[QUOTE=BuffaloBill;47819301]
SirWhoopsalot cast Sickness on a rider and made him literally puke his guts out so he died from it.
[/QUOTE]
Crits do that to you.
As we went on our merry way to Unspecifiedville, we suddenly saw something approaching in the distance. As they got closer, we saw what they were; dudes riding birds. Said dudes didn't seem like a threat so we decided to wait. They were about to fly over when our wizard/cleric decided to give them a warning shot in the form of a fire bolt. Enter combat. Our monk grapples a bird and, by magic of a nat20, throws himself on top of it, right behind the rider. Wizard/cleric sleeps two of the riders who fall to the ground with a nice cracking sound, making their birds fly off. Ranger shoots the remaining rider in the face. Ray of Sickness to his face from me, nat20. "Literally pukes himself to death" and the bird starts crashing into the ground. Our new halfling cleric got rammed to -5 while our silly monk made his save. She got healed back to health and, after some simultaneous honouring and desecration of the bird's corpse, we found a map towards a nearby tower. Thus on our way we went.
We reached the tower and got in relatively easy. Our monk levitated, awing the guard into letting the drawbridge down for us. Yes, he just got himself a fangirl. The inhabitants of the tower turned out to be a society of bird-lovers and she took us to their leader. After almost embarrassing ourselves by trying to charm someone ('we're sorry, he's special'. 'Oh, don't have it happen again'.), we split the party. 3 of us went to fly on the birds (never has a monk saying he has 'some experience' with flying birds been so funny) and the rest went to check some books with amazing information and very detailed illustrations because they were totally awesome, yo.
The birdpeople, after some struggles, got to flying and went into a dive. Buffalobill's bird (who was so painfully average that if you'd look up 'average bird' in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of him) got intimidated into continuing the dive, almost smacking them both into a bridge. Instead, they landed on him, with the bird steadfastly refusing to do anything except shuddering and shaking in fear.
I find the GM playing music over roll20 to do pretty immersion breaking, since there's suddenly music coming out of nowhere, or it's unfitting music, or it gets really irritating because it's been playing on repeat for like an hour.
Only time music over roll20 wasn't a pain in the ass in my experience has been that game of crab truckers.
[QUOTE=draugur;47823477]Only time music over roll20 wasn't a pain in the ass in my experience has been that game of crab truckers.[/QUOTE]
Well yeah, you just need Kickstart My Heart on repeat
I've never really had much of a problem with music in roll20
It basically fucking made my Call of Cthulu game because I could actually have some atmosphere thanks to it, and beyond that it helps slap everyone at the start of every RT session by going PAY ATTENTION *The Emperor* while I'm making the opening scrawl
It's fun to do for boss intros and fight starts, just to set the mood, though I usually stop it after a loop or two just so it doesn't get repetitive.
[QUOTE=Rents;47822812]I find the GM playing music over roll20 to do pretty immersion breaking, since there's suddenly music coming out of nowhere, or it's unfitting music, or it gets really irritating because it's been playing on repeat for like an hour.[/QUOTE]
See my GM tends to be rather tactful with the music, nice ambient stuff taken from decent RGP's with the master volume set waaaay down so it it's only really noticeable when everyone goes dead silent.
He's also good about choosing the right music for the right moment, swapping as the situation calls for it.
However when we play the FFG star wars games he has a rule, if the party does nothing for more than a few mins he WILL play march of the empire on shortloop until we actually do shit.
[QUOTE=thisguy123;47823820]See my GM tends to be rather tactful with the music, nice ambient stuff taken from decent RGP's with the master volume set waaaay down so it it's only really noticeable when everyone goes dead silent.
He's also good about choosing the right music for the right moment, swapping as the situation calls for it.
However when we play the FFG star wars games he has a rule, if the party does nothing for more than a few mins he WILL play march of the empire on shortloop until we actually do shit.[/QUOTE]
Or anything from Star Wars Kinect.
