Topics

1

RPGs / A new campaign for my players...

« on: December 19, 2009, 05:44:39 AM »

Hey guys, I haven't posted for awhile, school's been kickin ass.  But anyway:

For my next DnD4e game my players (7 of them?) voted to play as freedom fighters in a country recently taken over by a neighboring country.  Homebrew world basically.  Basically, Heroic tier will be them trying to find a base of operations, gain some allies and do some light terrorism to the enemy.  Paragon will be banding more allies together and reclaiming towns and cities, and Epic (if they get there) will be the reclaiming of the country and possibly the enemy mwahaha.

The game is made so we can have, when I don't have time to plan a whole lot, some missions of the week.  We meet every Saturday so we can do this w/o any problems.

For the first session, after the character creation session, I will tell the players they were sent on a mission to retrieve a key to a prison or something from an enemy building in an occupied town.  The players will actually start in the middle of a bloody battle with a group of enemies, and afterward will find the item they were told to get.  After getting it and returning to the 'hideout', the freedom fighter leader guy (I'll come up with names later) will congratulate them on their job.  However, the item was a fake, giving away the location of the hideout.  The hideout is then ambushed, forcing the players to escape and fight their way out and meet up with the leader at a rendez-vous point.

When they reach the point, they are again ambushed, and one of the npc's that I will point out as an Allie from inside the hideout will emerge and laugh and monologue etc etc on how the PC's are dumb and how he betrayed them.  And then the PC's kill him (I hope).  Then I'm unsure where to go...

If you guys have any ideas as to how this game could go, interesting morale choice missions (Flood the town and kill the enemy AND the innocent people?) and whatever else.  I have some time to plan, and I have a high opinion of everyone here when it come to games.  Any info is appreciated.  Thanks.

2

General Chaos / New FF game but neat RP idea

« on: August 03, 2009, 04:37:02 PM »

<a href="" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win"></a>

main trailer for the FF Dissidia game.  All the Hero's fight all the Villians.

The interesting idea I had for an RP is that same concept.  All your players past Characters vs all their evil nemesis in a grand final battle.  I thought it'd be neat.  if anything the video was really neat.

3

RPGs / Music?

« on: June 02, 2009, 02:26:24 AM »

Since I have my laptop next to me during sessions, I thought it'd be neat to play a little bit of background music while we play, just very faint setting the mood kinda music.

I've been searching around for some fantasyish medieval music buuut I got nothing.  I looked for olden European music but I just find some guy in a basement replaying the same tune over and over.

If anyone has a link to a place with something interesting (and free) lemme know please!!

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RPGs / Dealing with Absent Players

« on: May 15, 2009, 06:09:05 PM »

How do you deal with players who are absent for 1, 2, maybe 3 sessions?

In my DnD campaign I run weekly, one player has missed 2 sessions in a row and both sessions other players learned alot of information.  I keep this information learned on a wiki for easy access for players who are absent.  However, players who can make it every week have a serious advantage XP wise.  Whereas these regulars are near leveling, this player is just nearing the 1/2 way point.

Now this player still wants to play.  They still have the interest in playing their character, it just happened that these weekends plans were made.  How should I deal with his XP so he dosen't fall behind w/o just giving him XP so other players won't complain.

And what does everyone else do when players are absent due to real life things but still want to play?

5

RPGs / Creative ways to beat traps?

« on: April 21, 2009, 12:59:32 PM »

When I made a 'learning' dungeon for two of my players, I had a room with minions, and then a passageways with spear gauntlets (4Ed).  Now I was expecting them to get through it with trial and error, and in doing so they came up with creative ways to bypass the traps.  It was a Paladin and Warlock, the same ones playing my campaign now.  They were running after an escaping Kobold, and when they got to the passageway they find it's dead bloody corpse.  I want to mention that just before they entered, the Paladin unknowingly played with a bunch of levers he found and activated the trap after the Kobold ran away, killing it.

Now they knew there were traps.  They failed perception, and didn't have any kind of Thievery skills.  So what do they do?  Just for the hell of it the room they were in previously was the mess hall of sorts.  So the Paladin grabbed a table, and slid it across the floor of the passageway until the spears shot up and destroyed it.  Then he just acrobatics checked over it.  They would mark where they thought the traps were, and eventually they kept a few bodies of kobolds to heap on a square to see if a trap would activate.

They manage to make it through the whole corridor this way, and even when I threw at them a slinger or two at the end, they just grabbed a table and it provided some cover.  I thought this was creative and I didn't even think of them using the tables at all.  I just threw them in to give the room more personality.

