamming open and a large silhouette** in the doorway.
***winter island is the name on old maps. Most folks call it the dead island, because nothing there is alive, and nothing that goes there comes back. Or so the story goes.
*the ship is crewed by a group of adolescents that fire on unmarked ships that get too close to their home port. The ship was disabled by cutting the sails by way of a couple well rolled spells. No physical violence, which is important because...
**the large silhouette belongs to the chieftain, who's son captains a certain boat. The storm is bad and nobody has seen the son return.
Throw some ghosty ideas at me. I have my players fresh on an island they now know is called The Dead Isle. They had to make a small blood sacrifice and fight a copy of the blood donor, which was actually a decent challenge if only because the dice were poor tonight.
They are on a quest to find a treasure and retrieve a love potion. What they don't know is the treasure belongs to the ghost of Sheanna, the legendary pirate queen, who still waits on the island for her lover. Classic stuff here.
In this mythos Sheanna is the lost pirate queen, who's death is a mystery. In some of the sailing cultures, it is common for people to sail out alone at the end of their life to "find Sheanna" and never to return.
In reality, she was retiring from that life and waiting for Arcor (legendary sorcerer of lore who will be a big character later in the campaign). Arcor never came and so she waits.
Now, the party's encounter with Sheanna can go several ways, but that's the next milestone and will get them to level 4. Getting there though is the part I haven't figured out. The island is known to have nothing living, but the undead come in many varieties. I also intend to give them some kind of riddle-map to find the treasure on this barren 50mile^2 island.
So, zombies or skeletons(?*) or ghouls or sirens of some variety. I want the next session or two to be fight heavy.
*our wizard is a skeleton. Not sure I want to use them as monsters. I tell folks this is 5e but I play pretty loose and generally let my players do what they want as long as we can find a reasonable explanation or excuse.
Speaking of said wizard, he was awakened by the party from an enchanted sleep. Put there by Arcor, he is still unaware exactly how much time has passed. These names of legend were in their prime when he was last awake. I do plan to give my player more info on the larger lore before the next round. Between that lore and a couple other clues I've placed, we should be able to start to unfold the larger quest I've been imagining up for about three years now. Lost magics and Dragons and world dominion!
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
Gonna take time to brainstorm on this one...
In reply to Beer Baron :
This world and the lore are becoming a bit heavy. I don't usually plan too much in advance. But more and more lately im having these surges of inspiration/creativity and some of the more abstract plans I've been ruminating on are becoming clearer and more plot critical.
I think I'm going to have to start writing, if not a novel, something that could become one. This thread has been more for me to keep some notes than anything else. I may cut down on the minutes, since at this point I don't think any of it is really helpful for aspiring DMs.
Wrote up some gaming philosphy that I shared with a couple of online groups. Thought you might get a kick out of it. It's tailored towards Cypher System/Numenera which has become my primary gaming system. Could easily be adapted to other gaming systems though.
...........
This is a system I have developed for my games and the way I run things. I like very fast past, cinematic, and narrative focused action. I'm not saying this is the best system or that I think everyone else should be doing it. This is just a fun model that works for me. It speeds up “combat” greatly and makes actions scenes more cinematic in a way that simultaneously keeps more pressure on players.
I think it fits great within Cypher/Numenera. I think some other people might be able to take inspiration from it.
Although I still use levels, I simplify my need to track health of enemies by breaking them down into 4 categories of increasing toughness:
Mooks (1 hit)
Toughs/Goons (2-3 hits)
Heavies (Regular Health)
“Forces of Nature” (LOL!)
Mooks: These are your hordes of faceless goons that heroes mow through. A single hit from a PC will take out a mook. An AoE attack or a high damage weapon attack may take out multiple mooks. These are your ski-mask baddies in James Bond, one-shotted dudes in John Wick, copy-and-paste CGI monsters, etc.
You may choose to track health as for a horde of Mooks. When the group health is depleted the members fall, scatter, retreat, lose morale, etc.
In Cypher, they will be Lvl 1-2, and will almost always act as a group.
A single mook is no threat to a PC. In a group, they can deplete a single PC's resources, but do not pose a mortal threat. As a group, they pose little threat to a party.