[QUOTE=thisguy123;47823820]
However when we play the FFG star wars games he has a rule, if the party does nothing for more than a few mins he WILL play march of the empire on shortloop until we actually do shit.[/QUOTE]
My GM's rule when people were AFK consisted of playing maximum volume SANIC Green Hill Run until everyone got back in.
My D&D GM played the Benny Hill theme on repeat for an hour while the duel of "who gets to hold the only sword in the room" played out.
[editline]28th May 2015[/editline]
He does play appropriate ambient noise, however.
[QUOTE=Mayor Luigi;47819628]What did you make the map with? It looks cool.[/QUOTE]
Like the other guy said, yeah its Hexographer. I like making maps and I'm trying to find decent, easy to use applications to speed it up. This is one of them if you don't mind gamey maps from what I can see.
Clearly the best non-gamey mapping solution is [url=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=73095]Dwarf Fortress[/url]
[QUOTE=Gray Altoid;47825934]Clearly the best non-gamey mapping solution is [url=http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=73095]Dwarf Fortress[/url][/QUOTE]
If you don't lose before finishing the map :v:
[QUOTE=SiberysTranq;47821541]you know
I never really considered how fucking insane my entire RT game is until our trader decided to explain everything the party had done over the past year to his fiance
and the only rational response I could think of was complete BSoD[/QUOTE]
I got legitimately worried for a moment I was about to give her an aneurysm purely from stress. Now I have to do make-up with cheesy holo-vid movies and ice cream.
[QUOTE=Alxnotorious;47826116]If you don't lose before finishing the map :v:[/QUOTE]
That just adds more character to the location.
Since we're on the topic of maps, my campaign setting and its hexographer map is finally seeing some progress!
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19459374/testbed.png[/t]
And here's an example of a fully fleshed out country. Can't find a place to stuff "DRAKEAN KINGDOM" into, however.
[t]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19459374/drakea.png[/t]
Those look awesome, man. Makes mine look like shit.
Plan to throw my Shadowrun group up against horrible bug monsters today. Let's see them ghost their way around that! (I'll be back later to relate how they carefully avoided my bug monsters.)
Looking to DM a new campaign (5th) and want to encourage my group to not just hack & slash their way through everything this time. I was thinking of either adding exp rewards for other actions (like moving the plot forwards, doing things that are difficult for their character, finding alternative solutions to problems, etc) or just removing exp entirely and levelling people once they hit a "landmark" of sorts.
I don't mind if they want to power through in-game assets like money/loot, but metagaming the exp system is making for boring campaigns. Sometimes they focus too much on it and grind away instead of playing the game, which is what I want to avoid (or at least make less enticing compared to other options).
How do you guys feel about that kind of stuff? Do you have an alternative levelling system?
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;47832707]Looking to DM a new campaign (5th) and want to encourage my group to not just hack & slash their way through everything this time. I was thinking of either adding exp rewards for other actions (like moving the plot forwards, doing things that are difficult for their character, finding alternative solutions to problems, etc) or just removing exp entirely and levelling people once they hit a "landmark" of sorts.
I don't mind if they want to power through in-game assets like money/loot, but metagaming the exp system is making for boring campaigns. Sometimes they focus too much on it and grind away instead of playing the game, which is what I want to avoid (or at least make less enticing compared to other options).
How do you guys feel about that kind of stuff? Do you have an alternative levelling system?[/QUOTE]
In my Pathfinder game, there is no XP; they level up simply when I tell them to. This is usually based off of milestones in the story.
Also, not related but: I also love the Automatic Bonus Progression optional rule in Pathfinder Unchained, which means they no longer have to search for generic boring magical shit like ring of protection or cloak of resistance, just cause they need them to level with the increasing challenges. Also it lets me introduce characters like an alien gunslinger who only uses technological weapons since they come from a world where there is no magic
*cough*
[img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b3/4f/62/b34f62bb2e609439b92d31fa06e9e998.jpg[/img]
For d20 games, my group never keeps track of XP. For one, we're all lazy as hell, and figuring out the challenge ratings and math-math-math is just tedious busy work. For another, we had the same problem where people were trying to do stuff to game the system. So we normally will just all level up at the same time at the GM's order, often after accomplishing a sizable goal.
