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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Jan 16, 2018 21:10:16 GMT -5
These are great!! I agree with all of them, especially 3 and 4. DM monologuing and always saying "no" is something I've noticed that can really drag games down and frustrate players. My personality is such that I'm a people-pleaser, so my main goal is to facilitate player creativity and control, not my own. An aside: I've been enjoying your game ideas very much! I have bunch more of these, I am teasing them out. Thanx for reading my stuff, leave a comment or two on something, my ego is starving   I don't think we could starve your ego! It is fully self-sustaining. |
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Post by mao on Jan 16, 2018 21:37:03 GMT -5
I have bunch more of these, I am teasing them out. Thanx for reading my stuff, leave a comment or two on something, my ego is starving I don't think we could starve your ego! It is fully self-sustaining. I don't know....you have no idea how much validation I need  |
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Jan 16, 2018 21:43:14 GMT -5
I don't think we could starve your ego! It is fully self-sustaining. I don't know....you have no idea how much validation I need Have some validation. (An exalt) |
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Post by mao on Jan 17, 2018 6:06:12 GMT -5
Feel free to put your thoughts here, I have learned I am not for everyone. Nah, I don't want to derail your thread, I started my own. Just remember my comments are not to condemn you, but to convey my opinion and experiences. Where I agree with you I will comment in this thread. I see DMing to be an art not a science, I am Salvador Dali , you sir are Norman Rockwell. |
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Post by mao on Jan 17, 2018 6:11:07 GMT -5
Even at first L , the PCs are special, even if you are running a gritty city game the PCs are something head and shoulders above the rabble. Fame should be just around the corner for them. They are the Apex Predators, treat them as such!
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Post by mao on Jan 17, 2018 6:12:33 GMT -5
I was a total FAILURE as a supers DM but I came up with a very cool game idea that I had NEVER heard of anyone doing.
The backdrop was this: The group was telegraphed by the bad guys(Hydra) that they were going to burn down the Wayne Charity Hospital in the worst part of town and kill everyone in it.(A huge gang war was going on) The Gotham police had been terrorized into not showing up. The media was invited. A few brave cops showed up and some of the security staff and dr's were also there to help. In the middle of the fight
the players IRL cell phones started to go off. I had arranged with several people to make in character phone calls from 7pm to 8 PM and played them for laughs. A drunk girl friend called and wanted to go dancing., a telemarketer or three called, One characters dad called and complained that he was not coming to dinner with his parents enuf and the char was spending too much money on his super gadgets. Cousin Shaniqua called and needed a date to a wedding. It was a RIOT! Can't recommend this idea enuf!!!!!
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Post by mao on Jan 17, 2018 6:13:49 GMT -5
My all time fav run
ok it was 1995? I was at a con and my 15 ish nephew and I went to visit an old froend of mine who was about to start a run. He was running"Cthulhu by Candlelight" and the game was for 4 players. When I got to the room , the con had overbooked him by SIXTY players! One thing lead to another and I told the frazzled con representative, that I would run, if he gave me prize support. He quickly agreed and asked how many players, in a sudden decision I said "TWENTY!"
On the way with my 20 players and my nephew agreeing to co DM we plotted a game about an aircraft over the mid atlantic with a horrible artifact in the cargo bay. We came up with 20 roes and off we went
The game was amazing , the players were grateful I was willing to tun and got so into it that as I slowly killed them off , every single player who dies laid on the ground playing dead( it turned into a larp). It was amazing RPing on the part of 21 strangers. 21 you say?. A guy had come off the street (a non gamer) and weaseled his way in. The winner was our stewardess who had an unshakable lack of fear as an ability. Also of note were the white south african and black american mercenaries who were unshakable buddies. ( The black American was played by our interloper)
At 21 players it is by far the largest group I had ever run. It was one of those times when it all just came together
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Post by mao on Jan 17, 2018 13:34:55 GMT -5
Anatomy of a TPK
The year was 1987 and the Mysantia game was in it's 6th year. The players were 5th Level(very high L for me around this time). The players were full of themselves because they were at the "lofty" level and loaded with magic items. I decided to knock them down a peg with a super organized, low level major threat: The Bloodbath Orcs.
The orcs all had 8 hp and were lead by a death knight , who was the equivalent of one of the 8 or so pcs. The orcs had crossbow orcs each with 2 females to reload. The warrior types slit the throats of unconscious PCs.