With rolls, intrusions, or story reasons, a mook may be upgraded to a Tough in the middle of a scene.
Toughs/Goons: These are NPC's with faces, but no names. They can take a couple hits, but not many. These are the goons who, in a movie or comic, slow the heroes’ momentum but don’t stop them. This is the orc who pops out of the pack and forces a PC to fence with them for 10 seconds.
Most often, they will usually be felled in 2-3 PC actions. If a PC stands there and does low-damage attack actions, it will usually take 3 attacks to fell them. If two PC’s creatively coordinate their attacks, one PC can set them up, and another can knock them down in a single turn. Especially creative solutions, powerful abilities, or expending significant resources (cyphers) can often down them in a single attack.
You may choose to track health as for a horde of Mooks. When the group health is depleted the members fall, scatter, retreat, lose morale, etc.
In Cypher, they will be Lvl 2-3, and will frequently act as a group.
A single tough is a minor threat to a PC, and will likely deplete resources. In a group, they can pose a mortal threat to a PC. As a group, they pose a minor threat to a party, and will likely deplete resources.
A tough can be upgraded to a Heavy with appropriate narrative context.
Heavies: These are named NPC’s, unique monsters, bosses, etc. They are a tough and serious threat that a scene will likely evolve around and require bookkeeping. E.g. "They have a cave troll."
Heavies are the only unit type that you always track health for. You may give a heavy extra health. You may decide that at a certain health level the Heavy retreats, falls over a railing, etc.
In Cypher, they will be levels 4+ (probably no more than 8).
A single Heavy is a mortal threat to a single PC. Depending on level, you can expect them to deplete a party’s resources or pose a mortal threat to a party. A group of Heavies will likely pose a major threat to a party.
Forces of Nature: These are enemies so big that it is nearly impossible to hurt or kill them using normal means. These are your Kaiju, demons, demi-gods, elder dragons, Nazgul, hulking war machines, horror monsters, etc.
Usually the point is to run away from and survive them, not stop them. If the goal is to stop them, this usually requires special items or story methods to fell them. Not standard health damage.
There is almost never a need to track health levels. If they do have health, depleting it merely causes them to stagger, writhe in agony, become distracted, discorporate, etc in order to temporarily halt their pursuit/advancement or provide an avenue of escape.
In Cypher, they will be level 7+, although actions taken against them may be lower level.
A Force of Nature always poses a mortal threat to a group of PC’s.
A Force of Nature may be downgraded to a Heavy through story means.
These types and story design:
The mix of these you include will greatly affect the tone and theme of your games. A very heroic game will often make heavy use of Mooks for heroes to feel larger than life as they plow through. However, survival horror might also choose to heavily employ mooks (e.g. Zombies), but will probably use them as never-ending hordes.
The more you use Toughs and Heavies the more “grounded” a game is likely to feel.
Excellent tips BB. Thanks. Fights are still my weakest area. I really challenged my party last week with a not small number of pirates and KOd 2/6. They were able to save but that was their closest call yet.
We're running into a couple things.
1- Two of the party moved to Baltimore last Sunday. One doesn't wish to continue, the other does. Hopefully I can set up my laptop and extra monitor and make that work. Gonna try but I did give an open ended write off, so if it doesn't work technically, the story isn't altered and if they can manage to visit or find alternate means we can still have our warlock.
2- The other is they've just hit a milestone, finished a quest, learned more about the greater lore, and have several paths open. They also just graduated to level 5. I've finally given them enough of the big picture that I don't want to push them in any particular direction. Which isn't so much a snag, as it is just homework for me. I need to prepare for at least three different paths they've hinted at wanting to take. In one, I need to flesh out a new religious sect in a guild city. In another I need to make a checkpoint based map to find something they didn't realize had been stolen from them. And the third is a research quest to find info on an ancient sorcerer that may still be alive but has long faded into myth.
All three will need to be dealt with at some point, but it's a lot of prep for me to do before next week.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
Well... here's hoping they can be somewhat decisive...
When my players can't make up their minds, I usually have an antagonistic faction come gunning for them and force the issue.
