Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

Make him do it during tests for a penalty. Must be quite hard to shoot when you're coughing up half your lung.

[Max White]

The penalty to he's sneak must be overwhelming.

[GlyphGryph]

You can tell how well the monster is doing by how it is carrying itself. Even Boxers show how close they are to a punch out.

Which is why you use those adjectives I love to go on about.

Though I've got to be honest, in the system I run most often I do usually just let characters know hit points - but that's because most everything has between 4 to 8 hit points, with the maximum armor for most characters capping at 2! At that level of granularity and lethality, its not such a big deal if they know the actual number.

Also, if you have the sort of players who memorize the DMG? Tweak those monsters. Combine abilities! Switch up abilities and monster name/appearances!

"What, what do you mean the illithid hits us with petrifying gaze!? They can't do that!" "And how would you know, Mr. I'll just skip my monster identification check because I already know what this is? Hmmm?"

Let them use their "knowledge" as much as they want, and suddenly they become the guy who thinks they know everything instead of the one that actually does (much more manageable).

[Max White]

"What, what do you mean the illithid hits us with petrifying gaze!? They can't do that!" "And how would you know, Mr. I'll just skip my monster identification check because I already know what this is? Hmmm?"

And that is how the DM wins at D&D.

[Vorthon]

In response to the person who said 'people who only know 3.0+ ed D&D don't know what roleplaying is'.

I'm anti-powergaming/minmaxing. And I've only ever played 3.5e. I find that comment you made insulting.

[GlyphGryph]

You do have to admit you likely have a pretty narrow view of the broader field, at least, but I do agree that its possible to only have experience with 3.0+ and still be a good and knowledgeable roleplayer. It just takes a really good DM in order to make it happen.

[Vorthon]

Eh... I don't really care that much about stats or skills. Unless I'm going for a certain character concept. But that's when I'm a player and not DM.

I've got an idea for the campaign (I've abandoned the whole city-based campaign concept.), and I could use some feedback

Basically, the party is approached by a wizard (A very old and somewhat famous wizard, at that), and he wants to hire them to retrieve an artifact from some ruins at the other end of the continent. Ruins that the exact location of is the focus of speculation and rumour. That would be the main quest, but they'd be able to do stuff for other people along the way.

Does it need work?

[GlyphGryph]

Why does he want to hire them would be the first question I'd ask.

As a player, I'd be incredibly suspicious, assuming there is a damn good reason he doesn't want to hire, say, a couple dozen fighters and a team of archealogists or at least some experienced proffessional heroes instead of a team of noobs, especially if its supposedly valuable. Perhaps the object is dangerous and we're expendable? Perhaps its a trap? Maybe he just wants to keep things on the down low, and we should try to avoid being obvious about who we're working for? And most important, why is he entrusting us with this important mission.

Anyways, to clarify my last post:
There are two distinct types of roleplaying, really. There's character roleplaying, coming from the theater/literary tradition of unstructured roleplay, and then there is dungeon crawling, coming from the wargame tradition with a focus on stats and combat and winning, with everything else as "theme-setting" more than building a dynamic narrative. D&D was originally based on and is still very much a servant of the second tradition, and those who value the first tradition (or some of the other less popular traditions) more highly often suspect (often correctly) that those who've only experienced D&D have a very limited view of what roleplaying means.

There are a lot of other divergences in ways to roleplay and approach roleplaying as well, and if you've only done D&D you need to realize you've experienced only a very small slice of the pie, no matter how crazy your DMing has been. Not just setting wise, but mechanics wise. You might not realize just how much a systems mechanics can guide the way a game is played, and you might be unaware of the diversity of roleplaying experiences available to you (even WITHIN D&D!) if you haven't experienced a system that guides you naturally towards those sort of outcomes.

It's similar to the criticism that someone who's only ever read, say, a certain style of detective novel, doesn't really know what "good" writing is. They may have experienced good writing in several of their novels, but they really don't have any idea of the breadth of what it can do outside of its narrow genre. Of course, people argue that such critiques are worthless as well, but surely you can see where the opinion might come from.

[Vorthon]

Makes, sense (The big wall-o-text on breadth of experience, that is.).


As for the reason the wizard would hire the party, it would most likely be the 'he wants to keep it on the down low' mixed a bit with the 'the object's dangerous'. Namely because said artifact is a creation of one the first civilizations to have appeared in the world (By the time of the campaign, long extinct, as well), and may or may not be the reason for said civilization's downfall. To be precise about the name of the  the artifact, it's either going to be the Orb of Dreams or the Gem of Dreams.

[GlyphGryph]

So what things has the party already accomplished to make them trustworthy enough to undertake a quest for such a valuable item?

(You don't need to play this out, and you can build this up WITH your players, but let them work together to create a bit of a backstory and maybe even a reputation to start with, even if its only local. They ARE heroes, after all, even if they are only low level ones, )

[Vorthon]

Having them come up with a background for the party together would be a great way for the players to get to know each other (I basically scraped together enough people for a standard four-character party at school (Yay for highschool!  ), and some of the people don't really know each other that well.)