The PCs saw they were "only" fighting orcs, and underestimated them from the beginning, that is until the first throat got slit, then they panicked and proceeded to let the orcs decimate them .
The PC Mage was prob most responsible for the TPK, he was sloppy but most of all he had 2 scrolls., each of which was capable of ending the encounter in the parties favor but he refused to use them and his fireball was horribly used.
To this day the players remember this and say it was deliberate on my part, I admit it was a tough encounter. Ijust smile and remember the truth.
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Post by colinouchou on Jan 19, 2018 16:24:11 GMT -5
Anatomy of a TPK The PC Mage was prob most responsible for the TPK, he was sloppy but most of all he had 2 scrolls., each of which was capable of ending the encounter in the parties favor but he refused to use them and his fireball was horribly used. This, really this, mages played poorly are the most irritating part as a player and as a DM watching the players fail due to nothing other than poor decision making. |
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Post by Keyone1234 on Jan 19, 2018 16:29:36 GMT -5
Anatomy of a TPK The PC Mage was prob most responsible for the TPK, he was sloppy but most of all he had 2 scrolls., each of which was capable of ending the encounter in the parties favor but he refused to use them and his fireball was horribly used. This, really this, mages played poorly are the most irritating part as a player and as a DM watching the players fail due to nothing other than poor decision making. Why do so many players think the way to play wizards is to play them as indecisive cowards, I would rather have a jerk play a paladin. |
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Post by mao on Sept 8, 2018 12:08:44 GMT -5
This, really this, mages played poorly are the most irritating part as a player and as a DM watching the players fail due to nothing other than poor decision making. Why do so many players think the way to play wizards is to play them as indecisive cowards, I would rather have a jerk play a paladin. I agree, I had on PC about 5th level who would cast like 1 spell a game, I lost track of what he could do, he never changed, it was so frustrating |
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Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Sept 17, 2018 9:02:49 GMT -5
My all time fav run ok it was 1995? I was at a con and my 15 ish nephew and I went to visit an old froend of mine who was about to start a run. He was running"Cthulhu by Candlelight" and the game was for 4 players. When I got to the room , the con had overbooked him by SIXTY players! One thing lead to another and I told the frazzled con representative, that I would run, if he gave me prize support. He quickly agreed and asked how many players, in a sudden decision I said "TWENTY!" On the way with my 20 players and my nephew agreeing to co DM we plotted a game about an aircraft over the mid atlantic with a horrible artifact in the cargo bay. We came up with 20 roes and off we went The game was amazing , the players were grateful I was willing to tun and got so into it that as I slowly killed them off , every single player who dies laid on the ground playing dead( it turned into a larp). It was amazing RPing on the part of 21 strangers. 21 you say?. A guy had come off the street (a non gamer) and weaseled his way in. The winner was our stewardess who had an unshakable lack of fear as an ability. Also of note were the white south african and black american mercenaries who were unshakable buddies. ( The black American was played by our interloper) At 21 players it is by far the largest group I had ever run. It was one of those times when it all just came together Sounds like that was a fun game. |
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Post by mao on Sept 17, 2018 9:12:23 GMT -5
My all time fav run ok it was 1995? I was at a con and my 15 ish nephew and I went to visit an old froend of mine who was about to start a run. He was running"Cthulhu by Candlelight" and the game was for 4 players. When I got to the room , the con had overbooked him by SIXTY players! One thing lead to another and I told the frazzled con representative, that I would run, if he gave me prize support. He quickly agreed and asked how many players, in a sudden decision I said "TWENTY!" On the way with my 20 players and my nephew agreeing to co DM we plotted a game about an aircraft over the mid atlantic with a horrible artifact in the cargo bay. We came up with 20 roes and off we went The game was amazing , the players were grateful I was willing to tun and got so into it that as I slowly killed them off , every single player who dies laid on the ground playing dead( it turned into a larp). It was amazing RPing on the part of 21 strangers. 21 you say?. A guy had come off the street (a non gamer) and weaseled his way in. The winner was our stewardess who had an unshakable lack of fear as an ability. Also of note were the white south african and black american mercenaries who were unshakable buddies. ( The black American was played by our interloper) At 21 players it is by far the largest group I had ever run. It was one of those times when it all just came together Sounds like that was a fun game. It was.58 year old mao would be horrified at the thought of running that many players but when your in your 30s.......... |