I'm still bummed this game died on the vine because of scheduling. I know that happens... I guess I'm really bummed that none of my players cared enough about the game to do the work of trying to help schedule.
In reply to Beer Baron :
They've gotten pretty good at working together towards a goal. I'm confident they'll be able to choose a direction.
As for scheduling, it's a PITA. No doubt. I'm lucky in the fact that one player is my wife, one lives next door, and one is a single coworker of mine. The warlock and bard are the only two I have to worry about, but everyone else is flexible enough that when Saturday doesn't work, we can usually play Friday or Sunday without any trouble.
Ugh. One of my players is having serious scheduling issues. How is it that the single guy with no kids and part time work is less reliable than the guy working two jobs on the other side of the country? Literally everyone else is 100%. It would be less headache to just cut him out, and way less distraction and side-tracking, but the dude is pretty sensitive and I don't want to be the bad guy. I know I'm not, as it's just as much of an issue for everyone else, but it doesn't feel great.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
Haha!
Probably because the game means more to the rest of them, so they put the effort into setting up their schedules so that they can reliably do something fun.
I'd been running games with the understanding of needing a quorum of players to have a session. Usually that's 3/5. So if one person is a flake, that's on them. Everyone else still gets to play.
I'd say do an equivalent of that. Just run without him on a set schedule. Let him know after he misses a certain number of sessions that you're dropping him because he's missed a bunch.
In reply to Beer Baron :
I've been doing just that. Basically I'll run him as an npc during combat and a couple other situations, but this is now three in a row and he just told me he's out of town this weekend. We're not close friends, but I like the guy. I have a good out for the character with the ability for a return at some point. Pretty open ended. I think I'll call him and break the news. Invite him to check in and join a game when he wants to make the time. Not that I'll word it quite that way.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
I'd put the responsibility on him. Tell him the game is moving on without him and his character. That if he wants to play sometime, to let you know when and you'll try to find a way to work him in as a guest appearance for a session.
I can't remember if I posted here yet besides: NERDS!!!!
After I got into cars I gave my brother all of my D&D books, DM guide, fiend folio, all my dungeons, etc. He loved them. He still plays and LARPs today.
My wife got me into Runescape after we first got married (17 years ago), then we got into World of Warcraft just before the first expansion. I was addicted. I had two top tier characters for a while. #2 on the server and #3 on the server. I cannot explain properly how much it owned my life at that time.
Forgiving Skyrim, WoW is the best video game of it's genre.
As for the actual campaign, the next sessions should be good. A new city, literally on the edge of the map. A havent fleshed out all the details yet but I'm thinking typical fantasy setting with a very superstitious populace. They are looking for information and rumors. Easy enough in any setting. I'm planning a couple NPCs they can use for finding rumors and black market stuff. They're arriving by sea and the city is on a peninsula that sticks out to the north, with the south road known as very unlucky and most locals fearing to travel that way. Just for flavor, but plenty of opportunities for whatever I may want to throw at them. They're level 5 now and really coming into their abilities, but the only healer is the flaky bard.
An interesting and fun bit of not-plot-critical fun: one of my players is a skeleton wizard. He had taken a pet (and the barbarian too) and left the animal on the boat when they ventured onto a dangerous island. Due to cursed island, when they got back to the boat 3 days later, the pet was very dead. Another player suggested to keep the bones, then they'll hunt out a necromancer to reanimate them and then our skeleton player will have a skeleton pet.
So when they're a bit less focused on their current plan, I'll put that adventure together and learn a bit more about the dark arts in the process.
Another thing I've been dealing with. One remote player. He wants to keep playing after moving last month. With todays technology, shouldn't be an issue. Off the top of my head, we have four possible solutions.
1- FaceTime.
This is what we used last week. A phone stand at one end of the table and we have a low budget, if imperfect solution. The issues are simply screen size and available volume. Still, a decent fallback in any case.
2-Roll20.
This is the ttrpg standard. There are great tools for running the game and putting in maps and tracking everything. It is free to use with some limitations. It does not have a mobile friendly video tool. My player just moved across country and currently only has a iPhone and a tablet.
3- Discord.