Plus, it'll give me a valid excuse for starting the party at a higher level, so people who want to play characters who belong to a race/have a template with a level adjustment can.

[nenjin]

Basically, the party is approached by a wizard (A very old and somewhat famous wizard, at that), and he wants to hire them to retrieve an artifact from some ruins at the other end of the continent. Ruins that the exact location of is the focus of speculation and rumour. That would be the main quest, but they'd be able to do stuff for other people along the way.

No offense, but that is a textbook adventure set up. In fact, the last major adventure I did started exactly this way.

The first thing that happened was the PCs immediately realized the Wizard was taking them for a ride. Not that he was screwing them over per se, but that he wasn't being 100% clear about what they were after or his reasons for wanting it. Whenever you give the players less information than they feel they should have (aka "mysterious artifact"), they're betrayal sensors start going off. Add an NPC (a wizard no less) wanting this magical artifact, and players will rightly assume that they're only getting 1/2 the story.

It's not a bad set up....and general plot outlines are general, but it has to go farther than that. If the Wizard is indeed going to use this artifact to become a bad buy the players have to take out....be prepared for them to not be surprised at all, unless you have done an exceptional job of misdirection. Basically, never ever make your "quest givers" two dimensional, because the lack of motive shows at the end of the adventure when they hand the thing over and the guy either goes "muwhahaha, fools!" or you simply hand out exp for a delivery well done.

I don't have a real point with this post, it's just your setup was 1:1 for the last adventure I ran, and PCs basically smelled 1/2 the plot coming before it even arrived. Wizards with tasks tend to have that effect on players.

[Vorthon]

Basically, the party is approached by a wizard (A very old and somewhat famous wizard, at that), and he wants to hire them to retrieve an artifact from some ruins at the other end of the continent. Ruins that the exact location of is the focus of speculation and rumour. That would be the main quest, but they'd be able to do stuff for other people along the way.

No offense, but that is a textbook adventure set up. In fact, the last major adventure I did started exactly this way.

The first thing that happened was the PCs immediately realized the Wizard was taking them for a ride. Not that he was screwing them over per se, but that he wasn't being 100% clear about what they were after or his reasons for wanting it. Whenever you give the players less information than they feel they should have (aka "mysterious artifact"), they're betrayal sensors start going off. Add an NPC (a wizard no less) wanting this magical artifact, and players will rightly assume that they're only getting 1/2 the story.

It's not a bad set up....and general plot outlines are general, but it has to go farther than that. If the Wizard is indeed going to use this artifact to become a bad buy the players have to take out....be prepared for them to not be surprised at all, unless you have done an exceptional job of misdirection. Basically, never ever make your "quest givers" two dimensional, because the lack of motive shows at the end of the adventure when they hand the thing over and the guy either goes "muwhahaha, fools!" or you simply hand out exp for a delivery well done.

I don't have a real point with this post, it's just your setup was 1:1 for the last adventure I ran, and PCs basically smelled 1/2 the plot coming before it even arrived. Wizards with tasks tend to have that effect on players.

I won't state that the guy's a wizard, and he'll be wearing a cloak with a heavy hood.

[GlyphGryph]

That... uh... only makes it worse.

No, what you should do is make him super sketchy, but have him not turn out to be the bad guy. Have the bad guy be the person the party didn't expect, who, when the party reveals to him their suspicions, agrees to hold on to the artifact and keep it safe while they give a wizard dude a fake to disrupt his crazy plans. (PC plants are great for this, but you need to make sure the secretly evil character isn't revealed until near the end, for obvious reasons. Although, at this point you can switch him to controlling the wizard)

When the party realizes it and defeats the surprise enemy and finally returns the artifact to the wizard, apologizing for their stupidity, THEN reveal the wizard to be the bad guy.

[Sowelu]

Yeah, my first real DM'd adventure had a wizard hiring the party to get a specific item from a tomb, and don't touch anything else because it's horribly dangerous.  Yeah, he sent them after the only nonmagical item in a tomb full of valuable treasure, just so they could set off all the traps for him to loot it later.

...Well here's a fun idea you could use:  The wizard didn't just hire the heroes.  He hired A LOT OF PEOPLE.  In seperate groups.  And gives everyone specific instructions not to let anyone else know that he hired them, or where they're going.  Kind of like 7th Saga crossed with the Announcer from Team Fortress 2.  It's perfect for recurring antagonists who don't have to be evil--they're other adventurers that you keep running into, friend or foe, who get in the party's way or beat them to places (or who the party desperately wants to beat somewhere).  Then you wind up with, like, three seperate parties in the last dungeon at once.  How far are they willing to go to get the reward?  What will they do when a Real Big Nasty Thing shows up; work together with the NPCs or take the "I don't have to outrun the dragon, I only have to outrun you" approach?