I've also found that my players will quite often go into pure rules-based smashy mode once the gridded map comes out. Once things become a board game with little plastic orcs to murder, the thinky part of the brain turns off and the game begins to look like a series of move and attack actions.
Of course, it might just be that the game you want to run with thought and character stuff is not the game they're looking to play. You might want to try that thing where you talk with them and see what they're looking for in a game like most core rulebooks advise in their GM section.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;47832707]Looking to DM a new campaign (5th) and want to encourage my group to not just hack & slash their way through everything this time. I was thinking of either adding exp rewards for other actions (like moving the plot forwards, doing things that are difficult for their character, finding alternative solutions to problems, etc) or just removing exp entirely and levelling people once they hit a "landmark" of sorts.
I don't mind if they want to power through in-game assets like money/loot, but metagaming the exp system is making for boring campaigns. Sometimes they focus too much on it and grind away instead of playing the game, which is what I want to avoid (or at least make less enticing compared to other options).
How do you guys feel about that kind of stuff? Do you have an alternative levelling system?[/QUOTE]
For my 5e campaign once it starts I'm intending to do away with the standard XP system and just award it how I see fit for combat. (Which will likely be a bit lower than normal to account for the other changes I'm making.) In addition I'm intending to award XP on a per session basis according to how well each player stayed in-character and award XP for different things such as roleplaying for important story bits or solving puzzles. The puzzles thing will actually be very important because the second arc of my campaign takes place in one extremely large dungeon where advancing is going to mostly rely more on solving puzzles than fighting.
[QUOTE=Jrose14;47832517]Those look awesome, man. Makes mine look like shit.[/QUOTE]
Making them highly detailed is easy biz, though it gets even easier when you use a reference map to trace over(which I did by splicing a bunch of sat images.)
Trouble is, because my map is huge(190x190 hexes), the software tends to become a huge memory hog and grind down my framerate to stupidly low digits, which makes editing a map insanely difficult. Thankfully it didn't crash yet.
Awards for significant story related achievements (DM designated roleplaying XP awards as well as player voted ones) for good/significant roleplaying isn't ever a bad idea unless your players are selfish. You could also have a quiz of sorts at the end of a session, asking if any special info was gained or subtle things accomplished and perhaps ask what the characters believe to be the consequences of their actions (which can also help you in following sessions by potentially working off of those expectations).
The DM of my current game has a tendency to give out XP for good roleplaying/surprising him with unique stuff instead of just slashing away at everything.
[QUOTE=DeeCeeTeeBee;47832912]You could also have a quiz of sorts at the end of a session, asking if any special info was gained or subtle things accomplished and perhaps ask what the characters believe to be the consequences of their actions (which can also help you in following sessions by potentially working off of those expectations).
The DM of my current game has a tendency to give out XP for good roleplaying/[B]surprising him with unique stuff instead of just slashing away at everything.[/B][/QUOTE]
This actually reminds me. I was planning on giving small XP rewards to anyone who keeps decent notes on what happens during my campaign as well.
I also plan on doing something similar to the bolded part. If the players try to be creative about an encounter rather than simply straight up murder everything that comes their way (which they have a habit of doing, they find one tactic that worked once and stick with that without ever trying to find alternative tactics or ways to avoid fighting) or try to resolve an encounter peacefully they'll actually be rewarded whatever I was going to give for winning the battle plus bonus experience according to what role they each played in the encounter.
[QUOTE=Pax;47832860]For d20 games, my group never keeps track of XP. For one, we're all lazy as hell, and figuring out the challenge ratings and math-math-math is just tedious busy work. For another, we had the same problem where people were trying to do stuff to game the system. So we normally will just all level up at the same time at the GM's order, often after accomplishing a sizable goal.