I have no experience but one of my other players is convinced this would work. Easy to set up a webcam and stream an overhead view of the table. This would allow audio and text chat. I really want to have a monitor set up on the table so we can all see our warlock during the game, and I'm not sure this is possible on the platform.
4-Zoom.
This was my first thought. I know it works well on mobile platforms, and I can run the meeting from my laptop with either the built in camera or a remote cam for an overhead view. I can also easily run a spare monitor and use that to display my player for everyone. And I can join in on my phone so I have another camera I can use to give my remote player other angles, zoomed shots, or a direct-to-DM screen. I'm fairly confident I can also use my audio equipment to set up a couple room mics and a small PA so the audio is good on both ends.
Im thinking that since we're a all in person except for Baltimore, the best tool is going to be Zoom. The biggest hurdle I see is the 40 minute limit on free meetings, for which there are imperfect workarounds. I plan to do a dry run this week before the game and see how it goes.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
I get it, but that sounds horrible. It's tough to try to manage and give attention to the one player who isn't there in person.
In reply to Beer Baron :
It may well turn out to be more trouble than it is worth. I signed up for zoom and was able to get my mics and PA to work, but we run into the issue of feedback. It may be impossible getting enough input from the mics for him to hear everything on that end while getting enough volume out of the speaker for us to hear him on our end. And the inevitable audio delay. I might be able to fix the issue with a better mixing board, one where I can separate the main and monitor outputs for each input. My little Mackie doesn't do that. Still, worth experimenting with as long as it doesn't cost more than a cable or two.
So, I've spent the last few days testing different video chat formats trying to find the best budget solution for a group with only one remote player, and one who doesn't currently have a computer, just an iPhone and an android tablet.
Well, I'm not a huge computer/electronic devices guy, so I didn't realize I was literally holding the solution the whole time. Apparently FaceTime can be used to group chat, and a chat link can be sent to a windows or android device and joined just using a browser. This means I can host the chat from my phone, send a link to my player, and a link to my laptop. This gives me three cameras and three microphones (with the use of a usb cam/mic combo) to use on my end, so we have display and audio options. Completely free, and without any pesky time limits like zoom.
Hopefully this comes as useful info.
And all my effort to find a solution for a remote player that asked to keep playing, along with my effort to keep running this game, can be more frustrating than I should put up with. Dude didn't show. Pick up the phone Baltimore. All you had to do.
Don't split the party. That's rule 1.
Im splitting the party.
5 players. Two of which are unavailable more often than not.
So, the three that show up will continue and I may try to fill another seat or two for the group so that the story can continue.
The other two get to keep playing, but the characters are going down a different path, and the frequency at which we meet will be up to them. I think I have a good idea on how to schedule those sessions to make it more convenient for all involved. Two of my regulars have asked to play separate characters and join in those b-party sessions, so that's a full party of folks that play well together. That said, it may still fizzle.
In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :
There are always people who want to play D&D. There's never enough people who want to run it.
DM'ing is a lot more effort than playing. If they want to play, they can do the work to coordinate. You don't need to do everything for them.
We played our last session as a full group. Essentially, the original group is unchanged and will continue on, just one person short. This original group will be referred to as the away team, and consists of 4 players, 3 of which landed themselves in jail tonight for overreacting to an overzealous acolyte. Apparently if you stab someone in broad daylight with a bunch of witnesses, and your party doesnt join the fray, you get carted off to jail. Then, when your tanks hatch a half baked plan to try and take out the guards, they also land in jail. Luckily the free player is a bard and in well with the queen so maybe a favor can be won or a pardon earned somehow. I didn't plan it this way, I was just trying to give them clues. Now the same group who have planned to weaponize a love potion is in a position to either seduce a queen or make a jailbreak. Or both.
The home team will be continuing as well, along a different branch in the same story. One of my players has a super cool backstory that works so well in my story that I found a way for us to explore that history more as a means to learn the way forward. This group is 3 players, two of which are going to be introduced with brand new characters next session.
The home team is very much a lawful good party. The away team is very much chaotic neutral. Maybe they cross paths down the road. I'm excited to see where this goes. Hopefully I can keep up with two groups playing different games on the same world.
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