So!  I want to hear other experiences with traps or hazards, in any system.  I want to know of creative ways players (or you) got through them in ways the GM didn't even see or think of.

6

General Chaos / Getting info from a PDF

« on: April 19, 2009, 03:01:33 AM »

I am not the greatest person when it comes to computers.  I know more than the average person, which could be saying a lot, but I have a little problem.

Very simple, I want to take some info from the PDF of Dungeon magazine from the WotC website, Dragon magazine 364, the section on Kobolds.  All I want to know is how I can take the monster card, in it's format, and copy it onto something like a word document.  I also have the PDF downloaded if it makes a difference.  I know a website where I can manually input the info and it makes a monster card but that is too time costly.

7

RPGs / Perception Checks (D&D 4E)

« on: April 18, 2009, 11:52:23 PM »

Going off some games I've dabbled in with my players, I'd like to know how everyone handles Perception checks.  As dumb as I may sound I've been lookin on the internets and I've found alot of people use houserules when it comes to this.  I'm asking cause I want to know if players initiate their own perception checks, the DM, or if it's all pre-planned out.

I also ask this because my group of players tell me they roll perception in every single room and every single corridor.  And If one person brings it up, everyone wants in.  If one person notices something, everyone wants to reroll (Which I don't let them unless something has changed), etc etc... And I want to get some ideas on how to change this with good reasons other than "STFU You found nothing AGAIN!"

Soo, maybe some interesting ideas will come up, maybe not.  If you want to give a by the book definition on how perception checks work by all means state it.

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General Chaos / Old Anti-D&D propaganda

« on: April 18, 2009, 03:48:01 AM »

Found this by just clicking around:
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

It's a comic strip from the 70/80's about how D&D is for cults and jesus is awesome.
I found it to be hilarious however.

9

RPGs / Base of Operations

« on: March 30, 2009, 03:19:17 AM »

It appears in most games Ive seen/played/hosted, but players always seem to make themselves a Base of Operations.  Id like to get opinions as to how everyone deals with this idea.  Should the players have a place they can store the crap they've collected over the course of the session and use it as a place of planning...stuff.  Or do a lot of GM's just not allow players to do this, due to whatever reason.  And by Base of Operations i mean a house where they killed the owners or a cave they killed some bears in, along those lines, not a Hotel room they rent out or something.

I myself will allow a base of operations as long as I know the players will be in the area for a long enough time.  They seem to always want to make every house the base, after they've killed the owners, or make a phone booth their 'ammo dump' in some games, even going as far to kicking a hobo out of his 'house' so they could store things there.  Not even useful things.  Just things.

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RPGs / A tad bit of help with my Campaign please.

« on: March 24, 2009, 03:50:33 PM »

Well, continuing from http://slangdesign.com/rppr/bbpress/topic.php?id=97 for my campaign I had semi-planned out, now that I have a rulebook and Ive read over them Ive decided to start actually writing down my 'script' of sorts for the first session.  But there's a problem...

To start the players are going to be trapped within the dungeon they helped build.  I think to keep the element of surprise, the players will be the 'fresh' slaves' recently captured.  This way its still a new dungeon.  So as stated before something will happen where the evil boss (I'm just going to call him that for now) is forced to leave, leaving the players and the rest of the slave community locked inside.

Now here is where Ive come to a tab bit of a problem.  I have just a few ideas I could use for this session.  And depending on the idea I use will pretty much determine how...crazy (?) the evil boss guy is.  Oh, and the dungeon has multiple floors, the deeper you go the harder it gets, so there's a lot of slaves the players will be with.

1.  I could make the dungeon a series of trials [Each trial having the proper NPC to help them through it,(1 representing each guild, so about 4) but not do it for them.] in which there's the trap trial, the riddle trial, the monster trial and I thought of throwing in the 2 statues, one that only tells the truth and one that only tells lies, to mix it up.  Each trial has a very simple name (Like Trial of Ideas for the riddles) and after they get through them they are given the choice to keep going down or leave through some means.  This gives me the option to keep the dungeon active for later adventuring, giving the new Trials more meaningful names (like Trial of Epiphany for a later Riddle).  This would in turn make the Evil Boss someone who can show pity, showing that he may just be following orders from a higher being.  I'm toying with this idea but it represent the closest to my original.