I've also found that my players will quite often go into pure rules-based smashy mode once the gridded map comes out. Once things become a board game with little plastic orcs to murder, the thinky part of the brain turns off and the game begins to look like a series of move and attack actions.
Of course, it might just be that the game you want to run with thought and character stuff is not the game they're looking to play. You might want to try that thing where you talk with them and see what they're looking for in a game like most core rulebooks advise in their GM section.[/QUOTE]
Good point about the grid. I kind of want to keep them on edge but I also don't want the grid to mean someone is going to die either. I will find a way to temper their expections (and surprise the ever loving shit out of them :D)
Asking the players what they want is a really good idea. Part of the reason I'm DMing at all is because they got tired of the last DM killing them off with impossible encounters and they wanted to try something new. I've had some great ideas in the past and everyone wants to try a campaign where political intrigue, working connections and building a reputation are all just as important as combat. Think something along the lines of being welcomed into a mafia family, or the drama of a king's court (like Game of Thrones but less dramatic).
[QUOTE=DeeCeeTeeBee;47832912]Awards for significant story related achievements (DM designated roleplaying XP awards as well as player voted ones) for good/significant roleplaying isn't ever a bad idea unless your players are selfish. [B]You could also have a quiz of sorts at the end of a session, asking if any special info was gained or subtle things accomplished and perhaps ask what the characters believe to be the consequences of their actions (which can also help you in following sessions by potentially working off of those expectations). [/B]
The DM of my current game has a tendency to give out XP for good roleplaying/surprising him with unique stuff instead of just slashing away at everything.[/QUOTE]
Oh this is good actually, I like this. Thanks for posting that, will definitely implement.
Anyway great posts so far. If I do stick with XP I want it to reflect the growth of a character, not just plain defeating monsters. It will need to be more dynamic than it currently is.
XP from monsters shouldn't make up more than 1/2 of your XP, IMO. It should mostly come from good roleplaying, non-combat resolutions to situations, and other rewards. Hell, you could bring back AD&D class-specific bonus xp, like how a thief got XP equal to the amount of treasure he scored for himself, and a wizard got XP for handling magic items, that sort of thing. It can be slightly gamey but it's a way to reduce combat specific XP.
The Fighter and Barbarian classes get bonus XP from Drinking.
I've been getting by pretty fine in my RT game by operating off a general playtime scale, plus a little bonus for there being a session and usually a bit more for really substantial events
Works pretty great, especially when combined with the fact that I improv 90% of my sessions so we can basically keep going till everyone wants to stop
Magical Burst is simple in that each "XP" basically qualifies as a level, almost. 20 XP is considered "end game" according to the vanilla rules, and you usually get an XP or two at most for beating a major boss or reaching a plot milestone. Each individual XP is spent on upgrades for your character, so it's more of a point buy kind of deal I suppose, than anything like "once an arbitrary experience value has been reached, you gain more power" because each point of XP can be used to improve your character, instead of sitting stagnant until a threshold is reached.
Granted, we've had to completely rework the XP system because they're basically at about double the so-called end game value, but the point still stands.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;47832707]Looking to DM a new campaign (5th) and want to encourage my group to not just hack & slash their way through everything this time. I was thinking of either adding exp rewards for other actions (like moving the plot forwards, doing things that are difficult for their character, finding alternative solutions to problems, etc) or just removing exp entirely and levelling people once they hit a "landmark" of sorts.
I don't mind if they want to power through in-game assets like money/loot, but metagaming the exp system is making for boring campaigns. Sometimes they focus too much on it and grind away instead of playing the game, which is what I want to avoid (or at least make less enticing compared to other options).
How do you guys feel about that kind of stuff? Do you have an alternative levelling system?[/QUOTE]
I award XP for overcoming an encounter. Whether you charm your way around guards or kill them is up to you.
Encounters can be anything from monsters to a dangerous cliff side.
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