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Post by mormonyoyoman on Sept 17, 2018 10:27:33 GMT -5
no, No, NO! Nobody wants to read pages and pages of handouts. Nobody will pay attention to them. One of the very successful tricks I learned from running a 31 year long campaign: Less is more. I always UNDER explain everything. It creates an itch in your players, makes them THIRSTY for any scrap of knowledge. You will eventually be rewarded with players deeply engaged in every scrap of your lore. But they will scan through screens and screens of stuff. Especially with pictures. |
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Post by mao on Sept 20, 2018 13:45:35 GMT -5
no, No, NO! Nobody wants to read pages and pages of handouts. Nobody will pay attention to them. One of the very successful tricks I learned from running a 31 year long campaign: Less is more. I always UNDER explain everything. It creates an itch in your players, makes them THIRSTY for any scrap of knowledge. You will eventually be rewarded with players deeply engaged in every scrap of your lore. But they will scan through screens and screens of stuff. Especially with pictures. I really have very little contact w the general gaming public. I have a game available at the same time I used to run, but I am just done w FTF , for a while anyway. |
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Post by mormonyoyoman on Sept 20, 2018 14:09:36 GMT -5
I'm going by observation of people younger than me, which is almost the whole world, who will read innumerable screens of memes as long as there's a picture and an arrow to click to the next screen.
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Post by hengest on Aug 11, 2021 20:05:09 GMT -5
I've got some hard rules that disagree with some of yours. Namely, if the dice don't matter, don't roll them. Combat is a part of our game, but it isn't the point of the game. I do cut corners, much of the combat we do do is Random Encounters, but I assign the random encounters to fit the theme. On my stat blocks, for hit points, I roll up 3 different results and during play, I'll roll a d3. Sometimes, if there are lots of enemies I'll have one or two low hp, a couple of max hp, and the rest will be middle. If there are tons of bad guys, I'll ignore hp completely and go by hits. Fighters do 2HD of damage, Clerics and Thieves do 1HD, if the player rolls a max damage (because I don't tell them that I am doing this) then I'll double the HD damage, or just kill the enemy. I prefer to have these kinds of combats to be against 4 HD monsters so that I can just draw a bunch of pies and fill in the slices. Sandbox play took me some years to figure out. The benefits of it are that you can do less writing, or to be even more specific, prevents overwriting. My club plays once a month, I do need to make sure that we don't waste time, but I don't want to railroad them either. We currently play a game of investigation. There is a monster, the players have to identify/locate the monster, find a way to hurt him; and then hunt him down. They are playing D&D while I am playing a kind of wargame. The Sandbox is the theatre in which we play in. Now, granted, writing the sandbox can be fairly intense work, but honestly, it is no more than a bunch of notes that are just brief enough for me to create at the table. As far as my writing and prep goes, once the sandbox is in place, I have very little writing to do. I write only for the next session and if the players don't cooperate it is no big deal. Right now in my current game, I've got an idea of what the monster's lair is, but I haven't even started mapping or keying it yet. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself because a better idea can come up during play. I know what information I want to give to the players, and I have some none mapped locations which will give them tools that they need. I don't know if they will take the bait or not, if they do, fine! If they don't, that is fine too. The sandbox is simply a way to automate the world around them to make it come alive. I move things during prep. In my current game it takes place in a war zone, the British/India rules vs Burmese Resistance Fighters, I also set plans for my main bad guy. I move large groups of people on my calendar so if the players are in an area that is under attack or whatever, then they have to deal with it. As far as play goes, my players generally have enough to go on to make their own decisions. Sometimes I have to slow them down because they are used to playing video games and this isn't a video game. I can predict what they need to be successful, but I am also playing my villain and I want to play him to the very best of my ability too. If the players believe that they are being railroaded, then they know that they better get off of the tracks because chances are they are being manipulated by the villain. At the same time, I do write scenes as needed during prep, just so that I can keep the game running smooth. However, if it is too smooth, I get bored. I want the players to control the dialog and the direction of the game, and I want to react to them. I want to PLAY the game with them. That is important. First bolded section: did you innovate this or adapt it from some kind of mass combat system? Second bolded section: can you say more about this? "They are playing D&D while I am playing a kind of wargame." Third bolded section: nice quote and sentiment. Nice post. |
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 12, 2021 11:28:23 GMT -5