2.  Since the players are slaves and they are trying to save not only themselves but the community, I thought Id have them gamble the lives of them.  A large stone tablet will tell them to divide the slaves, about 100 of them, into 3 rooms (again, each representing a trial) and have them decide whether or not to let the slaves attempt the trial, or have them 'pass'.  I'm toying with the idea to make this a secret vote or  saying it in the open (or both).  By passing, the players will unknowingly the first time kill all the slaves.  I have 3 means by which this happens for the first 3 trials.  Traps, the slaves are to simply get trhough a passageway alive, filled mainly with spear traps.  If the players pass, the slaves in their 'waiting room' are impaled upon spears, shot down by arrow turrets, and burned in flaming oil.  Riddle, the slaves are to answer a simple riddle.  Pass, and the slaves are suddenly entering a room with zombies, being eaten alive and having their brains torn from their heads.  Monster, they fight a few skeletons.  Pass, rats rains down from the walls and floors up the the waist of the slaves as they are quickly eaten alive by millions of rats.
  The fourth trial, however, will be for the players only.  Ill throw the Truth/Lies statues at them for this.
In this way they players are somewhat determining how many slaves they could start with in their town building.
The way the players are picked is since there are 5, I will have 7 pedestals that need to be occupied.  Each representing one of 7 sins (I like incorporating them).  2 NPC's will fill up 2, these 2 will be semi-important is determining the vote for the players and slaves.  The players can choose not to do the voting and instead attempt the trial (in which case they will never come up as pass, in fact only the 7 who are the 'Sinners' will know that someone had a hand in choosing.
I think I'm going to go with this idea because I can incorporate more time in the building and adventuring before the Evil Boss comes back.  The Evil Boss himself could be a gambling man, using the dungeons he's built as tests against the slaves, earn their freedom at a price.  Believing the players will choose pass each time, he believes they wont survive in the wilderness, and thus wont come back for a time.

These are just 2 ideas I've thought over the most.  I want something interesting and a way to introduce a wide array of challenges so my players will learn the game with me.  Sorry for making this so long...If you read all of it I think you for your time and hope you can suggest any kind of ideas.  Thank you.

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RPGs / Question or two about DnD 4 ed.

« on: March 20, 2009, 04:09:09 PM »

Alright, just a few days ago I received my order of the 3 core rule books for DnD 4 ed. and ive been reading them with great enthusiasm.  however I have a question or two about some thing and It would be nice if someone could take a minute to answer them with their vast knowledge of awesomeness 

Alright, so first off I made a character just to learn the process, lets say a lvl 1 Warlock, and one of the spells (Vampiric Embrace) says that for the Attack, I roll a Constitution vs. Will.  I dont know what I need to do.  Do I roll 1d20 and add Constitution modifiers for attack and Will for enemies defence?  Please explain.

Aaand ummm... blah I hate being new to things... For a simple melee attack, it's just a 1d20 + modifiers to hit vs. enemy AC, and then damage is the weapon's damage + modifiers, correct?  Reading over the rulebook is making me second guess everything.

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General Chaos / Looking to avoid a bad book

« on: March 18, 2009, 12:14:38 AM »

Looking for a good book
      http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=16.0

Terry Goodkind is terrible
      http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=24.0

After thinking about these two I want to know what kind of book series to avoid and with ample reason to avoid them.  Like now I have reasons to avoid the Sword of Truth series, dosent mean I wont read it or something (I wont), but now I have good reasons to avoid it.

13

General Chaos / Could your players survive the Zombacalypse

« on: March 17, 2009, 04:27:06 PM »

Would the group you play with now be able to survive?

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RPGs / Unusual items in games?

« on: March 14, 2009, 12:57:51 PM »

Id like to continue this thread from the Old forums.  http://slangdesign.com/rppr/bbpress/topic.php?id=98  Id like to see other interesting things thought up by players and GM's.  Ill start by posting another item...

Oh!  It was simple, but in a Rifts game my friends had a pen that when writing the ink changed color.  It was really simple, but when we came to a barbarian village, they freaked out over the changing ink on some letters we had and tried to smash us.  So ya, even really simple items can have a big effect in games.

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RPGs / Most boring campaign?

« on: March 11, 2009, 09:55:04 PM »

What experiences have you had with boring campaigns.  Ones where even though you don't want to play you somehow muster up the willpower (no saving throws  >.<) to continue on.

For example one of the most boring campaigns I'm playing is with my friends Wheel of Time rpg.  Its made for people who have read the book, and being only the GM has read the series its really confusing for us players.  All the references to characters and events that would be really cool and awesome are just lost on us as we try to comprehend why the events that are unfolding before us have any real meaning.

But the only reason I'm really playing it still is that it's my friends first introduction to being a GM and he's having a blast.