I adapted the hit/dmg system from TSR's "BATTLESYSTEM" and I love it! In regards to me playing a war game, I assign enemy goals ahead of time and roleplay their reactions to the players decisions utilizing the morale system. My troops don't always do what I want them to, my villain doesn't always know that a threat is nearby, sometimes my villain is dumb or smarter than I am so I have to make ability checks on their part to see how much they know or can put together. I also like to have limited resources figured out ahead of time: How many troops I have, and where I want to put them for basic strategy that is functional.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Aug 12, 2021 14:03:35 GMT -5
I adapted the hit/dmg system from TSR's "BATTLESYSTEM" and I love it! In regards to me playing a war game, I assign enemy goals ahead of time and roleplay their reactions to the players decisions utilizing the morale system. My troops don't always do what I want them to, my villain doesn't always know that a threat is nearby, sometimes my villain is dumb or smarter than I am so I have to make ability checks on their part to see how much they know or can put together. I also like to have limited resources figured out ahead of time: How many troops I have, and where I want to put them for basic strategy that is functional. I know nothing about TSR's "BATTLESYSTEM", where was it implemented? |
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 13, 2021 10:58:02 GMT -5
There was an amazing boxset put out that was full of stuff! It detailed how to get into painting miniatures, had lots of scenarios to play, detailed rules for a wargame and how to set it up, even had a bunch of sheets of punchout cardboard soldiers to play with. A few products supported it, the very first glimpse of Forgotten Realms was published well before the setting was released that had players build an army to reclaim their homeland.
A second edition was also released, but this one was scaled back and didn't come with all the goodies, however the rules for the game were updated and included small scale skirmish rules that 1 figure represented 1 character. The Dark Sun setting was originally created around pushing this book, but it was dropped before the product even came out.
I speculate that they were trying to cut into Warhammers market but they fell on their face. It wasn't the best at what it was designed to do, and it wasn't until Wizards of the Coast bought D&D that we truly got a miniature system that felt and played like D&D. BATTLESYSTEM wasn't a bad game! It was its own thing.
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Post by restless on Aug 13, 2021 13:55:34 GMT -5
I have the original set, with everything in it! I bought it as B. Dalton long, long ago. I never played it, and only cursorily glanced over the rules. [...] however the rules for the game were updated and included small scale skirmish rules that 1 figure represented 1 character. I know I'm not a wargamer, but... like... unless there's dozens of figures on the field, why not just run a regular combat in that case? I realize I am likely missing something. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Aug 13, 2021 14:22:54 GMT -5
I have the original set, with everything in it! I bought it as B. Dalton long, long ago. I never played it, and only cursorily glanced over the rules. [...] however the rules for the game were updated and included small scale skirmish rules that 1 figure represented 1 character. I know I'm not a wargamer, but... like... unless there's dozens of figures on the field, why not just run a regular combat in that case? I realize I am likely missing something. It is a matter of what you want to do and what flavor you want the game to have. When my players traveled on ship board for two years of IRL and ship to ship combat occurred, I did not refer to the rules at all, I winged it and fierce hard fought battles ensued, I had fun, the players had fun and we spent zero time looking up or referring to rules and zero time debating them. Others would go to some other set of rules outside the OD&D rules to something that they liked and would play it by the BtB, measuring everything. It's all in what kind of game you want to have. There are two extremes and everyone falls somewhere between them. None of us are at the outer edges IMO. |
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Post by ripx187 on Aug 14, 2021 13:33:09 GMT -5
I have the original set, with everything in it! I bought it as B. Dalton long, long ago. I never played it, and only cursorily glanced over the rules. [...] however the rules for the game were updated and included small scale skirmish rules that 1 figure represented 1 character. I know I'm not a wargamer, but... like... unless there's dozens of figures on the field, why not just run a regular combat in that case? I realize I am likely missing something. It is done to make a more tactical scene, one where where you are standing is important. You can mix magic with ranged combat and melee, you can have different kinds of terrain, places for cover, measure movement rates, and play out some very complex battles that require strategy and keeps all of the participants' on the same page. The drawback is that it is slow, but if you've got enough characters on the field, it is worth it to set aside some game-time to play it out. |
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I don't think we could starve your ego! 
